Despite its scope, War Thunder is simple when broken down to its basic elements. Most notably, the game is available as a completely free download. You can purchase in-game currency to buy vehicles and skill upgrades, but because you can earn those bonuses by simply playing the game, spending is not forced upon you. Combat comes in two distinct flavors. You either take to the skies in a fighter or a bomber, or you grind it out on the ground in an armored vehicle. Matches are huge affairs involving up to 32 players. Tens of thousands of players are online at just about any time of the day or night on servers across the globe, too, so those 32 slots per game fill up. Match types involve familiar goals like destroying enemy ground forces from the air or conquering control points on the ground with your tanks.
When it comes to air combat, a trio of game difficulty settings allows everyone from casual shooters to more hardcore simmers to get comfortable. You can play in the physics-lite Arcade Battles mode, move up to the more rigorous Realistic setting, or go all-out with the grueling Simulator option. Arcade is the easiest way to play, thanks to amenities like starting in mid-flight in aerial combat and offering unlimited ammo both in the air and on the ground. Realistic mode tosses in a more punishing physics model along with the need to take off and land when flying. And Simulator mode takes the game to true flight simulator territory, planting you in a cockpit (the third-person camera option isn't available here) and forcing your soaring feat of mechanical engineering to compete with the laws of Newtonian physics.
