World of Tanks: Founder's Pack #3

Score: 85%
Publisher: Wargaming.net
Developer: Wargaming.net
Media: Download/1
Players: 1 (Training) / 30 Players (Online)
Genre: Simulation/Shooter

Jump in with Both Tracks:

Like the PC version, World of Tanks on the PS4 is completely free-to-play. There are, of course, items that can be paid for to boost your gameplay a bit. For the most part, these things take the form of advancing your game quicker than simply playing for free, allowing you to earn XP faster, which in turn, is used to upgrade your tanks and unlock new ones.

As with many free-to-play games, World of Tanks offers some packs of kit to help you progress faster or get more enjoyment out of the game. Founder's Packs are special packs made available for purchase to those early adopters (or "Founders").

What You Get:

Founder's Pack #3 is the second largest - and most expensive - of the four available Founder's Packs, at $74.49 USD, and includes three tanks: Two Medium Tanks and a Heavy Tank.

Specifically, you'll get:

T23E3, a Tier 7 American Medium Tank
T-34-88, a Tier 6 Russian Medium Tank
KV-220, a Tier 5 Russian Heavy Tank
3 Garage Slots (One per included tank)
100% Trained Crews
30 Premium Days
2,200,000 Silver

Why It Matters:

Early gameplay in World of Tanks puts you in Light Tanks. You're generally required to work your way through the tech tree, advancing your tank technology to a point where you can eventually research and then buy Medium and Heavy tanks. The tanks in Founder's Pack #3 will set you up with two Mediums and a Heavy Tank from the get-go, without eating up your existing Garage Slots.

To me, the big win here is the KV-220 Heavy Tank, because, well, ...Heavy Tank. The other two tanks are Medium Tanks and you can access Mediums quicker than you can access Heavies. The KV-220 gives you an early chance to try out the much slower, but much, much harder hitting world of Heavy Tanks.

The other two tanks seem to have been chosen to give some balancing factors that will likely make some people disagree with my favoring the KV-220. Specifically, both the T-34-88 and the T23E3 are higher tiers than the KV-220, giving you a total of one Tier 5 Heavy Tank and a Tier 6 and a Tier 7 Medium Tank. Further, while the American T23E3 is the Tier 7 tank, the T-34-88 has its own unique feature that makes it attractive...

Let's Hear it for Flexibility:

Premium tanks, like the three you get here, allow for swapping existing crews (of the same nationality) into and out without a fee, which is a thing when switching crews between tanks, in general. This makes Premium tanks a useful vehicle for training your crews.

The T-34-88 has an interesting backstory. If you look at its livery, you'll notice that it has a German cross on the side, even though it's a Russian tank. This is because the T-34-88 was added to the game based on stories of the Russians capturing German tanks and pressing them into service. It would be enough to make it a cool tank if it were just that backstory, but, no... there's a game mechanic backing this up: You can use Russian or German crews in the T-34-88. So, the T-34-88 isn't the Heavy Tank in the pack, nor is it the highest tier, but if you're using Premium tanks as a way to train your crews faster, the Russian-by-way-of-German tank offers flexibility that other tanks don't.

The Value:

Getting into a Heavy Tank early on in the game is a big time saver and lets you get a feel for a different flavor of gameplay, which would otherwise take a lot of progress and research. Medium Tanks aren't as exciting, since they are accessible earlier, although you still have to work through a variety of Light Tanks to get there... just not as many.

The question you have to ask yourself is what excites you most about this pack. If it's the Tier 7 tank or the flexible Russian/German tank, this may be the best pack for you. To me, the most exciting part of this Founder's Pack is the KV-220 Tier 5 Heavy Tank, which is the one tank that is shared across all of the Founder's Packs. If that's the only part of this deal that excites you, it would be better to pick up Founder's Pack #1 and spend the difference elsewhere.

-Geck0, GameVortex Communications
AKA Robert Perkins

Jump in with Both Tracks:

What You Get:

Why It Matters:

Let's Hear it for Flexibility:

The Value:

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