Computer tank simulators provide players with the opportunity to feel inside a formidable combat vehicle and find themselves in the thick of a tank battle. There are many types of such games, differing in plot, control and gameplay.
The first game where it was necessary to drive a tank and destroy enemy vehicles was called Battle City and was released on game consoles back in 1985. Of course, it cannot be called a simulator, but in fact it was Battle City that became one of the first games entirely dedicated to tanks. Currently existing tank simulators can be divided into several main groups.
Realism or Convenience?
One of the types of classification is genre. As in the case of flight simulators, games are divided into realistic and arcade games. Realistic simulators are an attempt to reproduce all the subtleties of controlling a combat vehicle with maximum accuracy. There are many control settings, and similar to the real physics of the movement of the tank, and the limitation of the view. All this makes realistic simulators quite difficult to master, and therefore interesting only to real fans of military equipment.
As for arcade tank simulators, here the controls are significantly simplified compared to the present, and many real indicators have been changed in favor of the dynamism of the gameplay. Naturally, it is this genre that attracts the bulk of fans, since the "entry threshold" is quite low here.
The success of multiplayer games
In addition, all tank simulators can be divided into single and network. If in the first case the player is fighting opponents controlled by artificial intelligence, then in the second he has to fight with other players. Of course, the second option opens up much more tactical possibilities, since the actions of living people are much more difficult to predict. In addition to this, there is a competitive element in online games that increases the interest of the players. For example, one of the most popular multiplayer arcade simulators World of Tanks, created by the Belarusian company Wargaming, gathers up to a million online players on Russian-language servers alone.
At the intersection of genres are the so-called tactical shooters - computer games in which players control soldiers, in some cases capable of using various equipment, in particular, tanks. However, such games cannot be classified as simulators, because, firstly, the control of tanks in them is quite primitive, and secondly, tanks are used here to destroy enemy manpower, and not to fight other combat vehicles, as in tank simulators.
