Recently I’ve been hooked on this Korean game called ‘Navyfield’. Its a quasai-mmo type game where you have a WWII warship and fight against other players. The graphics are very simple (just an overhead view , planes look extremely tiny) but I find the game very addictive.
You recruit a crew and level them up (max level is 120). Winning battles gives you credits and experience points. When your bridge officer is at a high enough level, you can purchase a better ship. Even if you are stuck in the grind, you can use your money and existing level to upgrade the guns, engine, and armor on your ship. Its fun to play around with different weapon configurations. The game has ships from four nations- US, Japan, UK, and Germany, and the ships range from frigates to battleships and carriers.
I believe the reason the game is so addicting is because there is this constant yearning to get a better ship. Early on, a player spends a lot of time in a Destroyer, and unless you like it (even though they are vulnerable to bigger ships they have their uses) you’ll be working hard for something better. Each nation has a ‘ship tree’ requiring a certain path to get a certain ship. There are also ship-launched planes, which can be shot down with a little practice.
Not all the ships are historically accurate, because they wanted to balance out the nations so that any nation/ship you pick has a decent shot. There are also some ‘fantasy’ ships out there (in order to give Germany a fair amount of aircraft carriers).
Some of the big battles can be a lot of fun- things get really crazy and chaotic. Occasionally I’ll get into wooden navy-esque engagements with an enemy ship, wailing away at each other at point blank range. Other times I might take a unlucky hit by a shell and have my engine stall, while I see a fan of torpedoes looming toward me.
The game itself is free, and if the grind gets tedious, you can pay some real money so that in each game so long as you stay in the game (win or lose) for 5 minutes, you automatically get at least 1000 xp/credits, which makes grinding up to the ship you want considerably easier.
Admittedly, much of the time spent is being afk (waiting for the match to start, or if I died early, waiting for my 5 minute counter to expire) but with enough practice it starts to get really fun.