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Watch and learn: how to record, play back and share your World of Tanks games

World_of_Tanks_tank

You might not be aware (I certainly wasn’t until recently) that World of Tanks can record every single game that you take part in, allowing you to review your battles later and share them online. Well, you know what? It’s dead easy to do. Here’s how.

First of all, you’ll need to make sure World of Tanks is recording when you play. Open up the settings menu and go to the “Game” tab. You’ll see these options and you’ll want to tick “Enable battle recording.” Simple, for someone like you, a gunner with the keenest of eyes and the sharpest of aims.

The next time you go into combat, World of Tanks will be quietly tracking everything you do. It won’t be recording raw footage, but will instead be monitoring the movements and actions of all the tanks on the map, logging all of this in a .wotreplay file, a bit like a scientist standing behind you with a clipboard. This is a much more efficient way to store a reply and results in replay files that are only a megabyte or two in size. You’ll find these in a folder called “Replays” within the World of Tanks folder itself.

A strange quirk of the World of Tanks is that you’ll have to actually exit the game in order to watch these, they can’t be loaded in the game client itself. After you’ve exited, double-click the file and World of Tanks will load it in playback mode. Here, you’ll be presented with a selection of camera controls like these:

A free camera option lets you pan around your tank, giving you the chance to see things you might’ve missed while the battle was raging and, should you want to, you can slow things to 1/16th of the original speed to see those gratuitous kill shots in super slow motion. You can also ramp up the replay to 16x speed to get to all the best bits, or if you just want to play the Benny Hill theme while you watch. (As I now do every evening, all evening, before burying my head in a pillow wet with my own shame. It passes the time.)

Of course, you’re not just making these replays to review the mistakes you’ve made, you’re making them so you can share them online and boast of your achievements. Head over to My World of Tanks Replays, create an account and upload yours. You’ll also be able to browse through and download everyone else’s, shaking your head at how terribly they play in comparison to you, the Tankmeister, Lord Tank of Tankington.

The rest, of course, will be history. All the world will get to enjoy your tanking skills and soon fame and fortune will embrace you as if they were your own parents. When this happens, when you’re lying there in your tank-shaped bath, up to your neck in champagne in your Beverly Hills mansion, I ask just one thing: remember us. Remember that it was PCGamesN and Paul Dean who helped you get there. Think of me as you down another gin and tonic.

Now, where’s my Benny Hill .mp3?