Playing video games is all about having fun and unwinding, but some developers manage to turn your entertainment into fully-fledged history lessons.
These 10 games stand out from the rest due to their creators’ insane (sometimes bordering obsessive) attention to detail.
The bad guys are carrying the right model of flashlight, and you get to use the exact type of rocket that one regiment used on that plane variant in the summer of 1942.
Much of human history has been reshaped by war, and these games put you right in the middle of it.
8 Steel Armor: Blaze of War
A Tank-Shaped Box
Fun fact: the abbreviation of the Steel Armor: Blaze of War, SABOW, sounds like ‘sabot’, your primary type of anti-tank round. Less fun fact: there are three T-62s on that hill over there firing sabot rounds your way.
The Iran-Iraq war ran from 1980 to 1988, and remains one of the bloodiest conflicts in recent history. After building a solid reputation with World War 2 tank games, Graviteam decided to tackle this often-forgotten war.
The game is built around two tanks: the American M60A1, and the Soviet T-62. You experience the brutality of armored warfare through these iconic Cold War behemoths, bunkered down in your metal cage with only sights and periscopes to experience the world around you.
SABOW gives you realistic campaigns based on actions taken by Iranian and Iraqi tank units during the opening stages of the war and also includes an Afghanistan campaign that really drives home the shortcomings of heavy armor against mobile insurgents.
The graphics are painfully dated, and the interface is somewhere between clunky and outright hostile to the player, but as Todd Howard famously said, ‘It just works.’
7 Brothers In Arms: Road To Hill 30
An Emotional D-Day Drama
- Released
- November 20, 2006
- Developer(s)
- Ubisoft Montreal , Ubisoft Quebec
- Multiplayer
- Local Multiplayer
- Engine
- Unreal Engine 2
- ESRB
- M For Mature 17+ Due To Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Strong Language
- How Long To Beat
- 8 Hours
“What makes a great soldier? Is it his brain, or his heart?” That phrase sounds pretty corny these days, but it is engraved in the minds of those who played the game for the first time at a young age.
Brothers In Arms is the closest you get to that Band of Brothers experience in a video game. It puts you in the shoes of Matt Baker, a man plagued by his consciousness during the air assault on Normandy in 1944.
This is one of the first WW2 games to take away the cinematic grandeur to make room for emotional depth and tactical acumen.
Brothers In Arms: Road to Hill 30 recreates real missions of the 101st Airborne division, with locations built after field visits and interviews with veterans, on top of archival footage.
6 Il-2 Sturmovik: Great Battles
A Simulator Fit For Aces
Great Battles is the third generation of the Il-2 Sturmovik series, and it commits the hardest to historical accuracy.
The WW2 flight simulator had a modest beginning in the winter part of the Battle of Stalingrad, but today, it covers battles from 1941 up to 1945, with a little WW1 sideshow that is not quite as complete.
Il-2 Sturmovik has top-of-the-line aircraft models that conform to their historical limitations, but the game’s crown jewel is the dynamic campaign.
This immerses you into a regiment or squadron in WW2 and has you flying missions based on historical records and actual frontline events.
As a simulator, Il-2 Sturmovik: Great Battles is not as accessible as War Thunder, but also requires less studying than Digital Combat Simulator or Falcon BMS to get going.
5 Medal of Honor (2010)
Striking While The Iron Is Hot
- Franchise
- Medal of Honor
- Released
- October 12, 2010
- Developer(s)
- Danger Close Games , DICE
- Publisher(s)
- Electronic Arts
- Engine
- unreal engine 3, frostbite
- ESRB
- m
- How Long To Beat
- 5 Hours
The 9/11 attacks shocked the world in 2001, and triggered an invasion of Afghanistan less than a month later. The initial force consisted of American and British special forces, who linked up with local militias opposed to the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
Medal of Honor focuses on the story of Navy SEAL, Delta Force, and Rangers units during the initial weeks of the war in Afghanistan. Some unit names have been fictionalized, but the combat and enemies you face are based on real missions that played out.
Related
15 Best First-Person Shooters Of All Time, Ranked
Looking for the best first-person shooters of all time? We decided to comprise a list of the best ones ranked.
Medal of Honor does a great job of portraying how the invasion of Afghanistan slowly escalated from a limited special forces show backed by airstrikes into a full-on boots-on-the-ground affair.
The game’s shooting mechanics are underwhelming even by contemporary standards, but the story more than sells it.
4 Verdun
A Tale of Mud and Trenches
Action
MMO
FPS
Simulation
Indie Games
- Released
- September 19, 2013
- Developer
- BlackMill Games, M2H, Abstraction
- Publisher
- BlackMill Games, M2H, Abstraction
- Engine
- unity
- ESRB
- m
- How Long To Beat
- 51 hours
- OpenCritic Rating
- Weak
Trench warfare has no glamor to it, and Verdun nails that to a fault. Despite having two sequels, Tannenberg and Isonzo, neither of them captures the grit as well as Verdun.
The game has beautifully recreated factions, weapons, and maps, but what makes it shine is the commitment to how horrible the battles around the time were.
Related
10 Games With Brutally Punishing Beginnings
Difficulty in games has been a talking point for a long time, but there are certain developers that love kicking your ass from the jump.
You spend most of your time sitting in position, picking off enemy assault teams, but the real horror comes in the few seconds you get over the wire. You are out there naked, exposed to enemy rifle salvos, artillery, and the terror of machine guns.
You also get to enjoy fun things such as bayonets, flamethrowers, shotguns, and even gas attacks. War is hell by default, but Verdun reminds you it can always get much, much worse.
3 Call of Duty 2
Activision’s Finest
- Released
- October 25, 2005
- Multiplayer
- Local Multiplayer
- Engine
- iw, id tech 3
- ESRB
- m
- How Long To Beat
- 8 Hours
When the core team behind Medal of Honor: Allied Assault moved to form Infinity Ward, they first delivered a game that was equal parts a masterpiece and historically inaccurate.
The developers got their redemption with Call of Duty 2 in 2005. While the first title took major liberties with the operations depicted, Call of Duty 2 stuck to more realistic and grounded missions, with some cinematic action sprinkled on top.
Like any good early 2000s WW2 game, it included a bombastic D-Day landing sequence, but the best levels in the game focused on Montgomery’s Eight Army.
Captain Price returns from the first game, in a much more likeable version before his Modern Warfare reimagining.
2 Rising Storm 2: Vietnam
An Experience Hotter Than Napalm
The Red Orchestra and Rising Storm series earned the nickname of PTSD simulator, and it is well deserved. Tripwire Interactive did not pull punches with the brutality of war in the games, and despite their primarily multiplayer focus, the historical accuracy and immersion flow well.
Although Rising Storm 2: Vietnam started out far worse than the preceding games, it slowly grew, eventually surpassing them.
The game puts you in control of American, Australian, South Vietnamese, and North Vietnamese forces during decisive battles of the Vietnam War.
Weapon availability depends on the year the battle took place, leading to some moderately painful but entertaining matchups where one team is using weapons of WW2 vintage against enemies that just received new toys.
Them’s the rules, so go stare down the dude with the Kalashnikov, and hope the napalm doesn’t drop too close. You’ll be thinking about that for a while if it does.
1 Six Days in Fallujah
Violent Room Service
- Developer(s)
- Highwire Games
- Publisher(s)
- Victura
- Multiplayer
- Online Co-Op
- Engine
- Unreal Engine 4
- ESRB
- m
- How Long To Beat
- 1 Hour
- Steam Deck Compatibility
- Playable
Sometimes, your game is so historically accurate that it gets canceled. Konami dropped Six Days in Fallujah back in 2010 after pressure from both the American and Iraqi sides, but the game found its way out in 2023.
Six Days in Fallujah is a historical retelling of the second battle of Fallujah in 2004. You play the part of a Marine from the 1st Marine Regiment during the month and a half of fighting for the Iraqi town.
The campaign mode walks you through specific episodes, but you can also experience them individually in multiplayer.
The voice acting and sound design put your head right into the heart of battle, sending a little shiver down your spine every time you approach a door. Breaching!
Related
10 Open World Games With The Best Combat
What to do in worlds this vast? Why, pummeling everyone down of course!
