Playing video games is all about having fun and unwinding, butsome 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.
8Steel Armor: Blaze of War
A Tank-Shaped Box
Fun fact: the abbreviation of theSteel 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 ofarmored warfarethrough these iconic Cold War behemoths, bunkered down in your metal cage with only sights and periscopes to experience the world around you.
SABOWgives 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.’
An Emotional D-Day Drama
Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30
“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 Armsis the closest you get to thatBand of Brothersexperience 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 firstWW2 gamesto take away the cinematic grandeur to make room for emotional depth and tactical acumen.
Brothers In Arms: Road to Hill 30recreates real missions of the 101st Airborne division, with locations built after field visits and interviews with veterans, on top of archival footage.
6Il-2 Sturmovik: Great Battles
A Simulator Fit For Aces
IL-2 Sturmovik: Battle of Stalingrad
Great Battles is the third generation of theIl-2 Sturmovikseries, 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 Sturmovikhas top-of-the-lineaircraft modelsthat 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 Battlesis not as accessible asWar Thunder, but also requires less studying thanDigital Combat SimulatororFalcon BMSto get going.
5Medal of Honor (2010)
Striking While The Iron Is Hot
Medal of Honor (2010)
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 Honorfocuses 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.
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Medal of Honordoes a great job of portraying how the invasion of Afghanistan slowly escalatedfrom 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.
A Tale of Mud and Trenches
Trench warfare has no glamor to it, andVerdunnails that to a fault. Despite having two sequels,TannenbergandIsonzo, neither of them captures the grit as well asVerdun.
The game has beautifully recreated factions, weapons, and maps, butwhat makes it shine is the commitment to how horrible the battles around the time were.
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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, butVerdunreminds you it can always get much, much worse.
3Call of Duty 2
Activision’s Finest
Call Of Duty 2
When the core team behindMedal of Honor: Allied Assaultmoved to form Infinity Ward, they first delivereda game that was equal parts a masterpiece and historically inaccurate.
The developers got their redemption withCall of Duty 2in 2005. While the first title took major liberties with the operations depicted,Call of Duty 2stuck 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.
2Rising Storm 2: Vietnam
An Experience Hotter Than Napalm
Rising Storm 2: Vietnam
TheRed OrchestraandRising Stormseries 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.
AlthoughRising Storm 2: Vietnamstarted out far worse than the preceding games, it slowly grew, eventually surpassing them.
The game puts you incontrol 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.
1Six Days in Fallujah
Violent Room Service
Six Days in Fallujah
Sometimes, your game is so historically accurate that it gets canceled. Konami droppedSix Days in Fallujahback in 2010 after pressure from both the American and Iraqi sides, but the game found its way out in 2023.
Six Days in Fallujahis 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.
Thecampaign modewalks 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!
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