The 2003 Iraq War was not a particularly popular thing worldwide. It triggered the Freedom Fries™ incident with France, all but buried the career of British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and sparked animosity far and wide against the United States.
However, the conflict served as inspiration for some fascinating pieces of media. HBO’s Generation Kill (2008) is a war miniseries arguably on par with Band of Brothers, while A24 hit it out of the park on the big screen with Warfare earlier this year. Videogames took a little while to catch up, and Konami has a role to play in this.
Despite suffering a publisher cancellation and a studio bankruptcy, Six Days in Fallujah entered early access in 2023. It is currently available on PC, though developer Highwire Games has plans to release it on consoles as well, following the footsteps ofReady or NotandARMA Reforger.
Six Days in Fallujah is one of the few games today that brings me back to the squad tactics heyday ofStar Wars: Republic CommandoandBrothers in Arms on the PlayStation 2.
In its current iteration, Six Days has co-op multiplayer and a campaign, with two scripted missions, and another eight procedurally-generated ones that you can run through again and again. The developers want to add over a dozen more prior to 1.0 release.
In the spirit of Gamescom madness,Six Days in Fallujah is on sale for 25% off. The sale runs until August 25th, according to the game’s social media page.
Now is a good time to get in on the game, as Six Days is set to geta major autumn updatethat will introduce new weapons, customizable attachments, and abilities.
Shock And Awkward
The first proper game torepresent the Iraq Warwas Insurgency: Modern Infantry Combat, a Half-Life 2 full conversion mod first released in 2008. The team behind it went on to buildInsurgency: Sandstorm, best described as “Counter-Strike 2 if it were actually good”. If controversy hadn’t gotten louder than publishers were able to stomach, another game would have beaten it in this race.
The first official game about the Iraq War was supposed to be Six Days in Fallujah, originally developed by Atomic Games and intended to be published by Konami. The game evolved from a government simulator proposal into a quasi-horror retelling of the 2004Second Battle of Fallujah, and was set to come out in 2010.
Atomic had big plans for the game, but it attractedeven bigger controversy. Veterans' advocacy groups in the United States felt it was too much, too soon, while anti-war activists argued that it glorified the Iraq War. Videogame discourse in the 2000s was still knee-deep in the tar pit that was “games make kids violent”, and something as brutal as Six Days was definitely not helping.
In the end, things got too spicy for Konami. The publisher pulled the plug on the project in 2009, and though Atomic tried to go at it alone, the studio filed for bankruptcy in 2011.
For a decade, the idea of a gritty, realistic game about the Iraq War was left for dead… until Highwire Games and publisher Victura moved in to resurrect Six Days in Fallujah.
The game’s console release is planned after it leaves early access on PC. There is no hard date for that yet, though the public expectation is that the console release will happen sometime in 2026.
