Games have a long history of being used to teach military lessons, starting with ancient board games such as checkers and chess. As games have become more complex and narratively driven over the last few decades, they've also become better at instilling players with these lessons. Indeed, history-focused games in particular can illustrate changes in tactics, weapons and the scope of war over time.
Below, you’ll find six games from the last 20 years that all effectively illustrate an informative facet of America’s past conflicts. If you want to dive deeper into the history of each conflict, we highly recommend reading books and reputable articles on each battle or campaign while playing the games. After all, while games may give players a better feel and, often, a better idea of the terrain and tactics of each conflict, they usually lack the historical depth that comes from a solidly researched book or documentary.
“Ultimate General: Civil War”
The “Ultimate General” series throws players into the role of, you guessed it, a general officer. There are multiple games, and you can be a general in the Battle of Gettysburg, the larger Civil War or the Age of Sail. You can lead your army through entire campaigns that start at a specific point in history with the real units in their real positions.
To learn the military history of the conflict, we recommend playing the Civil War version of the game and playing each battle individually so that you start with the same forces in the same position that real commanders did.
"Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad"
The 2011 game "Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad" tells the story of one of the most pivotal battles of World War II, a battle that isn't exactly ignored in Western circles but definitely gets less attention than it should.
A quick primer: While Europeans today mostly credit America as the most impactful Allied power, Europeans in the 1940s felt much differently as most Nazi and Allied casualties took place on Germany's Eastern Front with the Soviets. The Soviets are credited with defeating or destroying 607 Axis divisions. In Stalingrad alone, the Soviets killed and captured 500,000 German soldiers.
"Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad" focuses on that conflict and drops the player into the house-to-house and street-to-street fights of Stalingrad. The game is old but still holds up. It won “Game of the Year” in 2011, and its recent reviews on Steam are still "very positive," according to Steam's metrics.
"Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30"
Another World War II game, "Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30" follows the hard fighting of the U.S. 502nd Parachute Infantry Regiment in France in 1944. The exact squad is fictional, but events in the game are real, from the squad getting scattered during their jump into Normandy to the Battle of Bloody Gulch a week later.
The Bloody Gulch fight was part of the larger Battle of Carentan, where U.S. soldiers took the village and then defended it against a brutal counterattack.
"Steel Division: Normandy 44"
Look, Normandy comes up a lot. That's just how the history video-game market works.
"Steel Division: Normandy 44" hangs its hat on realistic terrain and imagery, as the game was made using real intelligence imagery and photographs from the war.
The real-time strategy game has conflicts ranging in size from fighting over a bridge to capturing a town. Since the terrain is real and force sizes are typically realistic, moments emerge naturally that echo history, such as breaking forces into smaller units to make it through the hedgerows.
"The Great War: Western Front"
World War I is a tough fight to model in video games. Like in World War II, it featured massive numbers of people fighting in densely packed areas, which is hard for computers to track and render. It featured lots of trench fighting, which is hard to make fun. And some battles lasted so long that it would be nearly impossible to fit into a video-game narrative arc.
"The Great War: Western Front" leaned into all those problems and was somehow made better by it. Players pick which side of the war to fight on, and the game has real-time, tactical fights nestled within a turn-based strategy game. Gameplay often revolves around trench fighting, which many reviewers complain about but is obviously how World War I really worked. And the game injects news of the outside world, so players can get a feel for when the U.S. joined the war, when Russia was knocked out and when major historical events such as the sinking of the Lusitania took place.
"Valiant Hearts: The Great War"
This World War I game differs from all other titles on the list. It doesn't focus on combat at all. It's a story-driven game with plenty of puzzles, and it tells the story of five characters with interweaving stories.
It's more of an interactive novel than a traditional game.
It won't help players memorize dates or tactics from the war, but it does a good job of telling personal stories within the larger conflict while depicting the shortages and strife that defined it.
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