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What are the best FPS games on PC? From the classic physics chaos of Half-Life 2 to Overwatch’s incredible guns, these are the finest FPS games.
For more than two decades, the best FPS games have been the driving force of the PC games industry. They’ve let us travel from the depths of Hell in Doom to the outer reaches of space in Titanfall 2. Others have taken us on a detour through the likes of Half-Life 2’s zombie-infested Ravenholm, while some have embraced futuristic cities.
Some of these FPS games are old, others are new, all are great. Wolfenstein 2’s amazing campaign; Rainbow Six Siege and its tight tactical multiplayer; Overwatch and its vast array of amazing heroes. No matter what sort of virtual gunplay you’re after, the following FPS games will satisfy your itchy trigger finger.
So crack those knuckles, get ready to make all the headshots, and keep in mind that guns will solve all your problems in the following shooty gems. These are the best FPS games on PC. We hope your aim isn’t off…
The best FPS games are:
Escape from Tarkov
There are countless FPS games that tout their realism, but none come close to the obsessive attention to detail paid by Escape from Tarkov’s dev team when it comes to guns, attachments, and ballistics modelling. Not only are there upwards of 60 guns in Escape from Tarkov, but each one can be modded up or stripped down to the point where they’re unrecognisable from their off-the-shelf counterparts. You can swap barrels, mounts, scopes, flashlights, foregrips, pistol grips, handguards, muzzle attachments, stocks, charging handles, magazines, receivers, gas blocks, and choose from several different types of round for each ammo type. No two weapons you find in-raid are ever the same.
This leads to plenty of malfunctions for new players and anyone who, er, doesn’t know much about guns. However, after stacks of wasted roubles and an inventory packed full of useless attachments, you’ll soon start figuring out how to fit each attachment before finally forming an emotional bond with your custom build. That last part is especially important as in Escape from Tarkov, if you die in a raid and an enemy loots your body, you’ll lose everything you brought in with you, even your treasured assault rifle.
A little help: in the form of this Escape from Tarkov ammo guide
These brutal rules can make Escape from Tarkov incredibly intimidating for new players, but while it’s easy to lose your valuable gear, it’s just as easy to go into a raid with little more than a pistol and extract with some of the best armour and weapons in the game. Thanks to a player-driven economy, you can even loot a seemingly worthless object like a statue and trade it for a brand-new HK416.
EfT also stands out from other FPS and multiplayer games on this list as it mixes PvP and PvE so seamlessly. Every raid plays out on a massive map with players spawning around the edges and AI enemies spawning in at key points of interest, usually where good loot can be found. From the start of the match you have up to 40 minutes to kill, plunder, and make it to one of the designated extraction points. If you die you’ll only get the gear you insured beforehand back, and only if it’s not been looted from your body first. So, how do you escape from Tarkov? Well, extraction points are always on the opposite side of the map where you spawned in, so making it through a raid without encountering an enemy is virtually unheard of.
TITANFALL 2
EA and Respawn built on everything the first game got right and balanced this shooter sequel’s multiplayer so well it became one of the best PC games of 2016. There’s nothing quite like Titanfall 2’s juxtaposition of crunchy, industrial mech brawling and nimble pilot combat. As you’ll see in our Titanfall 2 campaign review, the solo portion of this FPS also serves as both an excellent intro to the game’s mechanics and a charming, self-contained narrative.
The campaign never tries to outdo the gameplay with epic setpieces or blockbuster bombast. Instead, the raw mechanics serve up all the thrills: wall-running at a group of enemies and blowing them away with a few, unnervingly satisfying blasts of your shotgun feels exhilarating every time. What’s more, the PC version holds up wonderfully as we saw in our Titanfall 2 PC port review.
Respawn have not only added depth to single-player; a four-player co-op wave mode is an excellent companion to the competitive multiplayer that contains a wide varitey of Titanfall 2 classes. Titanfall 2 is a bigger and better beast than before, and a breath of fresh air for the mech games genre as a whole.
While there’s no word on a Titanfall 3, Respawn Entertainment’s battle royale Apex Legends is set in the same universe. Sure, the wall-running is gone, but Apex Legends weapons like the Mozambique and Hemlock serve as a fitting nod to this developer’s wonderful past.
WOLFENSTEIN 2: THE NEW COLOSSUS
Wolfenstein: The New Order effectively made the case that a good dose of Nazi-bashing and a decent yarn are not mutually exclusive. MachineGames had their work cut out with the sequel, Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus, but they certainly delivered.
As you can find out in our Wolfenstein 2 PC review, this is an incredible follow-up to a very strong reboot… even if some sections can get a little gun-heavy. MachineGames once again show that they can tell an engaging story to match the copious shooty slaughter. Blowing out the brains of Wolfenstein 2’s Nazis offers constant punchy thrills, and every setpiece has been turned emphatically up to 11.
Rudely awakened from your hospital bed after the defeat of the subtly-named Wilhelm “Deathshead” Strasse, you return once more as the bellicose B.J. Blazkowicz to try to trigger a Second American Revolution. With the infamous swastika adorning the US, you’ll want to look at our Wolfenstein 2 weapons guide to familiarise yourself with Blaz’s arsenal. A breathless, high-octane thrill ride from start to finish, Wolfenstein 2 is undoubtedly one of the best shooting games on PC.
Oh, and don’t forget to check out our Wolfenstein 2 perks guide. With the right powers equipped, those despicable digital Nazis don’t stand a chance.
Free Mac Shooter Games
DOOM
The big Doomguy in the sky must have been watching over us, because now we have a whole new Doom to play, and it’s brilliant. Look past the thoroughly modern graphics, the sizzle, and all the demon-punching, and you can see the beating heart of the 1993 original. This excellent reboot throws up some of the best Doom levels the series has ever seen, while unloading your gun into the hideous bodies of walking corpses and furious monsters is a gory treat.
Doom is not just an old game with a fresh coat of paint, though: it doesn’t shy away from employing plenty of modern conveniences, like upgrades, objectives, and checkpointing.
This shiny new version isn’t quite as spry as its progenitor, but compared to most modern FPS games, it’ll make you feel like The Flash. Speed alone is not what makes it great, however. It’s the addition of glory kills that elevates Doom amongst the best FPS games on PC.
Glory kills are finisher moves, essentially, forcing you to get in close and smash a demon to bits. And as we detail in our Doom PC review, these finishers give the game an incredible flow. You chain kills, both ranged and melee, jump off ledges and onto unsuspecting enemies, and indefatigably charge into the next battle.
CALL OF DUTY: WWII
The weariness that series loyalists have for futuristic Call of Duty settings was all too plain when Infinite Warfare came flying in, exosuits and all. A change of direction was needed. Something more along the lines of Call of Duty 2, which was once the gold standard in blockbuster FPS games. And so, following in Battlefield 1’s freshly muddied footsteps, Call of Duty WWII cements itself as one of the best FPS games on PC, and beyond a doubt one of the best World War 2 games.
As we said in our COD WW2 PC review, this is still very much typical COD: it’s still fast with near instantaneous kills and deaths. There’s also a zombies mode, and it’s still populated with potty-mouthed 12-year-olds whose parents should have definitely taken a closer look at the game’s age rating.
Thanks to the addition of COD WW2 War mode though, a slower, more methodical approach is now required. Unlike the pace and nimble movement demanded by Kill Confirmed and Uplink, War sees a team push forward to complete objectives, while the other attempts to foil them. On top of excellent PC performance, Call of Duty: WWII is one of the best FPS games on PC with tried and tested multiplayer and a story that evokes some of the finest moments of classic COD.
OVERWATCH
Compare it to Team Fortress 2 or to League of Legends if you like – Overwatch has enough in common with both to share some of their appeal, but different enough that it will take months for players to figure out its best character combinations.
Overwatch is about teamwork: little is made of who killed you or how many headshots you amassed. More important is how you managed to revive a vital sniper on the capture point as Mercy, or pushed the payload forwards with Reinhart’s shield, or otherwise managed to win a round using your eclectic mixbag of abilities.
While it was a little light on features at launch, regular Overwatch updates are coming all the time, with new Overwatch heroes being added, too. Overwatch League has also crystallised the game’s e-sports potential. Don’t worry if you’re not all about eight-hour practice sessions, though – half the charm is the pick-up-and-play appeal, which cements Overwatch as one of the best FPS games on PC.
COUNTER-STRIKE: GLOBAL OFFENSIVE
Throwing yourself into the world of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive for the first time is like diving into a modern warfare meat grinder. You will face players who have been prowling versions of these maps for more than a decade. You will die to snipers with tens of thousands of kills notched into their Scout. You will be punished by players who could recite CS:GO console commands in their sleep, sitting out the rest of the round while you rue your mistake.
Telescopic sights: focus on the best sniper games on PC
Why, then, would you choose to play Counter-Strike: Global Offensive? Because working your way up to the top of the leaderboards is an achievement; a reward earned through patience, skill, and muscle memory. And it has some of the best level design in games. There’s a reason why, even today, you will find servers running ancient maps like Dust 2 day in, day out; in part, because regular CS:GO updates forever keep this shooter fresh.
But Global Offensive is a modern game and brings modern ways of playing. It is now partly funded through the sale of cosmetics and weapon skins, like Team Fortress 2. It includes automatic matchmaking, guiding you away from the dedicated servers that made the series what it is today. And there are ranks, giving the elitists a visible badge for their dedication, alongside medals for veterans.
HALF-LIFE 2
So much more than an evolution of its superb predecessor, Half-Life 2 is frequently hailed as the best PC games of all time. Such accolades are not undeserved, either. The long-awaited sequel to Half-Life is hugely ambitious, benefiting from being developed by a much more confident Valve.
Everything is bigger than the 1998 original: the environments, the enemies, the story – it’s a blockbuster, but a smart one. There are decent AI companions; real characters who exist to do more than die comically; physics that transform the world into a seemingly real, tangible place.
Valve again works magic with its environments. Despite often being larger and more open than Half-Life’s, they are still crafted with the same care and attention to detail. And, importantly, they remain memorable, from the haunted streets of Ravenholm to the ominous Citadel, standing over City 17 like a steel and glass tyrant. Age may have worn away some of the sheen, but it remains a striking, compelling FPS game.
RAINBOW SIX SIEGE
Thanks to continued support from Ubisoft, Rainbow Six Siege is almost completely unrecognisable from the so-so shooter that emerged with a whimper rather than a bang in 2015. Now, with its burgeoning e-sports scene, a constant flow of Rainbow Six Siege operators, and some of the best multiplayer gameplay around, it has become one of the best shooting games on PC.
Every moment of Siege’s boxed-in battles is fraught with tension and danger, from the moment you start scouting an area with your drone – praying your enemies don’t spot it before you can find the hostage – to that final attempt to save the day by shooting down walls and smashing through the ceiling. Its asymmetrical multiplayer and tactical openness mean no round plays out the same way.
Want more? Check out our list of the best war games
It is a psychological battle as much as it is a series of gunfights; a game about manipulation and control as you attempt to make your foes react in specific ways while you try to keep your own team working together. You never feel safe: an attack can come from anywhere, usually everywhere all at once. After all these years of feeling safe behind walls, Siege’s destructible environments force you to think on your feet and trust no wall.
Siege features a relatively high barrier to entry, but unsure players can jump into the fray cheaply with the Rainbow Six Siege Starter Edition. For those who take to Rainbow’s punishing gameplay, you can be assured Ubisoft Montreal’s shooter is here to stay with new seasons and content coming all the time.
LEFT 4 DEAD 2
Valve’s zombies are not like other zombies. In Left 4 Dead 2, they crash over you like waves, crawling up walls and leaping across gaps. They are accompanied by specials: highly-evolved undead that force you to work together. A Smoker will drag you off into an alley with its long tongue where you’ll be mobbed by common undead. A Hunter will pin you to the asphalt before tearing out your throat. A Boomer will charge right into your face and explode, drowning you in green gloop.
Related: Check out the best zombie games on PC
Even though zombies are a dime a dozen and Left 4 Dead 2 has been around for a long time, the tension, level design, and countless mods ensure it remains a compelling romp. It remains one of the best co-op games on PC.
TEAM FORTRESS 2
In this extra shooty, class-based affair, angry cartoon men capture briefcases, escort bombs, and stand on nodes. Team Fortress 2 is brilliant, and it’s still easily one of the best shooting games on PC. It has also evolved, with mountains of user-created content, maps, modes, and new Team Fortress 2 gadgets helping keep the shooter relevant.
The premise is as simple as ever: you pick a character from a cast of nine and take your place on a team. Modes include Capture the Flag, King of the Hill, and Payload – the latter seeing a team drive a bomb forward on a rail track, while their opponents desperately attempt to hold them back. It is a classic that has become the flagship mode of Overwatch, but it was refined to perfection here in Team Fortress 2 first.
UNREAL TOURNAMENT
Epic made a name for itself with Unreal – impressive in a time when shooters were dominated by id – but it was with 1999’s Unreal Tournament that Epic earned its grand moniker. Tournament had the same core concept of Quake Arena but offered an alternative for those looking for a few more frills.
Among the game’s exciting weapons is the BioRifle, which weaponises toxic sludge. You can even charge it up and release a great bulb of the stuff, using it as a gelatinous landmine. Then there is Redeemer, a rocket launcher that flings a pilotable thermonuclear warhead at your enemies. You should also try the Ripper, which fires saw blades that bounce around corners. Each gun has separate strengths and alternate fire modes that need mastering in order for you to dominate in the arena.
Tournament’s maps – old and new – are filled with memorably mad architecture. There is nothing quite like leaping in low gravity between the three stratospheric towers in DM-Morpheus – particularly if you can gib someone in mid-air, spraying their gore through the sky.
DUSK
Dusk is much, much more than just another throwback FPS that riffs on every titan of the genre from Half-Life to Quake. While other retro-styled shooters have managed to emulate the feel of those classics, Dusk instead tries to outdo its own inspirations by being as fast, tight, and imaginative as possible.
Like Doom or Half-Life, Dusk has its fair share of unforgettable levels, from the mind-boggling Escher Labs and Homecoming to the nightmarish Unseen, the level design in Dusk is nothing short of genius. The gunplay is satisfying, with a punchy array of weapons you can use to gib the varied assortment of baddies Dusk throws at you.
But it’s the fluid movement that will leave you grinning from ear to ear. Simplified controls and rapid acceleration encourage you to be fast and aggressive in every fight, with accessible strafe-jumping, weapons that let you extend your air time, and the ability to perform ad hoc somersaults for extra flair.
There are a bunch of modern perks, too, such as mouse-look, crouch, jump, and actual physics – you can pick up a bar of soap and hurl it at an enemy if you’re low on ammo. All of this adds up to make Dusk the best ’90s shooter since the ‘90s. This indie game is an absolute blast to play and goes much further than simply recalling the halcyon days of the genre.
And if you want more retro gaming goodness then publisher New Blood Interactive are also responsible for Amid Evil, a gloriously fast-paced homage to retro games like Heretic.
So there you have it, the best FPS games on PC. With so many upcoming PC games taking the form of shooters – we can still dream of a Half-Life 3 release date being announced, right? – now is a glorious time to be an FPS fan. So give that trigger finger a stretch, and keep practising your virtual headshots. After all, those Nazis, zombies, and virtual terrorists won’t shoot themselves.
With Call of Duty, Battlefield, and more returning to the 1940s, we have to ask: what are the best WW2 games on PC? The most devastating conflict in our recent history of fighting over land and ideologies has been distilled into heroic charges, tense dogfights, epic digital wars, and savage battles many times over, and here you’ll find the top World War 2 games to play right now.
Whether you’re looking for the grittiness of a beach landing, the strategy of battle planning, the thrill of an aerial dogfight, or intense camaraderie experienced by a band of brothers, there’s a World War II game that has something to offer you. And thanks to the new wave of interest in the period, some of these games sport astonishing graphics and modern, punchy gunplay.
So from massive, free-to-play vehicular battlefields to complex war games, you’re bound to find something below to keep you duking it out for countless hours in our round-up of the finest WWII games.
The best WW2 games are:
War Thunder
World War 2 was a combined arms effort, with land, sea, and air forces offering equally invaluable efforts, and War Thunder truly captures that. It originally threw a spotlight on the war’s colossal aerial battles, but soon went on to include land battles through the medium of noisy tank warfare, and naval efforts via its sea-based expansion.
Boasting a dizzying number of historically accurate aircraft, tanks, and boats from pretty much every nation involved in the war, this exceptional free-to-play WW2 game offers a great multiplayer experience that neatly sits in the middle ground between complex simulation and arcade fighter. Like a sim, War Thunder has incredible attention to detail that makes it compelling to play. Each machine feels genuinely different and all offer their own challenges. And even when you’re not in the heat of battle there are tactics to consider as you stock your hangars with various new vehicles and upgrade them to suit your approach.
More like this: War Thunder is also one of the best plane games
Developer Gaijin Entertainment has expanded each of its combat types out, so you can read our War Thunder naval combat guide or our beginner’s guide to War Thunder tank battles if you need some help learning the basics.
World of Tanks
Wargaming’s flagship free-to-play WW2 game is obsessed with tanks, hence the name World of Tanks. It’s full of incredibly detailed artillery platforms and caterpillar tracks for you to drool over before rolling into battle. Hundreds of these glorious machines can be researched, unlocked, and purchased as you gain experience and resources from every tense match.
World of Tanks is a game you can dip your toes into, play for a bit, and have fun. On the surface, it’s simple and arcade-like, but underneath the chassis is the loud, angry engine of something more serious. How vulnerable is the machine gun port of the Tiger II? Where are the soft spots on the indomitable IS-3? What is the effective armour thickness of the T-32’s upper glacis? Armour penetration, angles, weak spots – this is the stuff you need to know.
To taste victory time after time, to work your way up the tank tiers and eventually get your name on leaderboards, you need to make a significant time investment. It would feel a bit like work if this wasn’t a game about blowing up tanks, which never stops being fun. And with constant updates, new maps, modes, features, and an audience of hundreds of millions of players, you’re always learning. It might not be the most realistic game at times, but it’s easily one of the best tank games on PC.
Want to try World of Tanks? PCGamesN has teamed up with Wargaming to give a free US tank – the M22 Locust and 600 gold to any new players who sign up using this link:
World of Warships
The third of Wargaming’s WW2 games, World of Warships sees the tried and tested formula of World of Tanks transposed to the sea. It’s not just World of Tanks with ships, though, as the switch to naval combat has informed a lot of big changes. These sea battles are slower, more thoughtful, and ultimately more tactical than their land-based counterparts.
Out in the open sea, there’s a sense of dread and vulnerability that you just don’t get in Wargaming’s other titles. Not this severe, anyway. There’s no hiding or running away in World of Warships – just plans, some of which will fall apart, and others that could, with some help from your team, lead to a glorious victory.
Air support adds an extra interesting wrinkle. You can hurl the fighters and bombers positioned on your decks at your foes, and suddenly the game starts to feel like an RTS. But one where you’re also frantically trying to line up your killer cannons and praying to Poseidon that this time, this time, it’ll be a direct hit. That is what makes it one of the best WW2 games on PC. On top of all this, Wargaming also do a terrific job of updating the game, with expansions adding new ships like a Pan-Asian line of destroyers to the game, not to mention the odd World of Warships seasonal event.
Steel Division 2
If you’re not into hardcore wargames and are looking for a more hands-on WW2 strategy game then Steel Division 2 ticks a lot boxes. Taking place on the eastern front of WW2, Steel Division 2 focuses heavily on the source material, translating every aspect of the horrid struggle between Axis and Russian forces into its gameplay. Soviet conscripts are in abundance, but are poorly equipped and will yield under too much pressure. The SS troops on the other hand offer a great deal more efficiency, but lack energy and enthusiasm after months spent fighting in the harsh Russian winter.
Much like the first game, Steel Division: Normandy ‘44, the sequel is peerless when it comes to representing the scale of warfare, offering up large maps with strict, unnatural borders so as to give you a cross-section of a large-scale combat operation. You have tanks, troops, and aircraft under your control, but your focus at all times is on the battlefield rather than where you’re drawing these forces from.
The new Army General mode is a neat touch, which does an excellent job mixing RTS story campaigns with the long-form strategic decisions you’d normally find in one of the best war or grand strategy titans. These four mini-campaigns take you through the Belorussian Strategic Offensive Operation that saw Soviet forces finally breakthrough the Axis stranglehold, with most of the action taking place on a strategic map.
Call of Duty: WWII
If you are looking for breadth and realistic details, then COD: WW2 might rub you up the wrong way with its Eurocentric campaign and PPSh-41-toting German soldiers. However, what it does better than all but the best WW2 games is connect the player to the squad they fight alongside, all the way from the beaches of Normandy to the capture of Ludendorff Bridge. It does this by tying health, ammo, and grenade refills to squad members, forcing you to seek out your medic if you are low on health, even if a tank separates you. It is an elegant and organic way of simulating the bonds that form between brothers in arms.
Take aim: Our list of the best sniper games on PC
COD: WW2 also stands out as one of the best WW2 games because of it relatively recent release date. After the glut of World War 2 games that hit PC in the mid-2000s we endured a decade-long drought where all the leaps and bounds made in videogame graphics helped bring other conflicts and settings to life while WW2 games were left behind. In our COD: WW2 review we were impressed by the audiovisual fidelity, which lends the campaign an almost filmic level of sheen, whether that is the sumptuous ring that fills your ears every time you reload an M1 Garand, or the unsparing particle effects that give every texture and environment their due depth. Sure, you will have seen and fought these WW2 battles in games before, but they have never looked this convincing.
Call of Duty 2
Call of Duty 2 was a jolt of electricity applied to the WW2 formula when it launched in 2005. Familiar scenes like the D-Day landings were recreated in greater detail, with more drama and a nail-biting sense of vulnerability. And, at the time, it was the best the war had ever looked.
Read more: Here are all the COD campaigns, ranked best to worst
With four campaigns across three theatres, the global scope of the war was on display. Like the original Call of Duty, it followed British, American and Russian troops, but also presented the north African campaign for the first time, as the Brits fought across the desert, melting and dying and hiding from tanks.
Despite being over a decade old, COD2 has stood the test of time thanks to the fact that it was one of the first games to add features like regenerating health, so you could focus on the battle and not worry about scurrying around looking for health kits. And with improved ally AI, it really felt like you were leading proper soldiers – all of them named – rather than mindless models with guns attached to them. Not just one of the best WW2 games, Call of Duty 2 is one of the best FPS games on PC.
Company of Heroes 2: Ardennes Assault
As our Company of Heroes 2 review points out – despite capturing the horror of winter warfare the RTS sequel didn’t quite hit the same high notes as its venerable predecessor. But with the standalone expansion of Ardennes Assault, Relic reinvigorated the single-player portion of the series, giving it one of its most interesting campaigns and regaining the WW2 RTS games crown.
It is all about the dynamic map. The Ardennes region is one big, constantly shifting warzone, with the Germans attempting to lock down as much territory as possible. Controlling the US forces of Baker, Able and Dog Company – all with unique mechanics and strengths – players must force the Germans out, bit by bit, in a desperate, bleak campaign. It is not just about winning battles; a victory doesn’t matter if it has cost you all your veteran units and left the rest of your force tattered and weak. A Pyrrhic victory spells doom for your campaign.
Random objectives and events can crop up in battles and on the campaign map itself, so no campaign is alike. You might be tasked with assassinating an officer during a mission, or ambushing a convoy on the campaign map, and failure or victory will have a tangible impact on the rest of the war. It is a persistent, savage war, where failure is always nipping at the heels of the increasingly desperate US forces. With details like that, no wonder it is one of the best WW2 games on PC.
Commandos 2: Men of Courage
They don’t make them like this anymore, and that is a tragedy. Commandos 2 is 17 years old, but remains utterly unsurpassed. It is a puzzle game, essentially. You control a group of operatives behind enemy lines, across ten elaborate, complex, devilishly hard missions.
Each mission is a huge, sprawling thing with a beautifully detailed, liberating map and tricky objectives that require a lot of planning, scouting, smarts and a spot of trial and error. Objectives run the gamut from stealing documents and rescuing spies to blowing up ships and stealing vehicles. Getting in the way of that are countless patrols, guards, minefields and even harsh weather. Luckily, the Commandos have more than a few tricks up their sleeves.
You have a spy who can steal clothes and disguise himself as the enemy, a secret agent who can distract and drug Nazis, and a battle-hardened Green Beret who likes to get a bit of blood on his hands. You even have a dog, Whisky, and he is both delightful and good at drawing the attention of enemies. Each mission gives you a specific group to use, and then it is up to you how you want to go about completing the main, secondary, and bonus objectives. It is this kind of freedom that makes Commandos 2 not just one of the best WW2 games on PC, but one of the best PC games of all time, period.
Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad
As much as games like Brothers in Arms and World of Tanks aim for historical accuracy in their weapons, machinery, and locations, they still offer a Hollywood-tinted depiction of the action. Red Orchestra 2 removes the filters and offers an unflinchingly difficult simulator shooter. Heroes of Stalingrad recreates battles from the Eastern Front in a Battlefield-like combined arms settings with soldier classes and vehicles. Throwing pray-and-spray, gung-ho attitudes to the wind, Red Orchestra demands strict teamwork, caution, and a considered tactical approach to objectives.
It is the hardships of being an individual cog in the machine that makes Red Orchestra compelling. Machine-gunners are vital for covering fire, allowing other players to advance down the field. But holding down the trigger too long causes the barrel to melt and buckle, requiring it to be replaced in a lengthy maintenance animation. Tanks are murder machines when fully crewed, but attempt to commandeer one by yourself and you will find yourself a sitting target as you attempt to aim your cannon. As well as the stresses of being part of a team, as an individual you’ll have to constantly count your rounds as a complete lack of HUD removes any indication as to what is left in your magazine.
Each round of Red Orchestra 2 is hard work, but like ARMA and other bullet-physic heavy shooting simulations, there’s a distinct, unrivalled sense of victory with every point scored. Few WW2 games make you work this hard for a single kill. If you’re more interested in the Pacific conflict then there’s even a spiritual successor from Tripwire Interactive called Rising Storm that’s just as brutally realistic.
Silent Hunter III
The Second World War is frequently depicted as a violently bloodthirsty, explosive, and ear-drum bursting conflict. But not every element of all-out war is noisy or fast paced. For the quiet, considered, cold-blooded killers out there, there is nothing quite like Silent Hunter’s unique brand of stealth. Throw out your undercover OSS agents, and submerge yourself in underwater naval warfare.
Related: Check out our rundown of the best stealth games
Silent Hunter III, despite being over a decade old, remains one of the best WW2 games, and allows you to command a U-Boat full of German seamen under the surface of the Atlantic ocean. Freeform missions simply inform you of targets and naval traffic, allowing you to conduct the operation in whatever conniving manner you so wish. You will need to be map savvy; Silent Hunter is one of those gloriously uncompromising submarine games, and without solid navigation skills you’ll be firing torpedoes into the open ocean instead of the side of a Allied merchant ship. Patience is the key ingredient though, as you lurk in wait as your plan slowly comes together.
Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway
The Brothers in Arms games offer some of the best stories in the WW2 niche, filled with personal tales of struggle and camaraderie. Hell’s Highway, the third in the BiA series, brings the troubles of the 101st Airborne’s Matt Baker to a close with a harrowing story that emphasises the relentless loss of life every soldier was forced to endure, evoking the likes of Saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers.
Backing up the story is a fantastic FPS game. It borrows the third-person cover system of the Rainbow Six: Vegas games, making the squad tactics a much smoother, effective element. War is hell in Brothers in Arms, and the methodical employment of flanking maneuvers and suppressing fire is the only way you’ll be able to survive it. Thanks to the tight-knit relationships Hell’s Highway weaves over its campaign, by the end you will really feel as if you helped pull your comrades through the dirt.
And damn is it grim. Grisly, too. Body parts are blown off, men are turned into bloody bags of meat – it is nasty stuff. It does not feel like Hell’s Highway revels in the gore, though. It feels more like an attempt to present war as a horrible, traumatising scenario that you should be glad you are experiencing on a PC rather than in reality.
Battlefield 1942
With Battlefield 1942, it felt like the FPS genre was evolving. Until DICE released the first in what would be an enduring series, multiplayer games were mostly concerned with the glory of the individual. They were about fast reflexes and kill counts. Battlefield 1942, however, is all about cooperation.
You can see where a lot of the series’ systems began, like the roles or classes, the addition of vehicles like tanks and planes and the importance of controlling the map. There was an even greater focus on combined arms warfare, though. You could be bombarding coastlines with your capital ship while your chum flies around in a bomber, trying to take out manned installations protecting the coast. The scale and diversity was crazy. And the maps let you duke it out in all of WW2’s theatres, so you could fight as the British in El Alamein or the Imperial Japanese Navy in Iwo Jima.
A few years ago, EA made it free, but it has since been removed from Origin due to Gamespy going out of business, leaving the game without servers. However! There are still places you can download it from, along with community servers, so there’s still life in the game yet – you can also get Battlefield 1942 in HD with the right mods. But should that life run out, DICE brought the 40s back with their latest game: Battlefield V.
Order of Battle: U.S. Pacific
Order of Battle: Pacific takes the now well-worn Panzer General-style of wargames and manages to do more with than any other of the classic game’s successors have in a long time. It is an intricate-yet-approachable wargame, with logical rules and a distinct eye for detail.
Each move becomes a series of puzzles. Objectives need to be reached quickly, with no dawdling. Yet extending your grasp for side-missions can also provide bonuses further down the line. Each decision expands into new opportunities and further questions.
It is also a game that finally succeeds at naval transportation and combat, which is pretty rare among the best strategy games, and a vital feature considering the Pacific setting means much of your time will be set at sea. Order of Battle’s approach to naval is exceptionally strong, and makes sailing from port to port as interesting as battles themselves.
Hidden & Dangerous 2
Hidden & Dangerous 2 may be an ageing veteran that needs a stick to stay mobile these days, but its tales of silent heroics, undercover operations, and daring strikes have been unmatched in the 15 years since its release.
Rainbow Six for 1944, Hidden & Dangerous 2 is a tactical squad shooter with all the trimmings we’re clamoring for in the modern era: permadeath, persistent characters, detailed operation loadout screens, and fully open maps with mission goals to be completed any which way you fancy. Leading a squad of four stiff-upper-lipped SAS officers, there is a fascinating variety of missions that take you to every theatre of the war, from a snowy top secret research base to the dense jungles of Burma.
Related: Here are the best old games for more classics like this
The level of freedom is comparable to Hitman: Blood Money (there is even the option to strip enemies and steal their clothing), and the lack of enforced silence means when things go belly-up you can crack open the heavy machineguns and simply murder your way out. The controls and systems are all fairly clunky and the AI of your squadmates is never up to scratch, but the thrill of Hidden & Dangerous’ campaign is absolutely worth pushing through the niggles for.
World of Warplanes
World of Warplanes lets you live out your fantasy of being a World War 2 fighter pilot, absolutely for free. Wargaming’s WW2 game thrusts you into the cockpit of over five aircraft types that can include thousands of customisable configurations. Your eternal fight for dominance of the skies sees you facing action-packed 12v12 dogfights that require careful communication and effective teamwork for you to claim victory.
This free PC game is set in the Golden Age of military aviation, and it has the environments to match. You can choose to fight for one of seven nations, but the canvas through which you’ll be targeting the baddies is inspired by land masses all over the world. It means that, if you’re anything like us and get shot out the sky on the regular, you’ll at least be able to enjoy the view on the way down.
IL-2 Sturmovik 1946
Though IL-2 Sturmovik is almost old enough to leave school and get a job, it remains one of the best simulation games of all time, particularly those with a military bent.
1946, then, is something very special, because it contains IL-2 Sturmovik, its sequel, and a whole bunch of expansions, which means you get an almost bewildering number of campaigns and richly detailed planes, and by the time you are done with it all, you will be effortlessly pulling off Yo-Yos like a master ace and speeding across the skies in Yaks and MiGs like a natural.
While 1946 collects all the pre-2007 IL-2 Sturmovik games and expansions, it also adds nine extra campaigns and lots of lovely jets in an alternate history version of the war that sees Germany and Russia duking it out in the skies in high speed jet battles. The missions are scripted, though you will find dynamic battles in the older games that come with 1946, and you’ll find yourself on tense bombing runs, foiling deadly raids and getting into plenty of thrilling dogfights.
And there we have it: the very best WW2 games you can find on PC. In need of even more? Head to our partner site Wargamer for a look at the best WWI games or even the best WW2 strategy games. But, until next time, tinkety tonk and down with the Nazis, old fruit.