World War One Games

[Brown Cap]

Hello, Escapists

I have been taking a college class on Europe and the World Wars. Though it is only an elective, I am very enthralled with the material.
Some friends of mine and I have played the Axis and Allies WWI Board Game, and it's a heck of a lot of fun, albeit time-consuming.

But this made me curious: are there any good World War I video games out there? I would love to check out a WWI RTS or even FPS.
Is there anything like that out there?

I can only imagine: What if Activision made a Call of Duty: WWI game? Or even COD: Civil War.
As much guff as the team receives, I feel that could be an interesting experience.

 

[Abe Mac]

The only one I can think of is a steam indie/greenlight/early access game called "Verdun". It's a WW1 FPS, but I've never played it myself so I wouldn't be able to tell you how it is. Been meaning to pick it up when it goes on sale sometime.

 

[josemlopes]

*edit* YAY in before the "world war one is boring you only sit in trenches shotting at each other before dying of disease" crowd arrived

As a shooter its kind of hard to make WW1 interesting, they really did spend a lot of their time either dying in trenches or right after leaving trenches.

Necrovision really did go for full retard though, when the boss of the first level is a wizard and in the third a dragon shows up you know its going to be a wild ride, and thats before the main character gets to drive a mech. I really need to finish that game.

 

[Pink Gregory]

To take a bit of a tangent - Toy Soldiers

It's an XBLA tower defense game with a WW1 toy-soldier theme. There's even a Tsar tank.

 

[Storm Dragon]

*edit* YAY in before the "world war one is boring you only sit in trenches shotting at each other before dying of disease" crowd arrived

As a shooter its kind of hard to make WW1 interesting, they really did spend a lot of their time either dying in trenches or right after leaving trenches.

Necrovision really did go for full retard though, when the boss of the first level is a wizard and in the third a dragon shows up you know its going to be a wild ride, and thats before the main character gets to drive a mech. I really need to finish that game.

I clearly need to play this game.

 

[Darks63]

Pull up a chair and get comfortable i have some to share with you!

world war 1 - RTS http://www.gamersgate.com/DD-WWI/world-war-i
rise of flight - flight sim http://www.gamersgate.com/DD-ROFICE/rise-of-flight-iron-cross-edition
wings of honor - flight sim http://www.gamersgate.com/DD-WOHBOTRB/wings-of-honour-battles-of-the-red-baron
necrovision + necrovision:lost company - horror/over the top FPS
1914 shells of fury - sub sim http://www.gamersgate.com/DD-1914SOF/1914-shells-of-fury
pride of nations - grand strategy covers 1850-1920
Guns of august 1914-18 - Grand strategy
World War One - La Grande Guerre - grand strategy
world war one gold - Grand strategy
commander the great war - grand strategy
strategic command ww1 - grand strategy
jutland + distant guns - THE game for ww1 naval warfare sim

*edit* YAY in before the "world war one is boring you only sit in trenches shotting at each other before dying of disease" crowd arrived

I find your lack of Red Baron 3D disturbing.....

anyway Red baron 3d is a awesome flight sim where you have a career mode that can take your through most of the war as either the Germans or the allies. also you have multiple historical craft and you are able to become a ace and paint your aircraft for personalization.

 

[Squilookle]

As far as First Person Shooters go- there's really only one half-decent choice. Behold- The father of Battlefield:


Also try Warfare 1917. Really hits home the sensless waste of life, and really addictive too.

http://armorgames.com/play/2267/warfare-1917

 

[streatim]

but thats all people think world war 1 was. people in trenches. the eastern front was mobile warfare, the opening and closing months of the war were very mobile with gains of miles a day, heck you have Lawrence of Arabia for starters and the ultimate badass in history Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck. he took 14,000 men at most in east africa and fought for 4 years against 300,000 british soldiers and wasnt defeated and was a national hero in germany.

This, this, and This. I think part of it comes from Britain and America's cultural output (as well as books like "All Quiet on the Western Front") which used the stalemate on the Western Front to emphasize the seeming pointlessness and butchery of the war; the other theaters complicated that image a bit.

Also, Shameless Self Promotion which is relevant to this topic. [http://lusipurr.com/2013/05/17/editorial-the-best-world-war-for-shooting-games/]

One thing I left out of the editorial that I really wish I'd delved into is the Siberian Campaign (when a Coalition of Japanese, American, British, French, Czech, and White Russians fought against the Red Russians)- that's something I think is totally rife with opportunity (and, best of all, it could satisfy publishers be ensuring we players would be killing Russians, the de facto bad guys of games now). The coalition was stuck in Russia well into the early 1920s, offering a wide place for setting as well.

 

[Mylinkay Asdara]

Hello, Escapists

I have been taking a college class on Europe and the World Wars. Though it is only an elective, I am very enthralled with the material.
Some friends of mine and I have played the Axis and Allies WWI Board Game, and it's a heck of a lot of fun, albeit time-consuming.

But this made me curious: are there any good World War I video games out there? I would love to check out a WWI RTS or even FPS.
Is there anything like that out there?

I can only imagine: What if Activision made a Call of Duty: WWI game? Or even COD: Civil War.
As much guff as the team receives, I feel that could be an interesting experience.

There are a few - helpfully listed above - but as you are no doubt learning, there's reasons for the scarcity. World War I had a very different feeling, impact, and after effect on the world than World War II did/does. WWI was pretty quickly a thing of despair, loss, a sense of "WTF" through pretty much every layer of society and all its practices. WWII had a villain, it had positive outcomes for economies that had sunk into horrific depressions after WWI, it had its horrors certainly - but it was a much more understandable war, if you will, than WWI was - both to our time and its own. While a lot of history surveys basically present them as Part I and Part II of the same basic conflict that is really done for time convenience and not at all accurate - although it is pretty clear that without WWI WWII doesn't happen at all the same way (or maybe at all) they are two different animals. Even the people who fought or were alive for WWI had a hard time contextualizing and understanding it - how it came to pass, what the point of it was, what, if any, outcome was the one they were actually going for, etc. WWII is a lot easier to break down into elements than can work in literature, games, movies, art, and the like.

 

[streatim]

I can only imagine: What if Activision made a Call of Duty: WWI game? Or even COD: Civil War.
As much guff as the team receives, I feel that could be an interesting experience.

Back to that question, I think you're absolutely right. It gets lost a lot that Call of Duty had its origins as a relatively historically accurate bunch (their research was damn near on par with the folks that made Brothers in Arms), so the lineage is there for the people who demand a level of historical accuracy (or at least an acknowledgement of it) in their games. That being said, I think "interesting experience" is still probably the best way of describing what could be expected from the modern CoD design teams.

 

[Dragonlayer]

*edit* YAY in before the "world war one is boring you only sit in trenches shotting at each other before dying of disease" crowd arrived

As a shooter its kind of hard to make WW1 interesting, they really did spend a lot of their time either dying in trenches or right after leaving trenches.

Necrovision really did go for full retard though, when the boss of the first level is a wizard and in the third a dragon shows up you know its going to be a wild ride, and thats before the main character gets to drive a mech. I really need to finish that game.

That's only the popular conception of the war and while it does apply to the Western Front from late 1914 to early 1918, there was so much more to the conflict that could be readily exploited by games: guerilla warfare in the African colonies, the cut and thrust insurgency in the Ottoman chunks of the Middle East, tunnel and bunker fighting in Verdun, the mobile fighting of the Eastern Front and the Kaiserschlact Offensives....

Necrovision fucking rocks though, it's like it was specifically designed to cater to my interest in mixing the supernatural and historical warfare - ZOMBIE DRAGONS AT THE SOMME!

 

[Dragonlayer]

*edit* YAY in before the "world war one is boring you only sit in trenches shotting at each other before dying of disease" crowd arrived

As a shooter its kind of hard to make WW1 interesting, they really did spend a lot of their time either dying in trenches or right after leaving trenches.

Necrovision really did go for full retard though, when the boss of the first level is a wizard and in the third a dragon shows up you know its going to be a wild ride, and thats before the main character gets to drive a mech. I really need to finish that game.

but thats all people think world war 1 was. people in trenches. the eastern front was mobile warfare, the opening and closing months of the war were very mobile with gains of miles a day, heck you have Lawrence of Arabia for starters and the ultimate badass in history Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck. he took 14,000 men at most in east africa and fought for 4 years against 300,000 british soldiers and wasnt defeated and was a national hero in germany.

he was also famously known for turning hitler down when hitler wanted to grant him an ambassadorship. by turn down i mean he told hitler to "go fuck yourself". when he returned to east african in the 1950's he was given full military honours by the british army

I remember reading about the Askari veterans who served under von Lettow-Vorbeck when they were trying to claim service pensions after the war - I think there were about 300 who turned up at the government offices and no-one know what to do with them because barely any had any official documentation as proof, until a bureaucrat came up with the idea to give them all brooms and ordered them to perform the manual of arms in German. Not a single one failed and they all got their money!

 

[Dragonlayer]

Look to the other fine kameraden of this forum for answers original poster, because I too can't find any bloody WW1 games; that said, I fully agree with you in that we are in dire need of a AAA WW1 game!

 

[Albino Boo]

[

but thats all people think world war 1 was. people in trenches. the eastern front was mobile warfare, the opening and closing months of the war were very mobile with gains of miles a day, heck you have Lawrence of Arabia for starters and the ultimate badass in history Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck. he took 14,000 men at most in east africa and fought for 4 years against 300,000 british soldiers and wasnt defeated and was a national hero in germany.

he was also famously known for turning hitler down when hitler wanted to grant him an ambassadorship. by turn down i mean he told hitler to "go fuck yourself". when he returned to east african in the 1950's he was given full military honours by the british army

I'm sorry but you are factually incorrect. The eastern front was not mobile, the lines had solidified by mid 1915, six months later than the west. The even the tactical success of Brusilov offensive were overcome by the movement of troops from the western front. It was quicker to move troop by rail across Europe than it was to advance on foot. The Russian follow up attacks in the Pripet marshes marked the start of collapse of the Russian army.

Lawrence fought a guerrilla war, in the same way the British had to deal with the Senussi revolt in Libya. The front line remained in place in the Sinai until Allenby's offensive in late 1917.

Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck successes were due the enslavement of Africans to act as bearers for supplies and equipment. At least 200000 died due to malnutrition and disease while being forced to work by German guns. Lettow-Vorbeck's was more mobile than British forces because he was prepared to work black Africans to death to achieve it. The British operated under strict rules to try ensure the health of their bearers and they were also paid.

 

[Albino Boo]

weirdly thats the first ever reference to Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck treating the african population badly ive ever actually heard and would be interested in reading more about it where you found it. in everything ive read he was said to of treated the black troops under his command extremely well and even promoted them to officers and according to some "It is probable that no white commander of the era had so keen an appreciation of the African's worth not only as a fighting man but as a man."

so yeah im a bit confused what you found he enslaved the local population and caused the deaths of upwards of 200,000 people when people under his command were fiercly loyal to him

It was form the book Tip and Run http://www.amazon.co.uk/Tip-Run-Edward-Paice-ebook/dp/B004KKXJ3Q/ref=sr_1_18?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1392806909&sr=1-18&keywords=ww1+africa . Lettow-Vorbeck did not treat his black troops badly but the bearers badly. As the Germans were forced out their home territory they forcibly recruited bearers from different tribes to his Askaris. Lettow-Vorbeck expended minimal supplies on the bearers and when they were incapable of any further work the bearers were just dumped and more enslaved to taken their place. Lettow-Vorbeck's command structure of Schutztruppe and Rugga Rugga native auxiliaries was the same used in German South West Africa during the Herero revolt between 1904 and 1907. During this war somewhere between 30000 to 230000 members of the Herero and Namaqua died, mostly of starvation.