The Fighting Forties Dot Com: A People's History of Online World War II Combat

 

World War II multiplayer FPS, 1999-present

or: how it's all Stephen Spielberg's fault

Before we get started, I want to take a moment to announce the official launch of not one but two sister blogs: June Gloom 64, which had already soft-launched a few months ago but is now the official home for all media reviews that don't go here, and Super June Gloom, my new personal blog. This also marks my #700th numbered review (I am still in the process of editing and reposting them to JG64) which is a huge milestone for me that I'm very proud of. Here's to a productive and pleasant 2026. - June♥

As long as there have been video games, people have been using them to kill each other virtually. In 1973 a trio of high schoolers created Maze War, arguably the very first FPS game. It was a primitive thing by today’s standards, but the basic principles were in place: it was in first person, and you got to kill your friends, virtually anyway.

Fast forward twenty years: Doom drops like a bomb on an unsuspecting pop culture milieu; with it, the concept of “deathmatch” reaches the public conscience. (Yes, I know about MIDI Maze — but who was hooking up multiple Atari STs via their MIDI ports to play that?) Hot on its heels was all manner of imitators, including Quake, id Software’s followup to Doom, which hit just as more and more people were realizing that the internet was the place to be. Right around that time, the world was marking fifty years since the end of the Second World War; Hollywood chose to mark it with the gory one-two punch of Saving Private Ryan and The Thin Red Line, both released in the same year (1998) just as video games were evolving dramatically into fully-3D, cinematic experiences — it’s worth pointing out that Resident Evil 2, Half-Life, Thief: The Dark Project and Metal Gear Solid all released that year too!

The sudden burst in popularity of World War II as a theme for video games (the game industry has always chased trends, after all) happened to coincide with the rise of the first person shooter. 1992's Wolfenstein 3D is the technical granddaddy to this subgenre, but the id Software classic was pretty primitive and lacked any multiplayer component. While lazier historians might point to 1999's Medal of Honor as the true starting point, my own research suggests WWII GI — yes, that awful budget game running on the Build engine — to be the first “modern” World War II shooter, beating out Medal of Honor by mere months. I know, I’m mad about it too. That being said, WWII GI was definitely not on most kids' holiday wishlists that year...

However the subgenre got its start, 1999 was a long time ago. War may never change, but its battlefields sure do. There’s a lot that I could say about the state of geopolitics and the quarter-century of endless wars and genocides being waged across the world, and how the games industry — like the entertainment biz at large — has gleefully capitalized on real-world violence that real people die in… but instead, for what's my 700th numbered review (holy shit!) I’m just going to take you on a tour of multiplayer World War II shooters. In it, I hope to describe each game a little bit, and, being a big fan of offline play, I’ll let you know if there’s any option for AI-controlled bots.

                                                                                

Opening shots: 1999 to 2002

The early days of the World War II shooter were a bit strange. Wolfenstein 3D was the closest thing anyone had, and the genre was more or less brand new at this point. The influence of Stephen Spielberg's 1998 film Saving Private Ryan and Rare's 1997 smash hit GoldenEye 007 for the Nintendo 64 are screamingly obvious. Medal of Honor — heavily inspired by both of the aforementioned properties — pretty much dominates the scene here, if only by default (especially once Allied Assault drops) but Return to Castle Wolfenstein poses a major threat.

WWII GI (March 15, 1999)
TNT Team
full review
Purchase: GOG | Steam

screenshot c/o Steam

Budget games have always been a strange lot. Sometimes they're good, usually they're not. The deathmatch in WWII GI, being functionally a commercial total conversion to Duke Nukem 3D, plays identical to Duke Nukem 3D’s Dukematch, here renamed “Gruntmatch.” Concessions have been made for the new weapons, but comes boxed with some pretty large maps, mostly repurposed from the single player campaign, though Hitler’s bunker features in here too. “Bastogne Boyz” lets you have some fun with a sniper rifle in the church tower, with broad views of most of the map, for example. Otherwise… not really much to write home about. Wanna play it offline? Bots work in NetDuke32, but honestly it's not terribly fun. If you can find a few people as weird as you, you can play it online using RedNukem and NukemNet.

                                                                                

Medal of Honor (November 11, 1999)
Medal of Honor: Underground (October 23, 2000)
Dreamworks Interactive
full reviews: Original / Underground
Purchase: Out of print

screenshot c/o MobyGames

Medal of Honor and its sequel, Medal of Honor: Underground are identical to each other in terms of gameplay and production values, both being products of the very last couple years of the Sony PlayStation's lifespan. True to their GoldenEye 64 roots, multiplayer in these early Medal of Honor games is 1v1 deathmatch with split-screen. No peeking! It’s fun to watch what gameplay exists on YouTube, because with the awkward controls, nobody can aim for shit. This was probably really fun in 1999 when you and your little brother were kids but I can’t say it’s all that mind-blowing now, even with the DuckStation emulator and its graphical improvements. Obviously, no bots to speak of, so bring a friend, I guess.

                                                                                

 

WWII Online (June 6, 2001)
Cornered Rat Software
Purchase: Steam

screenshot c/o Steam

Here’s a weird one. The very first MMOFPS — that’s right, like World of Warcraft with guns (ha ha) — was launched in the innocent summer days of 2001. Nearly a quarter century later, it is still active, with one giant map representing a huge chunk of Europe and room for a thousand players. But like a lot of MMOs of era, it completely failed to keep pace with changing technology and design conventions. With a current average player count that rarely hits 20, it’s a mere shadow of its former self, despite attempts to upgrade the technology for modern computers. Maybe one of these days they’ll code up some kind of bot, but in the meantime you’re best leaving this relic where you found it.

                                                                                

Return to Castle Wolfenstein (November 21, 2001)
Gray Matter Interactive, Nerve Software
full review
Purchase: GOG | Steam

screenshot c/o Hardcore Gaming 101

While we're still very early in the WWII subgenre's reign, Return to Castle Wolfenstein showed up to be the first real contender on PC against the still primarily PlayStation-focused Medal of Honor. It also has the honor of being the first really important game in the World War II multiplayer scene, and as such still has a very loyal playerbase, however small it might be. There aren’t a lot of classes, but you get to pick your primary weapon. Maps tend to be smaller and work similar to Day of Defeat, compared to W:ET’s more expansive, Battlefield-style maps. It’s also pretty unbalanced, which can be its own kind of fun, but there’s a reason most everyone went over to Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory. RealRTCW is an overhaul for the game that, in addition to lots of changes to the single-player campaign, automatically installs OmniBot for you to play the multiplayer offline.

                                                                                

Medal of Honor: Allied Assault (January 22, 2002)
2015 Inc.
full review
Purchase: GOG

Screenshot c/o GamersHell

2002 was an interesting year. A wave of nostalgia for World War II was washing over America for reasons not worth going into here; 2002 was the year immediately after 9/11, and Electronic Arts capitalized on this zeitgeist with not one, not two, but three World War II games. Medal of Honor: Allied Assault was the first one out the gate, and a reasonably big deal at the time, if only because it brought the hit series to PC and gave Wolfenstein some competition. Allied Assault comes with a few different modes. You’ve got your standard deathmatch and team deathmatch, with seven stock maps to start with. There’s also an objective mode with its own features. The expansions add more modes on top of that. There’s no real classes as such, but you can’t switch weapons until your next spawn. Your best bet for playing this is OpenMOHAA, and it comes with bots out of the box!

                                                                                

Medal of Honor: Frontline (May 28, 2002)
Electronic Arts Los Angeles
full review
Purchase: Out of print

screenshot c/o GameFAQs

Electronic Arts’ next World War II game was Medal of Honor: Frontline, which unlike Allied Assault was console-only, appearing on Sony PlayStation 2, Microsoft Xbox, and Nintendo GameCube. While Allied Assault showed a few signs of the ideas that would eventually become Call of Duty, Frontline was as pure a Medal of Honor game as could be. In keeping with the series taking influence from GoldenEye 64, the multiplayer is pure deathmatch with maps mostly derived from the campaign, not at all playable online but instead via 2-to-4-player splitscreen… and only on the Xbox or GameCube. PS2 owners got left out, not that they noticed. And of course there's no bots. Why would there be? 

                                                                                

Mod Squad: 2000-2001

The late 1990s was a golden age for game modding; in the wake of Doom and the explosion of editing tools for it, it became increasingly common for PC games, especially those with 3D engines, to have their own tools to make your own maps and mods, and if they didn't exist, someone would make one. While a lot of the more popular mods for video games of this era either continued with the settings of their base game, or went towards a more contemporary combat theme, there were a couple of World War II-themed mods in the wake of Medal of Honor: 

Saving Private Ryan TC for Duke Nukem 3D (January 16, 2000)
Edge Designs
full review
Download: Dukeworld

screenshot c/o ModDB

If you thought World War II GI was bad, this is just unforgivable. Again, the multiplayer is functionally the same thing as Dukematch (or Gruntmatch,) but the stock maps — entirely unchanged from the "campaign" — are just objectively worse on every level. NetDuke32 lets you play with bots, but why on earth would you want to?? 

 

 

                                                                                

D-Day: Normandy for Quake II (??? ??, 2000)
Vipersoft
Download: GitHub

screenshot c/o GitHub

What originally began as a Quake II mod has since morphed into a freeware multiplayer shooter utilizing the Q2PRO source port. D-Day: Normandy is very much an odd duck: maps can be shockingly primitive, and the lighting engine is, in a word, fugly. (That’s Quake II for ya.) But there’s a lot of maps, with quite a few factions to play, each map tailored to a different lineup: US, the UK, Poland, and the Soviets vs Imperial Japan, Germany and Italy. There’s a lot of classes to pick from as well. And, weirdly enough, it even features ADS! I suppose, being perfectly honest, it feels like a wish.com Day of Defeat, but you can’t really argue with free, especially with bots packed in.

                                                                                

Day of Defeat for Half-Life (January 12, 2001)
Day of Defeat Team
Download: Steam forums (Half-Life required)

screenshot c/o ModDB

Before it was a commercial game, Day of Defeat began as a mod for the original Half-Life. It's unclear if was originally titled War in Europe, or if War in Europe and Day of Defeat were separate mods before merging under the latter name, but either way, Day of Defeat was the winning name. It went through an alpha phase in 2000 before being renamed and ultimately releasing as Beta 1.0 on January 12, 2001. Oddities during the beta phase include different speeds for each class, “paratrooper” themed maps, a bleed-out system, and more. All this was ultimately removed. At this point, still just the little Half-Life mod that could, competing with the likes of Counter-Strike and Team Fortress Classic. But this was the one to watch.

                                                                                

The Big Ones: 2002–2003

2002 to 2003 was an important period for the development of the World War II shooter as a global phenomenon. The Medal of Honor franchise matured with the release of Frontline (more or less the “official” Medal of Honor 2) and Allied Assault (bringing the franchise to PC for the first time.) Battlefield 1942 established dominance very quickly, and while it wasn’t the only major World War II shooter released in this period, it remained one of the most popular multiplayer shooters on the market, rubbing shoulders with Counter-Strike and Halo 2.

Battlefield 1942 (September 10, 2002)
DICE
Download: Steam forums

screenshot c/o MobyGames

The first major multiplayer-focused WWII shooter on the market after a slew of single-player experiences that might or might not have come bundled with a multiplayer mode, Battlefield 1942 was the one to beat for its first couple of years. Its enormous maps with high player capacities, vehicles, classes, and a ticket-based control-point system made for pretty dynamic play. It’s also, as far as I know, the first game to use hitmarkers. It looked pretty darn good for 2002, which naturally necessitated a beefy machine. If you can’t find a classroom’s worth of teenagers to play this with you, it does come with the ability to play singleplayer against bots out of the box, either in Campaign mode or quick skirmish. The game is long out of print, and the official servers are gone, but there's legally-grey methods of acquiring it that EA will more or less turn a blind eye to.

                                                                                

Day of Defeat (May 1, 2003)
Valve
Purchase: Steam

screenshot c/o MobyGames

The official commercial version of Day of Defeat might not seem like such a big deal now, but it turned heads just on the strength of being an official Half-Life mod just like Counter-Strike. With a bevy of stock maps including an Omaha Beach re-enactment and some thrillingly maze-like urban warfare maps (one of my favorites, Avalanche, was a popular choice for “one map, 24/7” servers back in the day) it offered gameplay that felt like a smoother, prettier take on Return to Castle Wolfenstein’s multiplayer, while doing a lot in terms of atmosphere to make players feel right there. It didn’t have vehicles, it didn’t have much of anything fancy (except the occasional usable mortar launcher) — it was just pure objective-based gameplay. While the playerbase is sorely depleted from what it used to be, SturmBot remains a solid choice for playing offline (or in empty servers) even if it gets a little stupid sometimes. It's also under continual maintenance and development, with its current custodian INsane regularly constructing pathing files for a huge array of user maps.

This one was always my favorite. I won’t lie: 90% of why I did this feature was as an excuse to reinstall Day of Defeat.

                                                                                

Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory (May 29, 2003)
Splash Damage
full review
Purchase Play for free: GOG | Steam

screenshot c/o MobyGames

While it's a shame we never got that single-player campaign, as a multiplayer experience, Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory is an expansion on everything that made playing Return to Castle Wolfenstein online so great. Maps are bigger, the gameplay has been expanded upon and tweaked (though still with some balancing problems) and overall proved to be a huge success. Being free no doubt helped — and you can still get the game online. ET Legacy is the way to play it nowadays. 

 

                                                                                

Call of Duty (October 29, 2003)
Infinity Ward
full review
Purchase (bundled with United Offensive and Call of Duty 2): Steam

screenshot c/o CNET

All things considered, the original Call of Duty didn’t make all that big of a splash in the multiplayer scene compared to some of the others from this era. Oh, sure, the multi is fun enough, with stuff like vehicles and a hefty map collection with battlefields from across the war, some of them reprising their appearances from the base game. But really, people bought this game for the campaign. You wanna see where Call of Duty took over online gaming to stay, you gotta look to Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. All that being said, if you want to play online, you might be able to find a few folks playing the United Offensive expansion, but otherwise you're pretty much stuck with using MeatBot. 

                                                                                

Mod Squad: 2003

While game modding is still very active during this period (and would see a big jump the following year with the release of games like Half-Life 2) there wasn't much activity in the World War II theme, perhaps because everyone was still playing Battlefield 1942. Nevertheless, there were a couple of mod releases within weeks of each other, one important, the other not so much.

Red Orchestra for Unreal Tournament 2003/2004 (October 10, 2003)
Tripwire Interactive (before they were Tripwire Interactive)
Download: ModDB

screenshot c/o ModDB

Outside of Call of Duty, the Eastern Front got little attention from most WWII shooters up to this point. Then came a little mod for Unreal Tournament 2003 (and later, its final form, Unreal Tournament 2004) called Red Orchestra: Combined Arms. Think a more hardcore take on Battlefield 1942 and you’re not too far off. It was popular enough that its fanbase encouraged the dev team to enter the mod into the Make Something Unreal contest. The rest is history…

 

                                                                                

The Third Reich for Unreal Tournament (October 2?, 2003)
TTR Team
Download: ModDB

screenshot c/o ModDB

In a field full of also-rans came one of the biggest also-rans of all. All mods are products of ambition, but this one seemed to be a big victim of changing times. An attempt to port it to UT2K4 was a failure to launch. I’m not sure if more than a few people ever actually played this. A shame — it looks cool.

 

 

 

                                                                                

A crowded battlefield: 2003–2007

While the field is dominated by big names like Call of Duty, there was a big rush to a now-booming genre with a pretty healthy multiplayer scene. With several franchises either starting or growing in this period, there’s a surprising amount of variety in experiences, from semi-hardcore simulation to arcade shooter to narrative-focused tactical action.

Medal of Honor: Rising Sun (November 11, 2003)
Electronic Arts Los Angeles
full review
Purchase: Out of print

While Medal of Honor: Rising Sun is 

screenshot c/o GameFAQs

another console-exclusive game, but this one has the rare distinction of not only having online multiplayer (even for PlayStation 2) but bots! It’s still pure GoldenEye-style deathmatch, though, complete with split-screen offline multiplayer. Still, how cool is it that there's bots in a commercial console FPS from 2003? It's a pity the main game is kinda eh, but what're you gonna do?

 

 

                                                                                

Medal of Honor Pacific Assault (November 4, 2004)
Electronic Arts Los Angeles
full review
Purchase: GOG | EA App
"Director's Edition" upgrade: ModDB

screenshot c/o Gamespot

In a bid to be more like its competitors, Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault introduces classes and objectives. With an array of maps based on the campaign, as well as a few different gameplay modes including team deathmatch and an objectives-based “invader” mode, Pacific Assault offers a Pacific Theatre-themed take on what’s traditionally been a genre dominated by the European Theatre. The multiplayer is almost completely dead and there are no bots to play with, but I’m sure it was reasonably fun back in the day. Still absolutely the worst single player campaign for a WWII FPS I’ve ever played, though. Probably for any FPS, and I've played some bad ones!

                                                                                

Call of Duty: Finest Hour (November 16, 2004)
Spark Unlimited
full review
Purchase: Out of print

screenshot c/o Xbox Kai Fam Live on YouTube

Call of Duty: Finest Hour doesn't really do much for the franchise besides introducing hit markers. Multiplayer-wise, it does feature some extensive multiplayer (online only, and not on GameCube — though people still host lobbies, apparently.) It does not, however, have bots. Multiplayer even only exists due to Activision mandating it after the game was delayed. Otherwise, not much else to say.

 

  

                                                                                

Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30 (March 1, 2005)
Gearbox Software
full review
Purchase: GOG | Steam

screenshot c/o Gamespot

While Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30 was more notable for combining an emotional, narrative-heavy campaign with tough squad-based combat (making it stand out among more reenactment-oriented games) it did have a unique multiplayer mode. Each match had two or four players, and each player had a pair of AI-controlled bots that they could direct around the map at will, making for smaller-scale, more strategic gameplay than is usual for these kinds of things. Rendroc’s WarZone mod comes with a lot of mutators (Unreal Engine term for “mod,” roughly speaking, though it's not quite the same thing) the big one is the addition of AI players, who tend to be a little more deadly than their bot companions. Fun stuff if this is your kind of thing.  

                                                                                

Day of Defeat Source (September 26, 2005)
Valve
Purchase: Steam

screenshot c/o MobyGames

As you can imagine from the “Source” appended to the end of the name, Day of Defeat Source is the Source engine remake of the classic mod. Unlike Counter-Strike Source which hews pretty closely to the Goldsrc version, Day of Defeat Source features several tweaks, including a new map roster, some class changes (removing some, redoing others) and some new features like ADS for the M1 Garand. After Team Fortress 2 dropped, some of its features like the nemesis system were backported into this. I think ultimately I still prefer DOD 1.3 (I'm still mad about what they did to one of my favorite maps, Donner) but this game’s still got one of the best trailers in the business. Looking for bots and maps to fight them on? INsane's got you covered here too.

                                                                                

Brothers in Arms: Earned in Blood (October 6, 2005)
Gearbox Software
full review
Purchase: GOG | Steam

screenshot c/o  Blackhawk1720 on YouTube

Brothers in Arms: Earned in Blood is almost totally identical to its predecessor, Road to Hill 30, but with the addition of a “skirmish” mode that’s basically separate single-player missions — so not quite "multiplayer with bots," but still an option. If you want actual multiplayer with bots, Rendroc has a version of his  Warzone mod tailored to Earned in Blood. 

                                                                                

Call of Duty 2 (October 25, 2005)
Infinity Ward
full review
Purchase: Steam | Xbox.com

screenshot c/o TeamXbox

The game that launched a quarter million Xbox 360s, in large part because of its multiplayer (folks had to play something while waiting for the next Halo, I guess.) Call of Duty 2’s got everything from capture the flag to team deathmatch, with settings from across the war. Like the single-player game, it’s just more classic Call of Duty. Supposedly there’s a version of MeatBot for it, but I couldn’t get it running.

 

                                                                                

Call of Duty 2: Big Red One (November 1, 2005)
Gray Matter Interactive, Treyarch
full review
Purchase: Out of print

screenshot c/o Xbox Kai Fam Live on YouTube

The multi for Call of Duty: Big Red One was moderately popular in the PlayStation 2 and especially (original) Xbox scenes, and it shouldn't be a surprise: Big Red One is easily the best of the early spinoffs, with a great campaign, pretty solid multiplayer maps and fun gameplay modes including capture the flag. It doesn't have any bots to my knowledge, but that's okay — if you know where to look, you can still find people willing to play. 

                                                                                

Red Orchestra: Ostfront 41–45 (March 14, 2006)
Tripwire Interactive
Purchase: Steam

Screenshot c/o MobyGames

Central and Eastern Europe were having a pretty good cultural moment in the mid-00s gaming scene. Between Call of Duty highlighting the Soviet Union and a wave of cult Eurojank hits (especially S.T.A.L.K.E.R. in 2007) it was a ripe field for more Soviet representation in the World War II online shooter scene. Enter Red Orchestra: Ostfront 41–45, the commercial version of the hit Unreal Tournament 2K4 mod. Focusing entirely on the Eastern Front, from Barbarossa to Berlin, it’s as hardcore as these things get: no crosshairs, realistic bullet physics, no ammo indicator. It plays somewhere between Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory and Battlefield 1942; maps are large with room for everything from tank battles to stand-up firefights. There’s even a built-in “practice” mode so you can play offline with bots, right out of the box. Nice. 

                                                                                

 

Medal of Honor European Assault (June 6, 2006)
Electronic Arts Los Angeles
full review
Purchase: Out of print

Screenshot c/o The Game O'ver on YouTube

Shockingly, there is no online multiplayer at all for any version of  Medal of Honor: European Assault. It's a real surprise this late in the game, especially since some of its most recent predecessors all had it. Instead, European Assault brings things back to basics: offline 2–4 player splitscreen a la GoldenEye, and you’ll damn well like it.

 

                                                                                

 

Call of Duty 3 (November 7, 2006)
Treyarch
full review
Purchase: Xbox.com

screenshot c/o MobyGames

As I talked about in my review of the Call of Duty 3, Treyarch tried to get cute with the game's multiplayer: it’s basically Battlefield, but at that point, why not just play Battlefield? If the game had made it to PC, maybe it would have fared better, but then again, maybe not… and not just because people were getting tired of World War II. No bots, big shocker.

 

 

                                                                                

Medal of Honor Vanguard (March 26, 2007)
Electronic Arts Los Angeles
full review
Purchase: Out of print

screenshot c/o Start na Nostalgia on YouTube

Despite being one of the last, best games in the Medal of Honor franchise, the multiplayer is oddly underdeveloped, with only offline splitscreen up to four players and pretty basic gameplay modes, and again no bots. It's a repeat of European Assault's own situation, where the multiplayer is largely an afterthought. Ah well, surely Airborne’s multi was more successful, yeah? 

 

                                                                                

Medal of Honor Airborne (August 28, 2007)
Electronic Arts Los Angeles
full review
Purchase: EA App | Xbox.com

image c/o Gamespot

Nope. It died almost immediately; out of the box, you can’t even launch multiplayer as the official servers are gone. You can't even get it on Steam anymore, it got delisted. Still, though, it apparently had its fans, and the recent Medal of Honor: Revived project is seeking to bring multiplayer back. Doesn’t seem to be any bots, though.

  

                                                                                

Mod Squad: 2003-2008

At this point, the genre is fast starting to slow down, both in the commercial and modding scene. Modding in general is still quite popular, with Half-Life 2 leading the charge, but as a theme World War II is losing popularity, and projects like Ham and Jam for Half-Life 2 never get off the ground. But Red Orchestra’s Steam release triggered a small renaissance in the World War II modding scene, with not one but two conversions landing their own Steam releases: 

Mare Nostrum (March 1, 2008)
Sandstorm Productions
Download: Steam

screenshot c/o Steam

Tired of the Eastern Front? Mare Nostrum moves the action to the North Africa campaign. There’s not a lot to distinguish it, gameplay-wise, from the base game, and there’s about half the maps, but it’s there if you wanna play it! Unlike the next mod, this does include capacity for bots, so there's that.

 

                                                                                

Darkest Hour: Europe ‘44-‘45 (June 6, 2008)
Darklight Games
Download: Steam

screenshot c/o Steam

Taking a more expansive view of the European Theater, from France to the Eastern Front, Darkest Hour is still regularly updated and has a small, but loyal playerbase. The downside? “Practice” is a nonentity, with the developers choosing to simply not provide pathing for AI bots. Oh well.

 

                                                                                

A genre in retreat: 2008–2017

With the arrival of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, the World War II theme at this point seems to have fallen out of favor. Medal of Honor, the game that effectively kickstarted this whole subgenre to begin with, would go quiet for several years before returning with a modern-warfare entry in 2010; Call of Duty had one last World War II entry before going off to do other things for nearly a decade. A combination of market oversaturation and a changing geopolitical landscape means everyone seems to have moved on from wartime nostalgia into just straight up quasi-fascist "modern warfare" theming. 

 

Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway (September 23, 2008)
Gearbox Software
full review
Purchase: GOG | Steam

screenshot c/o Bit-Tech.net

While Hell's Highway is, in my opinion, the best of the Brothers in Arms trilogy in terms of the single-player campaign, it also overhauled the multiplayer quite a bit. Higher player counts mean more action. The downside? Multiplayer is pretty much dead except for special events, and unlike the other two games, there are no options for bots. Oh well!

 

 

                                                                                

Call of Duty: World at War (November 11, 2008)
Treyarch
full review
Purchase: Steam | Xbox.com

screenshot c/o the Springfield, IL State Journal-Register

Despite being nearly twenty years old, Call of Duty: World at War boasts a pretty active playerbase still. Part of this, of course, is that multiplayer-wise, it’s really just a World War II-skinned Call of Duty 4 with features such as the leveling system and killstreaks. You do get access to vehicles like tanks, though, so there’s that. And of course, the Zombies mode is fun for co-op sessions with your friends. Bots? Well, the only way I could get bots running was INeedBots’ T4 Bot Warfare mod, itself a mod for another mod, or really a platform of sorts to update some of the games from around the turn of the decade: Plutonium Mod. To use Plutonium, I had to set up an account on their forum, then log into it through the Plutonium launcher, then add the bot mod to the game folder and find it in the mods menu in-game. A bit convoluted, a bit suspicious, but it’s apparently on the up-and-up. YMMV! 

                                                                                

Wolfenstein (August 18, 2009)
Raven Games
full review
Purchase: Out of print

screenshot c/o Gamespot

Ah yes, the forgotten Wolfenstein game. Famously delisted from Steam after only a few years, Wolfenstein 2009 didn’t really make much of a splash at all, either in its single-player campaign or its multiplayer. Surprisingly, there is still a multiplayer community, but you gotta be willing to pirate the game to play, which poses its own obstacles. Like the earlier example with EA and Battlefield 1942, I doubt Activision (or Bethesda) will care very much, but YMMV. Near as I can tell, bots don’t seem to exist for this game either.

                                                                                

Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad (September 13, 2011)
Tripwire Interactive
Purchase: Steam (bundled with Rising Storm)

screenshot c/o MobyGames

It’s basically more Red Orchestra. It actually had an expansion called Rising Storm that moves the action to the Pacific Theater, too, if you’re into that. While it does come with bots as an option, actually playing with them is less than satisfactory (and requires either playing the “single player campaign” that the devs so hated that it’s unavailable for new buyers, or learning how to set up a dedicated server.) 

                                                                                

 

Day of Infamy (March 23, 2017)
New World Interactive
Purchase: Steam

Screenshot c/o Steam

While the Source-powered Day of Infamy is, technically, a World War II spinoff of the hit Iraq War-themed Half-Life 2 mod (turned-commercial game) Insurgency, there’s no denying the DNA of Day of Defeat exists in Day of Infamy (and Insurgency too, let’s be real.) While functionally Infamy is a lot tighter, with a little more emphasis on realism, it still stands tall as the true spiritual sequel to Day of Defeat Source. Pity the profile system is pretty much broken forever, though. And yes, it does come with bots out of the box, which is nice — because the playerbase is dead as a doornail. It's a shame, because there's a lot to like about Day of Infamy; in some ways, it's what I wish Day of Defeat: Source had been.

                                                                                

The fight continues: 2017–present

Just as Call of Duty seemed to herald the end of World War II as a popular theme, so too does it bring it all back. Not to denigrate games like Day of Infamy keeping the faith, of course, but something happened between 2014 and 2016 that seems to have given World War II a a new relevance. It’s in this environment that Wolfenstein returned with the one-two punch of The New Order and The New Colossus, boldly featuring no multiplayer whatsoever but nevertheless speaking to a growing anxiety about our political environment by imagining a world taken over by the Nazis and letting players ventilate them by the truckload. Funny how things change: 20 years ago, nobody would have blinked about playing Axis in one of these games, but now it feels a little different. 

 

Call of Duty WWII (November 3, 2017)
Sledgehammer Games
full review
Purchase: Steam | Xbox.com | PlayStation Store

screenshot c/o MobyGames

In contrast to Call of Duty WWII’s rather emotive single-player campaign, its multiplayer is pretty much just another iteration on where Call of Duty’s multiplayer has been going since Modern Warfare. It’s… fine, I guess? You’ve got your Team DM, you’ve got your War mode, you’ve even got AI bots out of the box… but what the fuck is that customization system? You can customize your character’s class and loadouts, yes, but also their appearance, making for some truly bizarre and ahistorical situations. You can play a black lady Axis trooper toting a Russian machine gun if you want. Live your Candace Owens roleplay fantasies! I dunno, seems weird!

                                                                                

 

Squad 44 (August 9, 2018)
Offworld
Purchase: Steam

Screenshot c/o Steam

This was originally called Post Scriptum, before changing its name to Squad 44, likely to bring it in parity with developer Offworld's modern tactical shooter Squad. When I tried to run it, it crashed almost instantly and Easy Anti Cheat screamed about a DLL file it didn’t like. So I uninstalled CoolSoft MIDIMapper. Ran the game again, it crashed almost instantly and EAC screamed about another DLL file it didn’t like. So I uninstalled CoolSoft VirtualMIDISynth. Now EAC doesn’t say anything, but the game just crashes anyway. Now I have to reinstall VirtualMIDISynth when I could have just uninstalled Squad 44. Great game!

                                                                                

 

Battlefield V (November 20, 2018)
DICE
Full review
Purchase: Steam | EA App | Xbox.com | PlayStation Store

Screenshot c/o Techspot

If you skipped all the non-WWII Battlefield games between 1942 and this one you are in for quite a shock. It’s a very expansive game with a lot to do; bigger games with 64 players can be absolute chaos, giving the impression of a much closer approximation to an actual warzone than a lot of games like this. No real bots to speak of in most modes, but you can fool around with the “Combined Arms” mode which is essentially co-op for 1–4 players. But this game has a similar issue to Call of Duty WWII in that the customization options means weapons and people are all over the place. Argh! 

                                                                                

 

Hell Let Loose (July 27, 2021)
Expression Games
Purchase: Steam

Screenshot c/o MobyGames

Supposedly this is the new hotness as far as WWII multi is concerned. With a big focus on squad-level communication and semi-simulationist gameplay, it’s absolutely intended for the more serious soldier than, say, Call of Duty. Personally, I wouldn’t know: every time I try to join a match it just sits on the loading screen for a million years before I have to forcibly close the game. I’m sure it’s good though. At least I got to the main menu; can’t say the same for Squad 44. And there’s lots of cosmetic DLC for you to waste your money on.

                                                                                

Call of Duty Vanguard (November 5, 2021)
Sledgehammer Games
full review
Purchase: Steam | Xbox.com | PlayStation Store

Screenshot c/o TechRadar

Call of Duty used to at least try to be historical, or at least authentic. Vanguard — both its multiplayer, and, arguably, its singleplayer — has abandoned this concept entirely for a game where World War II is little more than set dressing for a thoroughly modernist vision of warfare, a world of “operators” and paramilitary stylings. It’s all aesthetic. I don’t get it. Plays like Call of Duty, though, so there’s that.

                                                                                

And that’s it for this survey of World War II shooters on the internet! Spotted a mistake? Think I’m forgetting something? You really want me to talk about Hour of Victory? Let me know!

Me? I’m going back to Day of Defeat.