When Infinity Ward turned the focus of the already huge Call of Duty franchise away from World War II and towards contemporary conflicts, the scene was set for a perfect storm. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare proved to be a game changer in the field of mass market shooters. Infinity Ward’s high production value of a cinematic single player experience should prove to set the bar for shooters to come.
What then happened was that everyone wanted a piece of that new contemporary conflicts pie that so far had mostly been the arena of various Tom Clancy games and Bohemia Interactive’s hyper realistic Operation Flashpoint and ArmA series. The result was a trend that is still going strong five years after the first Modern Warfare game was released. Now there is a plethora of military shooters out there, and none of them has not been affected in one way or the other by the leader of the manshooting pack.
Here we have compiled a list of the 20 most prominent examples of the species ludus modernwarfensis. They all feature cinematic single player campaigns alongside big, many faceted multiplayer modes (though there are of course exceptions like Counterstrike, which has an honorary place on the list).
Oh god Bulletstorm. This arcadey shootfest by the people who brought us Painkiller sadly wasn’t a big enough hit to warrant a sequel. The game itself was heaps of fun, starring the most horribly inappropriately foulmouthed characters (single player) gaming had ever seen, and dishing out bonus points for the most horrible and violently fun ways of dismembering, maiming and brutally killing anything in the protagonist’s path.
Another game based on a book. There are still way too few of those. Metro is based on Vladimir Glukovski’s novel of the same name, taking place mostly in the underground tunnels of Moscow’s subway system, built to outlast a full out nuclear attack. Which happened, and which it did. So, now the player has to traverse said underground system, killing unfriendly people and creatures along the way. Which is not always fun. In a good way.
Ah, the difficult second album. Err, game. Just that this one wasn’t actually difficult. Just a pretty great follow up to the alien zapping funhouse through an alternate timeline where an alien invasion prevents World War II from happening. This one has the player take on the largest god damned enemies ever since the movie Cloverfield wasn’t a video game. Also it’s just a highly entertaining shooter with a ton of fresh ideas.
It was supposed to be the Playstaion 3’s killer app - no pun intended. Yet it proved to be the embodyment of corporate hype. While the final game is indeed quite good looking, it’s nowhere near as pretty as the prerendered, supposed real time footage used at E3 2005 suggested. Still, it is a fun game where a lot of space nazis have to die. Must die. It is imperative that space nazis die. Yes. Indeed.
Oh yeah, scary stuff. FEAR tried marrying horror and balls to the walls military action, and succeeded in delivering the two things, but they rarely got together. Same with the successor title, which ups the graphics, downs the AI (for whatever reason) and still remains one of the most fun romps with cloned soldiers you can get this side of Dolly’s grave.
Oh yes. What an innovative title. Interestingly enough, the upcoming Call of Duty: Ghosts also sounds a bit much like a certain Tom Clancy’s title on this list. But not just the game’s title was a bit, well, bad and unimaginative. The rest of the game was too, and although it sure looked nice, it was a buggy mess that just couldn’t compete with Activision’s mighter competing title of last year, causing EA to eventually shut the door on the Medal of Honor franchise. At least, for now.
Before Battlefield 3, there was this. Bad Company 2 is a game that has a somewhat lackluster single player campaign, that scores bonus points for having entertaining characters, and loses a lot with being about a the race between Russian and US special forces to get their hands on a fictional Imperial Japanese superweapon. Clearly it’s the multiplayer in this game that shines. Giving the player control over a wide array of vehicles and huge levels to play in, it’s the core of the Battlefield series.
Getting the post apocalypse on, Resistance 3 has the player go wild on alien invaders in New York City. Just as the other entries to the series, this third part has some great bells and whistles going for it. Huge enemies return, as do probably the most fun and inventive guns this side of Serious Sam. It’s a fun, albeit gritty, 50s themed romp through the alternate timeline US.
Speaking about killing Nazis from above, here’s one game that takes place on the ground of reality, but makes a point of inserting the player from a more aloof position. Airborne should be the last Medal of Honor game to take the battle to Germany. And that chapter did go out with a bang.
Because there’s no such quality villain as Nazis, the Killzone franchise took the best parts of them (mostly the uniforms and general aesthetics) and transplanted them to space. Space Nazis! And yes, they do have to be killed. All of them preferably. Killzone 3 mostly takes place in wintery environments, and offers the player a novelty jetpack to kill Space Nazis from above. Also it was one of the first game to offer stereoscopic 3D, making it possible to kill Space Nazis in 3D. Which makes it a very, very awesome game in my book. too bad I don’t have a 3DTV.
Snap count. Who hates Nazis? We all do? Great. Snipter Elite V2 pits the players against ze Germans, in the heart of the Reich no less, having the protagonist go after the scientists of the V2 rocket program in war torn Berlin in the last days of World War II (in the European theater, anyway). Unlike Ghost Warrior, this game actually centers a lot on sniping, so much in fact, that close quarters combat is a bit of a letdown in comparison. Those fancy and painful cutaway shots really helped there.
Nothings says corridors like subway tunnels. And there are a lot of those in post-nuclear Moscow. Based on the same set of novels as Metro: 2033, this Russian shooter ups the ante in terms of graphics and tension. Probably the most technically impressive game for a gaming PC this side of Crysis 3, it’s also one of the most creepy entries in this list. And the second most fictional.
The classic got a facelift. Before there warfare was even modern, there was Counterstrike. Hell, before 9/11 made terror cool, there was Counterstrike. Counterstrike is the hipster of the military shooters. People have been doing this dance for more than a decade now. CS:GO updated the venerated game, took some rebalancing, but retained the cops and robbers, terrorists and counter terrorists core, including the iconic maps, delivering an updated and still fresh classic.
While not being the latest and greatest, and being a big disappointment to those coming here for the promised sniping action, this one is still a valid entry into the military shooting people game category. Set on a fictional Latin American island, the player is cast as an elite sniper commando unit and gets to kill a lot of people. But there is not too much sniping, more regular shooting. A bit of a letdown, although a pretty game.
Ah, DNA. Even in games you work. It clearly shows that Rainbow Six: Vegas, the re-imagining of the tough, lethal, ultra tactical shooter franchise as a Michael Bay infused action franchise is the predecessor, the grandfather, of Deus Ex: Human Evolution, as the two games share the lead designer. That buttery smooth switching from first to third person when in cover, yeah Rainbow Six Vegas had it first.
Wars are fought by warfighters. This game has a case of advanced warfighteritis. Which means, a lot of gadgets, robots, recon equipment, UAVs, and the like. And guns of course. Modern guns to shoot down modern enemies. The single player campaign, dealing with open war in the US-Mexico border city of Juarez, also caused some controversy in Mexico, who didn’t like being painted as an unstable hellhole in need of US rescuing.
A critical darling, this game takes the whole concept of the military shooter and turns it on its head. Mechanically, Spec Ops: The Line might not be too special, admitted, it is a fairly simple, straightforward third person shooter. It’s the narrative that makes this game tick. A modern retelling of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, the novellette on which also legendary Vietnam War movie Apocalypse Now! was based on, this game is the brains among all the brawns in the military shooter genre.
Riding on the waves of military shooter, this one here is almost an old man. Ghost Recon was the somewhat more open counterpart to Rainbow Six’ close quarters, back in 2001. Future Soldier is a lot more confined than previous games, but still focused on operations in the open field. Focusing on stealth and borderline sci-fi gadgets, it’s a tight shooter that holds its own.
The second big “Call of Duty killer” franchise, this time with more Iranians and less Afghans. Also as opposed to the the Modern Warfare fare, a plot that’s a bit more grounded in reality. And bigger multiplayer maps, vehicles, and what have you. Also, Battlefield 3 introduces us to developer DICE’s powerful Frostbite 2 engine, which is on its way to become the coming generation of game’s Unreal Engine.
Manly men killing other, slightly less manly men have never been as manly as the bearded men of Medal of Honor, the subtitle-free series reboot that put up yet another competitor to Activision’s juggernaut, this time edging a bit too close to reality, causing a small scandal by having one part of the multiplayer parties, the antagonists, the terrorists, being labled “taliban”, thus causing a huge controversy in the American media, because remember kids: War is no game! Or something.
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