War is, for better or for worse, one of the main themes prevalent throughout most video games. Its presence has been felt right from the beginning of the medium with games like Space War, all the way to the present day, with some of the most popular contemporary games being the likes of Call of Duty and Battlefield, which focus almost entirely on war.
To some extent, many of these war games can present their subject matter in a way that seems to indicate a "pro-war" narrative, but for the most part, many war-based narratives use war as merely a backdrop for their stories and mechanics. There are some exceptions to this. Some developers choose to craft together a game that is explicitly anti-war. These types of games come in many different forms, but one thing they all share in common is that they are all critical of the concept of "gamifying" war.
10 Ace Combat Zero: A Suprise Turn
The Ace Combat series is renowned for having heart-stopping, intense aerial combat that makes the player focus their mind and come to terms with high-speed combat.
This is all true of Ace Combat: Zero - but this installment comes with a little twist to the series. Behind the flashy jet combat is a serious story about the futility of war, one that makes the player really feel like nothing but one little pawn in a very large machine of death.
9 Balance Of Power: Geopolitics Visualized
Balance of Power was created during the height of the 1980s resurgence of the Cold War - a period that saw the world's then superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, competing with each other for global dominance. To achieve this, both powers attempted to drag the rest of the world to their side. This created a world that can be best described with the old adage, "if you're not with me, you're against me".
The gameplay of Balance of Power is that it is essentially an interactive seminar/lesson that reflects the complicated nature of geopolitics during its contemporary period, tasking the player with seeing if they can keep this "cold" war from turning "hot". The anti-war element of this game is brutal in both its messaging and its punishment of the player. If, during gameplay, war is not avoided between the two superpowers, then eventually all-out nuclear war will start. This is treated as an immediate "game over", with the game giving you the following message; "You have ignited an accidental nuclear war. And no, there is no animated display of a mushroom cloud with parts of bodies flying through the air. We do not reward failure."
8 Bury Me, My Love: A Beautiful, Modern Reflection
A recurring problem with many "anti-war" games is that they often engage themselves in the very combat-focused gameplay that they are trying to critique.
Bury Me, My Love takes the idea of the anti-war game and places its focus on an area of war that is very rarely touched upon in video games - the experiences of refugees. Bury Me, My Love sees the player taking on the role of Syrian refugee Nour, as she attempts to make safe passage into Europe, all the while communicating with her husband Majd, who has been left in Syria. The game is sweet, heart-wrenching and unflinchingly human, and serves as a perfect reminder of the human cost of war.
7 DEFCON: Is It Worth The Cost?
The gameplay of DEFCON is extremely simple, being essentially a stripped-down accessible real-time strategy game that sees the player attempting to stay on top of and manage a massive global conflict. While at first providing a fun, if not intense challenge to the player, the game soon reveals its darker message hidden underneath the surface.
It soon becomes apparent, that as tensions escalate and nuclear weapons are unleashed, "winning" is not determined by "achieving" objectives. Rather, the "winner" is determined by how many surviving humans are left in each nation - which by the end of most game sessions of DEFCON is almost always none.
6 Final Fantasy 9 - A Light-Hearted Critique
Final Fantasy IX is often remembered as the cutesy answer to the relatively grim nature and edgy presentation of the previous two games in the series. A more cartoony art style? Check. A Fairy-tale setting? Check. A simple plot to fit a new demographic? Absolutely NOT.
While on a surface level Final Fantasy IX seemingly returns to a more simplified presentation, once you scratch the surface and get stuck into the game, one begins to realize that it is an incredibly scathing critique on the uselessness of violent struggle, that still manages to maintain a really fun, light tone.
5 Metal Gear Solid 4: The Guns Of The Patriots - What IS War?
All of the Metal Gear games are anti-war, so picking just one game to encapsulate the series is quite hard.When one really becomes absorbed into the series, one begins to realize that Metal Gear Solid 4: The Guns Of The Patriots is the most solid example of the series' anti-war message.
It is after all the culmination of all the previous' games' plot points and lengthy thesis statements. Interestingly for an anti-war game, and despite its lengthy, rambling monologues, the game has a fair amount of nuance in its discussion on war. Creator Hideo Kojima's main intent with this game was to explore whether war is an unavoidable evil, part of the human condition, or simply a tool used by the powerful to control everyone else.
4 Nuclear War - There Are No Winners
The basic gameplay of Nuclear War is that you take control of a caricature of a real-world political figure from the 1980s - ranging from Ronnie Raygun (aka, Ronald Reagan) or P.M Satcher (aka, Margaret Thatcher). As this figurehead, the player is then tasked with unleashing their nuclear arsenal on the other characters.
The message of Nuclear War is perfectly summed up by the ending scene. The final scene of the game depicts whichever world leader was "victorious" in the war, proclaiming "I Won! I Won!" - all the while standing alone in a desolate, irradiated wasteland, with nothing to show for their victory.
3 Spec Ops: The Line - Narrative Twisting
Many war games make the player do extremely questionable things without actually making the player second-guess these decisions. One need not look any further than the Call Of Duty franchise, which sees the player commit what can only be described as war crimes in many of the games. These actions end up having very little ramifications for the player if any at all.
Spec Ops: The Line, on the other hand, engages the player in a fun and interesting sand-oriented shooter combat, while slowly encouraging the player to do increasingly abhorrent things in the name of overcoming their opponents. The result is the slow descent into madness for the player character, with reality slipping from his fingers. This fall into madness is expertly done by having the game's text boxes and menus themselves begin to question the actions of the player, going as far as to criticize the player for unquestionably taking part in the simulation of such horrendous violence.
2 This War Of Mine - Survivor Inspiration
During the development of This War of Mine, 11-bit studios interviewed survivors of the Siege of Sarajevo - one of the bloodiest and longest sieges in European history. All the scenarios and choices presented to the player in-game are based on real-world events.
It is this firm grounding in reality that makes This War of Mine one of the best anti-war statements in gaming, planting the player's role not in a combat one, as they might usually expect, but pulling away from the "action" and making us all look at the consequences of such large-scale violence.
1 Valiant Hearts - The War To End All Wars
Despite its cartoony art style and fun, inventive puzzles, Valiant Hearts manages to be one of the most sobering and indeed, educational representations of the First World War in any medium outside a history textbook or documentary.
The game expertly takes the player on a journey into misery, starting out in an optimistic and determined mood, showing the war hysteria and propaganda that convinced so many to take up arms and die for a cause they knew very little about. This optimism and determination soon are twisted into hopelessness and fear as the player attempts to survive the hellscape that war twists our world into.