War. What is it good for? I am not going to get into the real-world answer, because I do not know how useful it is there. But in video games? It is hard to beat a good war. Sometimes it is easy to beat a good war, but generally, I want it to be hard.
That is what this list is about: huge battles, tactical chaos, logistics nightmares, ridiculous blockbuster campaigns, grimy sci-fi violence, and more than a few games that seem determined to throw every vehicle, weapon, or medieval soldier they can find directly at the screen.
These are the new war games I am most interested in right now, across PC, PS5, and Xbox Series consoles.
Key Takeaways
- The Last General and Falling Frontier put logistics, reconnaissance, and large-scale command at the heart of warfare.
- Hell Let Loose: Vietnam has improved after launch, while Gallipoli offers a varied and approachable World War I multiplayer experience.
- Gears of War: E-Day, Game of Thrones: War for Westeros, and Total War: Warhammer 40,000 are ambitious new takes on major war-focused franchises.
- Bonus picks include tactical destruction in Mars Tactics, high-speed dogfighting in Ace Combat 8, and old-school RTS action in D.O.R.F..
Table of Contents
- 10. The Last General
- 9. Hell Let Loose: Vietnam
- 8. Kingmakers
- 7. Company of Heroes: Definitive Edition
- 6. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4
- 5. Gallipoli
- 4. Gears of War: E-Day
- 3. Game of Thrones: War for Westeros
- 2. Falling Frontier
- 1. Total War: Warhammer 40,000
- Bonus War Games Worth Keeping on the Radar
10. The Last General
Platform: PC
Release date: TBA
The Last General is a modern-warfare RTS that is going extremely big. I am talking about commanding thousands of units over battlefields that can stretch across 400 square kilometres, complete with towns, cities, factories, supply lines, and all the lovely logistical stuff that turns a normal evening into a full military logistics career.
The hook is how much direct control it seems willing to give me. I can capture cities, build defences, construct factories, and manage production like a traditional strategy game. But I can also jump into individual soldiers and vehicles, taking direct control in either first-person or third-person perspective.
There is a political and covert side too. The game includes options to sabotage enemy infrastructure, hit factories and power plants, support insurrections, carry out assassinations, and conduct false-flag operations. There is a lot going on here.
It is also planned as a free-to-play game, which is not my favourite pairing with an RTS. Still, the scale and ambition make this one hard to ignore.
9. Hell Let Loose: Vietnam
Platforms: PC, PS5, Xbox Series X|S
Release date: 13 August 2026
I wanted to love Hell Let Loose: Vietnam when it first arrived. Underneath its launch problems, it was still built on the bones of Hell Let Loose, which is a great game. But despite technically being a full release, it felt too much like early access, and it was not different enough from the World War II original.
Thankfully, it has improved quite a bit. Recent patches have addressed hundreds of issues, particularly stability problems. That goes a very long way in a large-scale multiplayer shooter where technical frustration can ruin a match before the actual enemy does.
The developers have also rebalanced the NVA tunnel system. I liked the idea of it from the beginning, but it was far too powerful. It now feels less oppressive and much more fun to deal with.
Vietnam is a specifically asymmetrical conflict, and that creates a genuinely difficult design problem. The more technologically dominant side historically lost, which makes straightforward multiplayer balance a lot more complicated. I am glad the developers are discussing that issue more openly now, because that is where the game will either fulfil its potential or stumble.
I would not call it completely finished yet, but it is much easier to recommend than it was at launch. It feels like the team is sticking with it and moving in the right direction.
8. Kingmakers
Platform: PC
Release date: TBA
Kingmakers is one of those games that almost refuses to be explained normally. I get sent roughly 500 years back into medieval England, where huge armies are clashing with swords, bows, cavalry, and all the usual historical business. Then I show up with assault rifles, shotguns, grenade launchers, armoured vehicles, motorcycles, air strikes, and attack helicopters.
It is completely insane, but it is not just a joke premise where I bring future tech back in time and immediately turn the kingdom into a shooting gallery. Beneath all the absurdity is a complex battle simulation with thousands of individual soldiers fighting across massive encounters.
The game was delayed shortly before its originally planned launch because the developers did not want to release something they felt amounted to an alpha. Their target is a campaign with around 10 to 15 hours of substantial content, which is a respectable reason to push a game back, even if the timing was a little confusing.
A publicly playable build has appeared before, and a public demo is expected. The full game is listed as coming soon on Steam, while a console release is planned after the PC version reaches 1.0.
7. Company of Heroes: Definitive Edition
Platform: PC
Release date: Q4 2026
The original Company of Heroes launched in 2006. There are now fully grown adults who were born after that game came out, which is frankly rude. The good news is that this definitive edition is not trying to reinvent a classic RTS for no reason.
It packages the original game with Opposing Fronts, Tales of Valor, and the additional content. It also includes more than 50 multiplayer and skirmish maps, plus a proper technical refresh:
- 4K and widescreen support
- Improved lighting, shadows, water, reflections, and draw distance
- A move from 32-bit to 64-bit architecture for better compatibility
- Updated controls and general quality-of-life improvements
- A new difficulty setting called Ruthless
This is not a dramatic remake. If I already love Company of Heroes, that is probably the point. It should be easier to run, nicer to control, and a little prettier without losing the game people liked in the first place.
6. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4
Platforms: PC, PS5, Xbox Series X|S, PS4, Xbox One
Release date: 28 October 2026
I am not going to pretend I am bouncing off the walls for another Call of Duty. After Black Ops 7, my confidence is not exactly soaring. Every year brings another huge trailer, a promise that lessons have been learned, and a collective moment where everyone wonders if this is the one that gets it right.
Still, Infinity Ward is promising a more grounded, boots-on-the-ground campaign and multiplayer experience, and by God, I want Call of Duty to be good again.
The campaign setup is at least the right kind of dumb. A war breaks out on the Korean Peninsula following a full-scale North Korean invasion. The story moves from trench warfare there to close-quarters fighting in New York and vehicle chases through Paris. It sounds like a giant action movie, which is exactly what a Modern Warfare campaign should be.
Of course, blockbuster dumb can be good dumb or bad dumb. I am not fully convinced yet. But early beta feedback was a little stronger than I expected, and Infinity Ward has reportedly been responsive to criticism. It could be very good. It could also be very bad. That is the exciting horror of Call of Duty.
5. Gallipoli
Platforms: PC, PS5, Xbox Series X|S
Release date: 20 August 2026
Gallipoli is the fourth game in BlackMill Games’ World War I series, but it moves away from the European fronts and into the Ottoman campaigns. That means battles across locations including Anzac Cove, Cape Helles, and Kut al-Amara.
Mechanically, it follows the BlackMill formula: hardcore, objective-based combat built around teamwork. Matches are 25 versus 25, there are 10 historical classes, and squad play is at the centre of everything.
What I like most is that Gallipoli understands World War I combat does not mean every map needs to be a trench. There are cliffs, beaches, deserts, forts, and city streets alongside the expected muddy defensive positions. That variety matters.
It is more grounded and lethal than Battlefield, but it is not so brutally hardcore that I would tell people to stay away. The game has earned very positive Steam reviews, and that lines up with my experience. This is a strong multiplayer war game that gives the setting more range than many people expect.
4. Gears of War: E-Day
Platforms: PC, Xbox Series X|S
Release date: 6 October 2026
Gears of War: E-Day is a prequel set on Emergence Day, 14 years before the original Gears of War. This is the beginning of the whole nightmare, when Locusts bursting out of the ground is a shocking new horror rather than an unfortunate part of somebody’s Tuesday.
It looks like a return to the grimy horror edge of the earliest games, and that feels right for this particular point in the story. The Coalition is not simply remaking the original game either. The cover system has been rebuilt, with the goal of keeping that familiar Gears feel while making it smoother and more satisfying.
On top of the campaign, the game is set to include co-op, four-versus-four PvP, and a 12-player PvE mode called Horde Siege. If it lands the way it looks like it might, this could be the kind of game people imagined when they first heard the words “Emergence Day.”
3. Game of Thrones: War for Westeros
Platform: PC
Release date: TBA
Game of Thrones has always seemed almost absurdly perfect for a strategy game. Giant armies, castles, alliances, betrayals, dragons, undead armies, ice monsters, and about 40 families who all hate each other should be a pretty solid foundation for conquest gameplay.
And yet it has taken a remarkably long time to get a proper strategy game built around that idea. Game of Thrones: War for Westeros finally appears ready to fill that gap.
I will not lie, the franchise has some baggage at this point. I often think of it more in terms of wasted potential than what it actually became. But a sandbox-style conquest campaign across Westeros is exactly the sort of thing this world should have had all along.
This is not being framed as a mere collection of missions. The idea of controlling the struggle for Westeros in an open-ended strategic format is what makes me interested. The setting has all the ingredients. Now it needs the game to put them together properly.
2. Falling Frontier
Platform: PC
Release date: December 2026
Falling Frontier is a space RTS set across a massive procedurally generated star system, and it is very serious about logistics. I build shipyards, refineries, supply depots, and reconnaissance stations alongside the usual strategy-game infrastructure.
The intelligence systems are where it gets especially interesting. I can deploy scout ships and probes, use passive scans, or make the riskier choice to run active scans that may expose my own position. I can hide ships behind moons and mask heat signatures close to gas giants. It is full of the kinds of details that make space warfare feel like actual space warfare rather than ships bumping into each other in a dark ocean.
The combat is designed around four broad stages:
- Information gathering: figuring out where the enemy is and what they are doing.
- Long-range engagement: missile exchanges and attacks launched across major distances.
- Mid-range combat: railguns and electronic warfare enter the picture.
- Close-range manoeuvring: navigation becomes crucial when I am dangerously close to something that is trying very hard to blow me up.
That layered approach has me very interested. There are lots of space strategy games, but not all of them make reconnaissance, heat, terrain, supply, and engagement distance feel this central to the actual battle.
1. Total War: Warhammer 40,000
Platforms: PC, PS5, Xbox Series X|S
Release date: TBA
Total War and Warhammer 40,000 feel like an obvious combination to me. Warhammer 40K is a setting built around gigantic armies of lunatics fighting endless wars with tanks, giant robots, monsters, spacecraft, and an amount of weaponry that would make a normal military budget burst into flames.
Creative Assembly already spent three games figuring out how fantasy works in the Total War format. Warhammer 40K has plenty of fantasy in it too, just with a brutal technological overload layered on top.
The campaign is intended to span multiple worlds during the Era Indomitus, bringing interplanetary warfare to the grand strategy side of the series. Mods will be supported through Steam Workshop, though official mod tools will not arrive immediately because the game is running on Creative Assembly’s new Warcore engine.
I do not have a release date yet, but this is the game at the top of the list for a reason. If Creative Assembly can translate the setting’s enormous scale and faction variety into a satisfying Total War campaign, it has the potential to be an absolute banger.
Bonus War Games Worth Keeping on the Radar
PVKK
Platform: PC
Release date: TBA
I am not even going to attempt the full title. PVKK looks like a war game crossed with one of those intensely tactile vehicle and spaceship simulators where I am constantly flipping switches, monitoring generators, scanning targets, and calculating trajectories.
It was previously targeting summer 2026, but it has been delayed. It is now listed for a later release, and it remains a PC-only game for the moment. The physicality of operating a complicated war machine is the big draw here.
Medic: Pacific War
Platform: PC
Release date: 4 June 2026, Early Access
Medic: Pacific War is very different from everything else here. My job is not to kill people. My job is to keep them alive as a medic in the Pacific theatre during World War II.
It is currently in early access and clearly still unfinished, but players seem to like it. It has a mostly positive rating, and the developers are working on optimisation. It has a way to go, but the central idea is compelling because it shifts the pressure of war away from combat and toward survival.
Ace Combat 8: Wings of Thieves
Platforms: PC, PS5, Xbox Series X|S
Release date: 2 October 2026
Ace Combat lives in a wonderful sweet spot where the aircraft look incredibly realistic right up until someone starts talking and reminds me that this is the wonderfully strange world of Strangereal.
Ace Combat 8: Wings of Thieves is the first new numbered game in seven years. I take on the role of a hot-shot fighter pilot who was effectively invented as propaganda to keep morale alive while very little else is going well. The plot is not really why I am here, though. I am here for fast, arcade-style aerial combat, and it looks like Ace Combat through and through.
The multiplayer side is being expanded substantially. An airbase lobby will support up to 100 players, cross-platform play is planned, progression is separate for multiplayer, and multiple modes are in the works. After Ace Combat 7 sold more than six million copies, going bigger makes complete sense.
Mars Tactics
Platform: PC
Release date: 2026
Mars Tactics has some of the revolutionary struggle energy of Red Faction Guerrilla, but it is an XCOM-style turn-based tactical game. Its big selling point is fully destructible environments, and it looks like it may go even further with that idea than most games in the genre.
It has a slightly old-school feel while still looking unmistakably tactical and modern. I think it looks freaking sweet. A 2026 release is planned, though the exact timing remains unclear.
D.O.R.F.
Platform: PC
Release date: TBA
D.O.R.F. is deliberately channelling the age of Command & Conquer and classic base-building RTS games. I choose from three factions, build giant bases, harvest and refine resources, create enormous armies, and try to flatten everyone else.
The developers are working on terrain destruction to bring some newer ideas to the formula, but the look is proudly chunky, grimy, and pre-rendered in that extremely 1990s RTS way. There is no release date yet, but it is absolutely one to keep an eye on if classic real-time strategy is your thing.
That is a pretty wild range of war games, from hardcore World War I squad combat and future military logistics to fantasy conquest, first-person medieval drive-bys, and an RTS full of tanks, monsters, and giant robots. War may be hell, but at least the games are looking interesting.
