World war 2 video games

How come video games set during world war 2 rarely explored the Italian front?

Three off the top of my head (sans grand strategy and its closest relatives) would be these.

Battlefield RTR had maps set in Italy and featured Italian vehicles. No biggie. Blitzkrieg had missions that took place in Africa and allowed control over Italian units IIRC, but you mostly end up fighting them.

A&A on the other hand is pretty interesting as far as alt history goes. It's way more Germany focused, but the campaign features most historical big campaigns. Of particular note, the Axis campaign is alt history, so winning in Africa allows you to push into the Middle East and beyond. Which I guess isn't really the Italian front, but hey, close enough since they were the main belligerents on the Axis side in terms of numbers down in Africa.

Guess it doesn't happen much because there just isn't as much spectacle to be had about it. It's just easier to sell a game about taking the beaches of Normandie for the millionth time rather than duking it out in the Italian mainland. In the west you also get a clearer path to victory as you eventually push towards Berlin and the final victory, whereas the Italian front in a lot of people's minds - if they even care at all – revolves around being stuck in the mountains for a billion years. I think that's the main culprit for a lack of big or even mid-tier games (outside of GSG and nichey strategy things) focus on Italy - marketability, recognition, and an evil boogeyman to sell to the normalfag gamer.

Oyyy!! Stop trying to direct people away from what the Nazis did, you neo-nazi bastid!

To answer your question, they were a minor player in the grand scheme of things. The Italians were quickly beaten in Africa, and invaded later on in 1943. Germany and Japan hold all the glory as the agitators of the the second world war. It's just what is more interesting to audience, core and wide. However, it's never too late to make a game featuring them in a better capacity.
There is one game I remember you could play as the Italians in though. It was the Ubisoft game RUSE, and that was just for multiplayer. I was actually pretty good as them back when. The unit I exploited the most was a dual purpose anti tank and anti aircraft mobile artillery piece. Their lighter tanks also let you get a good rush. Pretty underrated game despite its creators being ass.


Axis & Allies was the shit. I still even have my old physical copy. One thing I remember in particular was the really fun map editor. I didn't know how to do online play at the time, so I stuck to only playing the computer. The factions were all fleshed out and had very clear distinctions on their play styles. It's also an underrated game. I'd like to replay it one of these days, but I don't have a disk drive on this pc, and I haven't been bothered to find a torrent for such an old game.

The games I have seen that focus on the African/Italian front usually start off with Rommel as the big baddie and then more or less its just about winning the war.

It was an interesting game, for sure. I liked that you commanded proper formations instead of just pumping out ye olde mainstays and that combined arms and commander abilities played big roles. The thing I'll remember most though is that you could actually win as the Axis. The other two games I mentioned let you fight the battles of Stalingrad, Kursk and El-Alamein, but even a total victory in either place nets you nothing. Back to the inevitable path towards defeat. It'd be fun with some branching paths in more games!

A game that did that really well IMO was Panzer Corps. It's a fun strategy game that may not be the most realistic or well made, but I adored the campaign structure. As Germany, you can fight all the way to San Fransisco if you win major victories in like every map in the game. As the Soviets, you can even fight the Allies if you're "too good" and get Stalin to feel cocky. The Africa DLC - which I do not own for disclosure, so I can't tell you if it's good - let you fight beyond Al-Alamein and if the way you assemble armies is anything like it is in the main game, you can basically fight with an all-Italian army if you so choose just to bring it back to the thread's topic.

Good game, includes a lot of alt history options, fun branching path campaigns across all factions. Really with more games would try something like that.

Because the Italian army was woefully unprepared. Mussolini, as much of a fuck up as he was, knew this fully well and tried to stall the beginning of the war because he just couldn't mobilize shit - remember that they had recently acquired a war-torn country and that unlike Germoney the infrastructure had none of those cushy (((Weimar))) funds taken from the banking families. Simply put, Italy was a stroll in the park compared to like the Eastern Front. A more interesting game would have you deal with the fucking Mafia helping the Allies cross into the peninsula.

Downloaded this one after seeing that alternative branch thing it has going on and boy does the game not fuck around in the actual campaign. Poland is an actual bitch to take in a Decisive Victory due to the fact half of the god damn army is stuck in Slovakia and takes several turns to get into position whilst the other half is not mobilized at all. The fucking poles got a tank that can be a nuissance to your own and their cities are heavily fortified with artilery and forts.

My autism ain't letting me finish that damn mission without a decisive victory, it's fucking Poland God damn it. But from what I noticed Germany is the only one with such a vast tree, the others don't make any mentions of alternative paths in its library. Is it an oversight or?

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They ruined the Axis' chances of winning, along with the retarded nips. They don't deserve the glory.

The German campaign is the main campaign. The others are smaller because they're cheaper DLC campaigns. I guess I can't complain too much about that. I haven't gotten to the end of it, but the grand campaign has some interesting missions. Its branches (because it's on a historical trajectory) are mostly things like "assault Dunkirk and cripple the English" and such, but the last few missions are basically, "hey if you get a decisive victory in a bunch of Berlin missions you don't totally lose." Same with the western one. If you get decisive victory after decisive victory (like five against what I can only assume are insane odds) you get a shot at pushing the Americans into the sea or something judging by the mission titles. It's crazy, how many games even let you come close to that? Fun stuff!


Let's be honest here, if more big pubs made games focusing on the Italian front the Italians would only see the "glory" of having their countrymen slaughtered in their millions by heroic African-American ftm transexual super soldiers. Maybe when you look at it like that, it's not that bad that they're spared most of the attention while only autistic strategy games let them out of the cuckshed.

Fair enough, but the difficult bit is to actually get those fucking decisive missions. I'm doing the 39' Grand Campaign right now and I only got a marginal victory on the last one due to getting bogged down at the last city thanks to lack of supplies.

I dread the later missions once the Soviets and Americans start pushing back

Boy, will you have fun with Norway then, when the weather makes the terrain muddy (limiting the mobility of all your troops) and grounding all your aircraft, while the map is full of mountains and chokepoints and you're getting bullied by the English navy. And the you get to the Low Countries and get to experience all those beautiful rivers.

Don't engage the tank with your tanks. First order of business is to establish air superiority, then use a Stuka to weaken the tank, followed by artillery to suppress it before moving in with two or more infantry to destroy it.

Remember, suppression is the single most important mechanic in the game, followed by mass attack and forcing units to surrender. Use enemy units against each other when they are bunched up to surround and destroy them, try to get behind cities with your tanks to attack their artillery.

Try the Grand Campaign, it starts you off with more gimped and weakened Polish forces.

You eventually invade India.

There's even an achievement for that.

You have the inspiration for the game, Panzer General I and II, that both allow for branching scenarios, and then you have Warhammer Armageddon, which is basically Panzer Corps with 40k units, though they did rework a few mechanics to make the gameplay fit the setting more closely.

Panzer Generals series
Mare Nostrum Mod for RO

Oh christ don't remind me, I used to play this kind of game on my phone back in the mid 00's and I had an easier time sieging Moscow than dealing with all the fucking coastal forts alongside Norway. Getting the bonus objective there was a several hours long endeavor

Yeah, later missions are absolutely brutal. The game's fun, but it doesn't pull its punches. Sometimes it's even been a bit unfair during the Soviet counterattack missions, but hey, I woudln't expect a Soviet counter-attack in 1943 to be a walk in the park so I guess I can't complain.


Reading the achievement list is how I learned about it. Honestly not bad marketing because the challenge sounded fun! But I hadn't beaten the other campaigns so shelling out another bundle of Shekels seemed premature.

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Note to self, the AI isn't THAT retarded

I tried to play Panzer Corps, but the game crashed constantly, it was unplayable (win10 64bit). Anyone got a link to a working version?

Not to mention getting saddled with some of the shittiest and to be fair some of the best weapons of the war. Tbqh I'd rather have a WW2 game that lets you play as the minor Axis nations. Fucking over the bolsheviks as Latvian or Estonian SS, Hungarian or Romanian armies would be killer.

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Wouldn't know, I use Win8 and I've had zero issues. Got mine from Steam during a sale though, so maybe you just have a bad copy of it. Wouldn't know how to help you there.

Story time that for us user, sounds hilarious and I can't find anything concrete

Didn't they even keep operating well into the 1950s?

Panzerfaust infantry?

Because the italians didn’t commit the holocaust you stupid fucking goy. Remember the six vigintillion.

Latvia still has nazi imagery in their parades. I guess they never felt like dismantling that because, honestly, what kind of threat could that region pose to anyone?

Because Hetalia was a joke in ww2.

I don't have any sources unfortunately. In the interests of full disclosure for all I'm aware of the story might be bullshit, but imagine for a moment you're the military liaison to the RSI. You've had to watch as excellent commanders and precious tanks, planes, artillery and troops were diverted from preparing for Barbarossa to bail the macaroni's asses out of the fire against smaller and lesser equipped forces time and time again. Then imagine a report like pic related comes across your desk. I'd be asking questions too.


If I remember correctly there were Estonian and Croatian SS units that point blank refused to lay down arms and they were operating resistance movements in the rural forests and mountains of their respective countries right up to the early 70's before the soviets got them all. There's probably a lot of shit from Unternehmen Werwolf we'll never hear about either. Now that would be a hell of a game.

The main issue with the Italians is that they were poorly led. Unlike with Germany, where being an officer was a prestigious position that attracted the best and brightest, in Italy a military job was reserved for dumbest failures, a place where rich families threw their unwanted progeny in the hopes they'd die and make successions all the easier. When Italian units were put under the command of officers that cared about the mission and them they performed admirably.