Army Games: Best Military Picks, Army of Two and Army Men

Summary: Army games covers four unrelated things: military simulations, big-budget shooters, toy-soldier games and the specific franchises people search for by name. There are three Army of Two games and no more. Army Men has been dormant for over twenty years. And the best modern answer to what both of those offered is probably Helldivers 2.

• Army of Two ran to three games between 2008 and 2013, all of them Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 only.
• The genre's real split is realism. Arma and Squad measure a firefight in minutes of positioning, Call of Duty in seconds.
• The free end of this genre is unusually strong, because military shooters suit live-service funding better than most.
• VR is where the tactical end has quietly moved, and it is the one part of the genre that has no flat-screen equivalent.

This is a phrase that means four different things depending on who typed it. Some people want a simulation detailed enough to require a manual. Some want a campaign with tanks in it. Some are looking for a specific game they played in 2009 and cannot remember the name of. The sections below are sorted accordingly rather than ranked.

What Counts as an Army Game

Four groups, and they share almost nothing beyond the setting. Military simulations like Arma and Squad care about communication, sightlines and logistics, and a session can pass without you firing at all. Blockbuster shooters like Call of Duty and Battlefield use the military dressing for spectacle and are designed around a three-second engagement. Tactical squad games such as the Ghost Recon and Rainbow Six series sit between the two. And toy-soldier games are their own tradition entirely, closer to a cartoon than a war.

Buying across that line is the usual mistake. Somebody who wants Battlefield will find Arma tedious and somebody who wants Arma will find Battlefield weightless. If it is the broader shooter question you are actually asking, the shooter roundup covers the genre without the military filter.

How Many Army of Two Games Are There?

Three. The series ran from 2008 to 2013 and then stopped.

• Army of Two (2008). EA Montreal's original, starring mercenaries Salem and Rios. The hook was that most objectives were genuinely impossible alone, with back-to-back sequences and an aggro system that made one player draw fire while the other flanked.
• Army of Two: The 40th Day (2010). Set during a disaster in Shanghai and generally the best-regarded of the three. Added morality choices where one player decided and both lived with it.
• Army of Two: The Devil's Cartel (2013). Handed to Visceral's Montreal studio, rebuilt on Frostbite 2, and it replaced Salem and Rios with two anonymous operatives called Alpha and Bravo. Reviews landed in the mid-fifties, sales were poor, and that was the end of the series.

The practical catch is that all three are Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 titles and none ever received a current-generation release. Whether you can play them today depends entirely on backward compatibility on whichever console you own, so check that before hunting for a copy.

Games Like Army of Two

What people actually miss is the forced partnership: a shooter that assumes two competent people and designs around it rather than bolting co-op on afterwards.

• Helldivers 2. The closest thing in spirit. Four players, friendly fire always on, and objectives that punish anyone trying to solo them. It is the modern version of the idea Army of Two was reaching for. Worth checking which platforms can play together before your group buys it.
• Gears of War series. The cover shooter Army of Two was openly imitating, with a campaign built for two throughout. Mechanically tighter than anything in the series it inspired.
• Ghost Recon Wildlands. Four-player open-world tactical work, where planning an approach on a camp is most of the fun and the shooting is the short part.
• Payday 3 and Left 4 Dead 2. Not military at all, but built on the same principle that the group fails together. Left 4 Dead 2 is nearly twenty years old and still the cleanest example of it.

Army Men: What Happened to the Plastic Soldiers

The Army Men games were 3DO's biggest success, running through the late nineties and early two-thousands across PlayStation, PC and Nintendo hardware. The premise was simple and worked: green plastic soldiers fighting tan plastic soldiers across kitchen tables and back gardens, with Sarge's Heroes the entry most people remember.

The series died with its publisher. 3DO pushed out sequels at a punishing rate, quality dropped, and the company went bankrupt in 2003. Nothing has properly revived it since, which leaves a genuinely odd gap: the toy-soldier idea is still appealing and nobody with a budget has picked it up. The closest current options are small independent games working the same premise, none of which have the recognition the original had.

The Best Army Games Right Now

Sorted by how much realism you are volunteering for.

• Arma 3 and Arma Reforger. The deep end. Enormous maps, real logistics, and a community that runs scheduled operations with briefings. Not a game you drop into for twenty minutes.
• Squad and Hell Let Loose. Large-scale team shooters where communication decides matches more than aim does. The middle ground most people actually want when they say they want realism.
• Helldivers 2. Military in structure, science fiction in setting, and the best co-op shooter of recent years by a distance.
• Company of Heroes 3 and Men of War II. The strategy side, where you command rather than shoot. Often overlooked by people searching this term and frequently what they were after.
• Call of Duty and Battlefield. The arcade end, and there is no shame in it. Both ship a campaign worth one weekend and a multiplayer mode worth several years.

Free Army Games

This is one of the few genres where the free tier is genuinely competitive with the paid one, because large multiplayer shooters suit live-service funding and the audience is big enough to sustain it.

War Thunder and Enlisted, both from Gaijin, cover vehicles and infantry respectively with unusual depth for free games. World of Tanks remains the most-played armoured game in the world. Warzone is the free half of Call of Duty. Delta Force revived a dormant name as a free tactical shooter and is worth a look if Squad sounds appealing but too demanding.

The trade-off is consistent across all of them: progression is slow by design, and the things that speed it up cost money. None require spending to be enjoyable, but all are built so that spending feels sensible eventually.

Army Games Online

Almost everything above is online, so the useful distinction is between games where other players are scenery and games where they are the point. Squad and Hell Let Loose are the second kind: a fifty-person team with a working command structure beats a better-aiming team without one, reliably.

Browser army games are the other meaning of the phrase, and they are a much older and smaller tradition: tank duels, base defence, artillery puzzles, nothing that needs installing. Fine for ten minutes and unrelated to everything else here. If coordinating a group is the actual problem, the multiplayer roundup sorts games by how many people you can reliably assemble.

Army Games in VR

The tactical end of this genre has quietly moved into VR, and it is the one part with no flat-screen equivalent. Onward, Pavlov, Contractors and Ghosts of Tabor make you physically reload, physically lean around cover and physically shoulder a weapon, which changes a firefight more than any graphical upgrade could.

It is also the most demanding way to play, both physically and in setup. A standalone headset from Meta runs all four without a PC behind it, which is how most people end up in this corner of the genre. Try one before committing, because motion sickness decides the question for a meaningful minority of players.

Decide How Much Realism You Are Volunteering For

Every disappointment in this genre traces back to one mismatch. People buy Arma expecting Call of Duty and find a walking simulator with guns. People buy Call of Duty expecting Squad and find it shallow. Neither game did anything wrong.

So pick the tier first and the title second. If you have friends and no patience, Helldivers 2. If you have friends and plenty of patience, Squad. If you are alone, Company of Heroes 3. Most of these live on PC, where they discount steeply and often, so a Steam gift card and a little patience will cover two of them.