The gaming world is incredibly competitive and game developers are always looking for new angles. With technology evolving quickly, the technical side of basing games around real-world events is becoming more straightforward. The result of this has been evident in the production of many visually stunning immersive games based around the real world. Here are five of the best.
FIFA
One of the most successful video game franchises of all time is based on perhaps the world’s favorite sport. Soccer is played on every continent and the world soccer governing body, FIFA, has put its name to a long-running series of video games across multiple formats.
FIFA is most closely associated with the World Cup, of course, which is one of the peak sports events in the world, watched by millions in every nation. The real World Cup is a huge event for sports fans, broadcasters, and sports betting companies, rivaled only by the Olympics for betting interest. And while the game itself does not replicate the bustle of the sports betting action associated with the major soccer events, it does accurately reproduce almost every other.
The success of FIFA has also led to the rise of a wide range of games based on accurate depictions of real-world sports contests, ranging from the NBA and MLB to tennis and cricket. A host of management games, such as Football Manager, give players the opportunity to take a different approach to sport and handle the responsibility of leading a club or a team.
Assassin’s Creed
Okay, we may be stretching the premise here, but only to an extent. The incredibly popular Assassin’s Creed franchise has spanned pretty much every era of human history, and much of the appeal of the franchise is how much effort goes into making realistic settings for the less-historically-accurate action involving assassins, Templars, and time travel.
From the busy streets of Renaissance Florence and Rome to the rivers of Anglo-Saxon England and the grandeur of 18th-century Paris or 19th-century London, Assassin’s Creed has regularly provided gamers with a chance to explore real historical locations and meet real historical figures, ranging from Karl Marx to George Washington to Herodotus. If you love a hefty slice of history with your gaming, this is definitely the franchise for you.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance
This open-world game with a steep learning curve enables players to explore a realistic version of the medieval kingdom of Bohemia. While players are free to make their own history, the backdrop to many of the events in the game is drawn from real-life history, including a wartime raid on Bohemian villages that occurred in the year 1403.
Players also have the chance to meet real historical figures, including Racek Kobyla of Dvorce, Wenceslaus IV, and Sigismund of Luxemburg. And the attention to historical detail extends to the realistic reproduction of clothing, weapons, environments, and the economy of the era. The visuals are stunning and the way that the game develops mimics, to an extent, the learning curve required to master skills such as sword fighting, horse riding, and archery.
This War of Mine
Many games have been based around war, but few have successfully focused on the human cost of conflict. This War of Mine is one of the most memorable games to do so. The game focuses on civilians who are fighting for survival in a besieged city and is based on the horrific siege of Sarajevo by Serbian forces that took place in 1992. It all too accurately recreates the horrors of ordinary people struggling against death, hunger, and disease, and it manages to produce a compelling gameplay experience.
LA Noire
Produced by RockStar Games, the same developer that created the successful Grand Theft Auto franchise, LA Noire is set in 1940s Los Angeles and draws on the same material that has provided the backdrop for many famous crime thrillers based on that era, most notably LA Confidential, a James Ellroy novel that became a successful Hollywood blockbuster.
Not only does the game accurately reproduce the city of that era, in all its squalor and magnificence, but it also provides a gritty and surprisingly accurate reproduction of the business of policework at a time when corruption, racism, and brutality were all too common.
The main character, Cole Phelps, is also drawn from the real world. A World War II veteran who joins the LAPD after leaving the army, he starts the game as a relatively innocent young detective, but throughout, he has to make moral and ethical decisions that will shape his story.
