COMBATSIM.COM provides daily news, articles, and community resources for the specific genre of personal computer games called military combat simulations, or simply combat sims for short. The site first appeared online in January of 1997.

We cover all facets of air, land, and naval combat simulation and strategy games. Our content comprises interviews, game previews, game and book reviews, strategy and how-to guides, industry editorials and commentaries, military history articles, military biographies, defense and aerospace news, and even military humor and fiction.

About the Games:

Military combat simulations and strategy games recreate the excitement, both thrilling and often terrifying, experienced by soldiers, sailors, pilots, and commanders in every type of military combat since the beginning of recorded history.

Military combat games can be played from a first-person perspective where you experience the 3D game world directly through the eyes of the soldier, sailor, or pilot character you are playing, or from a third-person perspective where you watch the game play out from high above the game world like an all-seeing god. There’s even a category of games that combine both first-person and third-person perspectives.

Military combat games for the personal computer that are 3D first-person experiences are usually called combat simulations, while those that are played via the third-person perspective, with either real-time or turn-based gameplay, are usually called military strategy games. Purists, however, will argue, and rightly so, that a military game played with a hex board, dice, and character pieces, has as much right to the term simulation as do the 3D versions on the personal computer. For our purposes, however, we stick to the usual definitions described above.

About Simulation Hardware:

Combat simulation computer games can be very hardware intensive, both in terms of CPU and graphic card requirements, as well as the need for sophisticated game controllers. The hardc o r e combat simmers think nothing about dropping hundreds of dollars on the latest video card or the newest HOTAS. You do not, however, need to have the most advanced computer, and certainly not the most bleeding-edge controllers, to enjoy the most sophisticated simulations. In fact, part of the fun of this pastime for many simmers is getting the most out of the games while staying inside a reasonable budget; which would explain why so many of our past hardware buyer’s guides have been geared toward that very objective.

The Community:

When it comes to online communities, you will not find a nicer, more helpful group of individuals anywhere. Visit our forum to find answers to your game and hardware questions, or just pull up a chair and share a few laughs with the regulars.

To navigate around the site, use the horizontal menu along the top of the site, or click the game- and hardware-specific links found in the column to the right of this page, or visit our archive page to use our various content indexes.