Russell Shanks chooses the best SOE-related games from the past 25 years
Among the pantheon of Second World War videogames, special operations and covert action form a prominent subgenre. My research has identified over 35 videogames where the SOE has featured in game levels, characters and narratives, including among some of the biggest franchises and from the beginnings of the genre. For over 25 years, since Medal of Honor (DreamWorks Interactive, 1999), players have been able to play as SOE operatives in exciting, emotional, and entertaining ways.
To qualify as an ‘SOE game’, digital wargames either need to make direct reference to the organisation in the game or to be clearly based on an episode of SOE history. For instance, a game may not mention the SOE directly but may still be based on elements of SOE history. Games have adapted famous missions and made use of methodologies of covert action, such as the use of SOE-developed weapons, including the Welrod silent pistol.
Here are my Top 5 SOE Videogames:
5. Battlefield V ‘Nordlys’ (EA, 2018)
Battlefield V’s war story ‘Nordlys’ is an adaptation of SOE’s Operation GUNNERSIDE – a raid by ‘N (Norway) Section’ on the Norsk Hydro Plant on 27/28th February 1943. The objective of the raid was to destroy stocks of Deuterium Oxide (D2O, aka: heavy water) at the plant, preventing its use by the Nazis for their nuclear programme. By destroying the heavy water, SOE prevented the Nazis from developing an atomic bomb.
In ‘Nordlys’, the objective to disrupt and destroy German activity at the plant forms the framing narrative behind a story of contestation between duty to a cause and duty to family.
What makes Nordlys unique among videogames about the Second World War is the focus on a mother-daughter relationship that progresses the story. The playable character is Solvieg Fia Bjornstad, a young resistance fighter who has a penchant for terrorising German patrols in the snowy forests around the plant. Her mother, Astrid, is an engineer at the facility and has been assisting the Allies in attempts to raid the plant. Driving the plot is the contestation between Solveig’s drive to rescue her mother and Astrid’s determination that ‘not one drop’ of heavy water should make it back to Germany.
The level encourages the use of stealthy tactics, with plenty of cover and silent weapons on offer to assist players. Additionally, the level is unique in the game to include skiing mechanics, enabling Solvieg to make a quick progress across some large maps.
4. Attentat 1942 (Charles Games, 2017)
Attentat 1942 is set in the aftermath of SOE’s most significant action in Czechoslovakia – Operation ANTHROPOID: the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich. Although SOE do not appear in the game, it highlights the debates surrounding targeted assassination by the organisation and the effects that such forms of covert action have on civilian populations.
As a ‘point and click’ game, players navigate through the game by following dialogue, clicking on objects, and completing mini-games to discover the story of what happened to their grandparents in the aftermath of the assassination. The game switches between recorded interviews from the present (performed by actors but based on real testimony) and black & white animated sketches representing the past.
Developed by Charles University, Prague, the game is highly effective as an educational tool in portraying the moral dilemmas faced by those living under Nazi occupation. Thematically, the player has to make sense of the conflicting, contradictory and at times harrowing stories coming from witnesses – including experiences under Gestapo interrogation and of the Holocaust.
3. Sniper Elite: Resistance (Rebellion, 2025)
Sniper Elite: Resistance is the most recent edition to Rebellion’s Sniper Elite franchise. Ostensibly a sniping game, the plot is heavily centred on the covert action of SOE (and the American OSS in some titles). Its levels are large open worlds, with a variety of different objectives to complete, from intelligence gathering, to sabotage, assassination and supporting air raids. These often resemble real tasks performed by members of SOE, but are intertwined with ludic challenges involving imaginative and ironic ways to kill prominent Nazi figures – such as blowing up a Nazi Scientist with his own inventions.
Sniper Elite is perhaps the best game to feature the variety of different weapons and adaptations to firearms developed by SOE’s scientific section. The variety of equipment available enables the player to master different loadouts, including developing those which are historically grounded from SOE sources. At times the game presents an unreliable guide to the SOE’s material culture, featuring weapons that were developed but never saw action – such as the Welgun – but it also includes some of SOE’s weird and wonderful devices – such as the Rat Bomb – that do not appear in other wargames.
2. Medal of Honor: Rising Sun (EA, 2003)
Medal of Honor: Rising Sun is one of the first digital wargames to feature a character from the SOE, with the appearance of Major Bromley from the mission ‘Singapore Sling’. After Bromley has been rescued from Japanese forces, he aids the player throughout several levels in the second half of the game. Every time Bromley appears, action-packed sequences follow – from dropping through a glass ceiling to gun-down delegates of a top-secret Axis meeting (with akimbo silenced Sten guns), to jumping into a helicopter as a Burmese temple explodes, Bromley is an example of videogames representing ‘covert action’ with a capital ‘A’.
The game also features an early appearance of one of the weird and wonderful weapons associated with SOE – the Welrod silent pistol. The inclusion of the Welrod enables players to get a better appreciation for the use of stealthy approaches and clandestine warfare than earlier productions had achieved. While the weapon is laborious as a single-shot adaptation, it is both quieter than other weapons in the game and has a one-shot-kill capability: meaning if used in conjunction with other stealth tactics, the enemy NPCs won’t know what hit them.
1.The Saboteur (Pandemic Studios, 2009)
The Saboteur is one of the best SOE games to play due to the unique way it approaches the secret war. Unlike other games, which focus on epic melodrama in their war stories, or are heavy with the real experiences of those who lived through life under occupation, The Saboteur presents the work of SOE through a neo-noir lens of pastiche, parody, and is full of joie de vivre. Yet its narrative also effectively raises questions about morality, nationality, collaboration and resistance that provide a deeper insight into the life and legacy of SOE than in bigger and more popular titles.
The game plays like a blend of Assassin’s Creed, Grand Theft Auto and Hitman and is set in war-time Paris. Its massive open world allows the player to travel around parts of France in a variety of vehicles (from clunky beat-up junkers to racing cars and German military vehicles) accompanied by the tunes of sultry jazz numbers. The inclusion of civilians – whose interactions with the player-character add further dimensions to the open world – provides another significant moral context that sets this game apart.
The volume of free-play targets to keep the player occupied away from the main story and side missions provides plenty of entertainment. It’s exciting, dramatic and ridiculous at times yet uses all these elements effectively to encourage the player to think about the morals and ethics of covert action.
Coming soon: Top 5 Worst SOE Videogames