10 Best Naval Warfare Games

Join the Navy, see the world, they said. Instead, all you get in return is a Soviet supersonic missile or an American torpedo homing in on you, but hey, that's part of the fun.

Naval combat used to be the pinnacle of wargaming back in the late 1980s and 1990s, but those days are long gone. The original MicroProse went bust following the Falcon 4 debacle, Ubisoft swallowed (then shuttered) Red Storm Entertainment, and EA decided it wasn't going to go at it alone.

Despite all the adversity, however, naval warfare has refused to die. Smaller studios have kept the genre alive through high-end releases, and have shown that you don't need AAA to achieve excellent results. Here are the best naval simulation games available today.

10 Wolfpack

Friendship is Magic

Have you ever wanted to embark on a deadly mission with your best friends? Well, thanks to Wolfpack, you can. This early access submarine simulator lets you take control of a Type VII U-Boat, with the ability to go in co-op and split the load with your buddies.

It's a way to test your patience and the strength of your friendships in ways the average friendslop couldn't dream of, but most importantly, it is one of the most realistic simulations of German U-boat operations in the Atlantic out there.

9 Cold Waters

Red Storm Reborn

I wanted to recommend Tom Clancy's Red Storm Rising here, but there's no easy way to play the 1988 title today, not to mention the limitations of such an old piece of software. However, nothing is stopping you from playing its spiritual successor by Killerfish Games.

Cold Waters is one of the best depictions of the loneliness of modern submarine combat. You're in control of a nuclear submarine, the odds are always against you, and help is not coming. In other words, a target-rich environment for an aggressive sub captain.

8 Harpoon Classic '97

Back to Basics

The Harpoon series was well ahead of its time when it debuted in 1989, but it truly reached its peak with Harpoon 2. Enjoying that in modern hardware is a little tricky, but thankfully we got a remaster in the shape of Harpoon Classic '97.

Harpoon focuses on the tail end of the last century, with deadly weaponry, almost omnipresent sensors, and high political stakes. The gameplay is closer to a tabletop wargame than your standard strategy title, but that's what makes Harpoon Classic '97 work so well at a large scale.

7 Silent Hunter 4: Wolves of the Pacific

A Pacific Daytrip

The life expectancy of a submariner in WW2 was not particularly high, and if you were in an American tin can in the Pacific, your life was in the hands of the famously unreliable Mark 14 torpedo.

Once you get the mechanics down in the base game, Silent Hunter 4 has excellent depth (no pun intended) of mods, especially in terms of playable subs. If you like a little more action beyond smashing Japanese merchies, try Silent Hunter 3 instead for classic Atlantic action. The less said about Silent Hunter 5, the better.

6 War on the Sea

A Systematic Approach

If Silent Hunter 4 is a great showcase of Pacific submarine warfare, War on the Sea makes it work on a holistic level. You get to experience some of the most important naval battles of World War 2 while in control of the powerful task forces involved, and the resemblance is often uncanny.

The biggest strength of War on the Sea lies in how it simulates all aspects of WW2 naval warfare at a competent level, even if it doesn't particularly excel at any. The aircraft pull off believable attacks, submarines engage in cat-and-mouse games with destroyers, and carriers feel like the all-important behemoths they are.

5 Task Force Admiral

Fly Navy!

From the very start of hostilities over Pearl Harbor, the Pacific theatre was dominated by fierce carrier battles. Task Force Admiral is the latest attempt to give you the full experience of leading a flattop in those dangerous waters, and it excels at it.

Task Force Admiral has good flight dynamics, intuitive controls (following quality-of-life updates), and beautiful visuals. The only thing keeping it from reaching its potential right now is the relative lack of content, but updates are rolling out, and you have a battle generator to keep yourself entertained for the coming months.

4 UBOAT

Current Objective: Survive

UBOAT might as well have been called This Sub of Mine. Deep Waters broke the mold by building a competent submarine game while enclosing a survival simulator in it.

What UBOAT excels at is giving you a feel for every station needed to make a submarine function during a high-intensity combat patrol. The most impressive thing is how granular it all feels, with things like battery or oxygen management being just as important as aiming your torpedoes.

3 Rule the Waves 3

Spreadsheet Warfare

If you're struggling to decide what period you want to play in, then Rule the Waves 3 is the game for you. Spanning from 1890 to 1970, the Excel sheet gameplay hides surprisingly deep management and combat mechanics, with the bonus of running on any potato computer.

The Grand Admiral (that would be you) has the daunting task of building, maintaining, and leading a navy from the steam age to the dawn of missile combat. Rule the Waves 3 has no flashy visuals, but it does an amazing job holding you accountable for your own long-term strategic choices.

2 Command: Modern Operations

Advanced Map Warfare

The developers behind the Command series have managed the impossible: to turn Google Earth into an aggressively realistic wargame. Command: Modern Operations is the 2019 sequel to 2013's CMANO, itself a spiritual successor to Harpoon.

CMO does a much better job than its predecessor in terms of presentation, but that's not the meat of it. There is no game in the market with a wider range of full-spectrum warfare simulation at this level, and if you can survive not seeing little 3D models running about, you're in for a treat.

1 Sea Power: Naval Combat in the Missile Age

The Missile Knows Where It Is

Vampire, Vampire, Vampire! If that doesn't get your heart rate going, then nothing will. Sea Power is the latest release in fully-simulated, real-time, 3D naval warfare.

At the time of writing, Sea Power comprehensively covers the most powerful navies during the Cold War. Following the release of update 0.8.0, which made sonar and missile performance more realistic, but also added a persistent campaign with fleet-building mechanics, Sea Power has just about everything it needs to lead the line in naval simulation.