History VideoGame / IronStorm

* AlternateHistory: One of its selling points, no less. It was arguably one of the first mainstream shooter games where alternate history was a deliberate part of the back story and plot. And it even came before a bevvy of UsefulNotes/WorldWarII-themed alternate history games came about, someone must have thought World War II wasn't original enough even back then...

* FlameSpewerObstacle: One of the obstacles in the final level at the Reichstag is a gas flame spouting from a pipe. It's an instant kill if James steps in it, there's a whole detour to do (including a roof where he's shot at by a gunship) to stop the gas flow.

* {{Cool Gun}}s: Cool? Yes. Shiny? [[UsedFuture Never.]]

* SniperRifle: The [[ShoutOut Dragunov Sniperskaya]] (seen on the page picture) is a really useful CoolGun. You receive one already at the start of the first level, but it avoids being a DiscOneNuke thanks to CripplingOverspecialization. It's really worthless for anything other than precision sniping at greater distances.

* ArtificialBrilliance: Though the game's budget wasn't big (it's nearly an indie game), the AI of the enemy soldiers is surprisingly high and cunning. You usually can't lure them to fall for an old trick learned in other {{FPS}} games. If nothing else, the AI makes the game really challenging. There are occasional moments of ArtificialStupidity, but thankfully, they're rare.

* DownerEnding: [[spoiler:James Anderson (the protagonist) gets killed in the escape aircraft [[YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness after accomplishing his mission]] because HeKnowsTooMuch and the ForeverWar shows no sign of stopping.]]

* EliteMooks: The Russo-Mongolians have their Siberian troopers, armored GasMaskMooks with enhanced health and equipped with a full-auto rifle that fires explosive, one-shot-kill rounds.

** The frontline cuts Germany in two, much like the UsefulNotes/IronCurtain separated UsefulNotes/WestGermany and UsefulNotes/EastGermany. The major differences: this isn't a "cold" war of course, and communism is nowhere to be seen.

%%* InfiniteFlashlight

* HyperspaceArsenal: An effectively done aversion of this trope (with a few minor hiccups though). You can only carry one weapon from each class at a time, and each of them not currently wielded (except grenades) can be seen on Anderson's back and legs in third-person view. This can get pretty tricky, especially with slot 4, which houses most of your heavier firearms (marksman rifles, assault rifles, portable machine guns and grenade launchers). This forces you to choose your load out carefully according to your current situation, since you can't carry both a marksman rifle and an assault rifle at the same time, etc. Sadly, it also gets a little ridiculous occasionally: ''You can't carry a simple silenced pistol and an SMG at the same time'' ([[LampshadeHanging as the tutorial is eager to inform you]]).

* MonumentalDamage: The one recognizable real life monument in the game is the Reichstag building in UsefulNotes/{{Berlin}}, in the final level (and on the box art of the original game). It's been converted into a personal residence of the Baron Ugenberg as well as a major HQ for the Russo-Mongol Empire, and though Berlin is apparently [[https://i.redd.it/f6gt932mfeo61.jpg not on the frontlines]], there's some heavy bombing damage inside (conveniently blocking some ways) and the outside is filled with ditches and barbed wire and tanks patrol around it.

* DownerEnding: [[spoiler:Everything James Anderson (the protagonist) went through was AllForNothing, he gets killed in the escape aircraft and the ForeverWar shows no sign of stopping.]]

In the game's {{backstory}}, UsefulNotes/WorldWarI never ended in 1918 and dragged on well into the 1960s. The reason behind this was a charismatic White Russian general, a certain [[BigBad Baron Ugenberg]]. He managed to unite lots of former Tsarist soldiers and warriors from Siberian and Mongolian tribes under his banner during the [[UsefulNotes/RedOctober Russian Civil War]]. With the help of their constantly growing numbers, he succeeded in crushing the Bolshevik Revolution and reuniting former UsefulNotes/TsaristRussia, [[LargeHam grandiosely renaming it]] "the Russo-Mongolian Empire." But his conquest didn't end there, as he decided to build [[TheEmpire a mighty pan-Eurasian empire]], having delusions of being a modern day successor of Genghis Khan. He succeeded in claiming the entire eastern half of Europe. The front lines between his newly founded empire and the remaining western democracies came to a halt in the late 1920s, [[DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything cutting Germany in half]]. The game starts in early 1964, when the [[TheFederation United States of Western Europe]] manage to discover information about a secret DoomsdayDevice being built by the baron's scientists. Enter you, lieutenant James Anderson, an aging ShellShockedVeteran, sent on a suicide mission behind enemy lines in order to locate and neutralize the secret weapon project.

** The final level taking place at the Reichstag in UsefulNotes/{{Berlin}}, which has been bombed in several places and is surrounded by barbed wire, trenches and tanks. It has a [[UsefulNotes/WorldWarII April-May 1945 Battle of Berlin]] vibe to it, except this time it's the Soviet Union stand-in (the Russo-Mongolian Empire) that controls it and is attacked instead of the reverse in RealLife.

** The final level taking place at the Reichstag in UsefulNotes/{{Berlin}}, which has been bombed in several places and is surrounded by barbed wire, trenches and tanks. It has a April-May 1945 Battle of Berlin vibe to it, except this time it's the Soviet Union stand-in (the Russo-Mongolian Empire) that controls it and is attacked instead of the reverse in RealLife.
* AlternateHistory: One of its selling points, no less. It was arguably one of the first mainstream shooter games where alternate history was a deliberate part of the back story and plot. And it even came before a bevvy of World War II-themed alternate history games came about, someone must have thought World War II wasn't original enough even back then...

''Iron Storm'' is a 2002 FirstPersonShooter / ThirdPersonShooter game, created by French developer 4x Studios (their only game, they closed after its release and some developers joined Kylotonn Entertainment) and published by the defunct Wanadoo in France and Dreamcatcher Interactive elsewhere. The game is a fairly typical [[MilitaryAndWarfareVideoGames war]] FPS, but offers lots of good level design and a huge amount of intelligent opponents. What sets it apart from most games of the genre, is its very unique AlternateHistory setting and engaging atmosphere.