SMASH THE FASH
PARTISANS: 1941 is a tactics game with heart as well as smarts.
While Partisans: 1941 may look drier than a towel in Death Valley, a game with more brown in it than your average furniture warehouse, one should never judge a guerrilla fighter by the condition of their outfit. Behind Partisans’ mud-stained trousers lies a capable real-time tactics game with some radical ideas and heart in abundance.
The game involves controlling a group of Russian resistance fighters dedicated to being a thorn in Hitler’s side while his armies sweep across the Soviet Union during Operation Barbarossa. From your base situated deep in the forest, your ragtag band embarks on a series of increasingly daring raids against the Wehrmacht.
The core is similar to most other real-time tactics games. Each mission sees you pick several of your partisans to complete an objective in a large, openly explorable map, before safely exfiltrating back to your camp. These maps are swarming with guards that range from Polizei – a militia of Russian citizens working for the Germans – to crack SS soldiers whose machine-guns can rip up your squad like an unsolicited takeaway leaflet. Their sweeping vision cones and the complex arrangement of their posts and patrols makes every step your squad takes fraught with danger. Hence, the meat of the game involves evading, tricking, and ambushing these patrols, picking them off as you creep to your goal.
BOTTLE IT
Your partisans start off with next to nothing, a single knife and a handful of rocks you can use to distract guards. Soon, though, you’ll have scavenged a wide range of equipment and abilities that’ll help you get the upper hand, from guns and grenades to mines and trip-wires. My favourite partisan ‘gadget’ is a simple bottle filled with water. When placed on the ground, bottles attract the attention of thirsty guards hoping for a free
swig of schnapps, making them useful for disrupting patrol patterns.
Generally, Partisans’ systems are more forgiving than its key touchstone Commandos, but it’s also more nuanced. A good example of this is stealth. A guard’s ability to detect you is based on proximity, so if you accidentally stumble across the edge of their vision cone, you’ve usually got time to rectify the problem. But guards can hear you as well as see you. Hiding inside a bush will you make you practically invisible, but if you move around too much when a guard is nearby, they’ll be alerted by the rustling foliage.
Another crucial difference between Partisans and Commandos is that being detected doesn’t necessarily mean mission failure. Combat is as much a part of the game as stealth. It’s advisable to soften up
The more I played of Partisans, the more I enjoyed it.