Partisans may look drier than Death Valley towels, and their game may be more brown than your average furniture warehouse. But don't judge the guerrilla warriors by their state of dress; behind Partisans' sloppy overcoats and muddy trousers hides a surprisingly competent real-time tactical game with plenty of radical ideas and heart.

The game is about controlling a group of Russian resistance fighters dedicated to becoming Hitler's aide-de-camp during Operation Barbarossa (you know, the German word for "Massive Bastard"), during which Hitler's forces sweep across the Soviet Union. From a base deep in the forest, your ragtag group embarks on a series of increasingly daring raids against Wehrmacht-occupied land and infrastructure.

The obvious reference here is "Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines"; "Partisans" is set in World War II and involves dangerous missions against overwhelmingly superior armies (not to mention taking a seven-light beating from fascist thugs! (Needless to say). But whereas "Commandos" was essentially a game disguised as a puzzle, a strictly clockwork machine in which one wrong move would crush you to death in the gears, "Partisans" is more free and dynamic, allowing the player to experiment, to make mistakes, to make tea

The core parts of the game are.

At its core, the game is similar to other real-time tactics games. In each mission, the player selects a number of partisans and escapes safely to his or her camp after completing objectives on a large, free-to-explore map. These maps are crawling with guards ranging from Polizei, Russian citizen militiamen working for the Germans, to crack SS soldiers who machine-gun your squad like annoying takeout fliers.

The guards' cone of vision and the intricate layout of their posts and patrols make your squad's every move fraught with danger. The crux of the game, therefore, lies in carefully picking apart these patrols in order to get closer to the goal by evading, tricking, or ambushing them.

The partisans initially have almost nothing on their person but a single knife and a handful of rocks that can be used to distract the guards. Soon, however, they will be able to procure a variety of equipment and abilities that will help them gain the upper hand, from guns and grenades to mines and trip wires that, with careful placement, can take out an entire squad. My favorite partisan "gadget" is a simple bottle of water. Placing the bottle on the ground attracts the attention of guards who are thirsty and want to chug schnapps, and helps draw the guards out of their patrol pattern.

Along with their equipment, partisans have unique skills and abilities. Partisan character builds are not as immediately distinctive as, for example, Desperado III, but gradually each partisan's special skills become apparent. Commander Zorin, for example, is the game's close combat expert, able to quietly finish off enemies with a well-aimed knife throw. Fourteen-year-old Sanek, on the other hand, can "disguise" himself (i.e., pull down his hat and scuttling about so as to never look suspicious) and distract the guards by talking to them. After that, snipers, explosives experts, and even a ridiculous banzai charge called a "rib knife" are unlocked for the special ability thief.

In general, Partisans' system is more forgiving than Commandos or the more recent Desperados III, but also more subtle. A good example of this is stealth. The guards' ability to spot you is based on proximity, so if you inadvertently stumble on the edge of their cone of vision, you usually have time to correct the problem. However, the guards can also hear you. If you hide in the bushes, you are practically invisible, but if you move around when the guards are nearby, the rustling of leaves will alert them.

There are many little tricks like this in the game. It is hard to kill them really "quietly." Unless your character is an expert in melee combat, attacking a guard with a knife will result in a melee that takes time to resolve and generates noise. Even Zorin's knife throw, the most efficient way to quietly kill an enemy, generates sound waves as his body hits the ground. This means that one must think carefully about how to deal with each guard, and the slightest mistake can easily turn into a full-blown battle.

Importantly, however, being discovered does not necessarily mean mission failure. Combat is as much a part of the game as stealth. While it is preferable to soften up a lookout patrol or encampment with stealth and then engage them head-on, most missions can be played fairly aggressively on easy or normal. Move the partisans to cover, use abilities like suppressive fire to keep the Germans at bay, and use grenades to flush them out so the riflemen can finish them off. This is not to say that partisans are easy. Even on the easiest difficulty, my quick-load key was used a lot. But I didn't reach for them the moment they were discovered. It's always worth seeing how things play out, how a seemingly bad situation can be turned to your advantage.

I like this fuzzy edge to partisan tactical play, but it has its drawbacks. It is difficult to judge the potential effectiveness of more aggressive tactics. It's hard to determine if the gunfire is simply alerting the surrounding troops or if half of the Wehrmacht is closing in on your position. This is not the only way partisans struggle with communication. For some objectives, you may need to find certain objects first, such as keys or TNT. However, no hints are provided as to where these objects are located, so they have to painstakingly search the map. Also, the doors in this game seem to be in a quantum state, opening and closing at the same time you click on them. Because of this, accessing the building is like a Laurel and Hardy sketch, with your partisan swinging from the door handle like a chimpanzee while the guard stands unaware a few feet away.

There are a few other problems. After each mission, the partisans return to their camp in the forest, where a mini-game of resource management awaits them. Food and resources must be found to maintain the camp, and at the same time the partisans must be sent on autonomous side missions to earn various rewards. This aspect of partisan life gives the film a feel of the underrated Edward Zwick film Defiance. The fact that weapons and equipment carry over from mission to mission is also a neat touch that encourages you to weigh your options and value each bullet. Roughly speaking, however, the camp segmentation is not deeply involved enough to be truly engaging, and after a while you'll want to get on to the next mission. [Partisans get more fun the more they play. You can slowly build up your forces and carefully introduce new characters and equipment. It starts with raiding convoys and rescuing civilians from Nazi death squads, and progresses to blowing up bridges and assassinating the local comptroller. I especially like the earnestness of the whole experience, which is a testament to the film's success. Partisan" won't win any screenwriting awards, and it's a little odd that the commander sounds like Billy Butcher from "The Boys," but the rest of the characters speak like humans, not mouth-breathers programmed by Joss Whedon, and the game clearly pays respect to its subject matter The game clearly pays respect to its subject matter (no respect at all to the Nazi scum). It may look a little shabby, but with a redoubtable spirit and a little ingenuity, Partisans can get the job done.