➤ The Review of the Peculiar Attentat 1942 🎮

Evaluating a stock like Attentat 1942 is by no means easy. The videogame born from the collaboration between Charles University and the Czech Academy of Sciences is a particular educational adventure that traces some events of the Second World War through the memories of eight survivors by now elderly. The characters we talk to are fictional and are played by actors, but what we are told is the result of careful historical research and is part of an educational project called Czechoslovakia 38-89. The result is an atypical video game, halfway between documentary and adventure, with crossroads dialogues and tests to be overcome in the best possible way to increase the chances of reaching the truth.

Heydrich's shadow

Made in Czech and subtitled in English, Attentat 1942 takes us back to the time of the assassination of SS general Reinhard Heydrich, killed by Czechoslovak partisans in June 1942. To tell the truth, the death of what was for many the most Germany's dangerous situation occurred due to a poorly treated infection, but this did not diminish the gravity of an attack that unleashed a harsh Nazi retaliation. And it is with the story of the reaction of the SS that our investigation of the past comes to life, following the stories of a grandmother who has been through a lot and a grandfather who may have played an important role in the story. From here there are other items, other memories, historical tales and details packed in a couple of rather intense hours, undoubtedly made with educational intent but much better packaged than what the genre has accustomed us to. Effective high-definition footage, raw details, original documents, objects and comic flashbacks effectively tell us about rebels, innocents and survivors, all interspersed with interactive sessions that from passive spectators suddenly transform us into an active part. Linked to the flashbacks, the minigames are designed to directly involve us in the events of the past, where retracing what happened to the characters we find ourselves deciphering a document, having to hide something in a few seconds, reconstructing an article and answering the Nazis' questions in the best possible way. possible. The mechanics are simple to say the least and we are talking about very short game sessions, but they increase the involvement, add details to the narrative and are fundamental to progress by allowing us to earn coins that allow us to repeat an interview in order to explore all the crossroads of the dialogues, discover the keys to the characters, and obtain as much information as possible. The number of coins made available by the minigames is limited, which must be kept in mind, but in case of failure we can replay them later to get all the available ones.

The power of history

Attentat 1942 is a historical tale that becomes a video game, avoids the clichés of sad educational applications and mixes languages, using simple but effective comics to tell us about the events of the past. The shots are excellent and the acting is almost always of a good level, allowing the historical power of the story to reach us and to involve us in a very intense journey into memory. Intense but unfortunately far from perfect. Despite the simplicity of the code we were banned from crashes and hiccups during the transitions from one scene to another. Furthermore, the quality of the drawings is fluctuating while the minigames are really simple, in some cases so much as to be almost negligible. The audio, on the other hand, is of excellent quality and enhances an emotional dimension that acts as a backbone for the title. Among massacred civilians, painful memories and entire villages razed to the ground, we find all the madness and oppression that made the massive and compact Nazi occupation a symbol of abuse. An absolutist abuse, capable of transforming people who until recently lived in a society considered civilized into monsters or victims. The flashbacks, the documents and the little encyclopedia that is gradually filling up do not forget all this, putting us in front of the weaknesses, cowardice and suffering of survivors who, faced with the wrong question, often slam the door in our face, unable to face a maze of memories made up of memories, secrets and dramatic events that are not always talked about with pleasure. All supporting elements of a narrative that never exceeds in crudeness, and this does not surprise us given the educational intent, but it does not make too many discounts, challenging a frankness that is absolutely necessary to reliably tell certain events and give the right weight. to the twists. And it is thanks to this that Attentat 1942 is decidedly superior to the vast majority of educational games, making us actually want to investigate what has happened, to expose the cowardice of human beings and even to get excited when when the lips of a witness curl to the memory of a painful past. Too bad for the simplicity of the dialogue options, probably necessary to guarantee full accessibility to everyone, and too bad for the really short duration, not unlike that of a documentary unless you want to examine each document in detail and explore every possibility of dialogue, but on the other hand we are talking about a product of an explicitly modest nature, even in terms of price.

Comment

Digital Delivery Steam Price 10,99 € Resources4Gaming.com

7.5

Readers (1)

5.9

Your vote

Award-winning as an educational game, Attentat 1942 also stands out as a pure narrative experience, using high-quality footage and comic flashbacks to engage us in a delicate and exciting investigation. Too bad for the too much simplicity of the mechanics and for the technical problems, difficult to forgive in the face of such a simple code, but once captured it is difficult to break away. Unfortunately, the game itself takes care of closing things too soon.