The Saboteur
Available for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PC
Game Developer: Pandemic Studios
Game Publisher: Electronic Arts
Release Date: December 8, 2009
Official website: EA.com
Review Summary:
The Saboteur is the swan song for Pandemic Studios. With a great setting and open-world gameplay, this game succeeds in being a solid, diverse game. Unfortunately, the mechanics behind the game are lacking. The climbing, driving and shooting are not up to the quality standards set by other AAA open-world games. I loved the variety of the missions, the cutscenes and the setting, but after ten hours playing the main story, I do not want to go back for more.
Rating: 3.5 out of 5
The Saboteur review
World War II is a setting played out in many games and mostly used in the first-person shooter genre. It is rare to see an open-world game use a World War II setting. This is the time period The Saboteur has been set and you control a race car driving, foul mouthed Irishman named Sean Devlin. He comes to Paris to find and take revenge on a Nazi officer, and race car rival, named Kurt Dierker. Throughout his adventure, Devlin meets people in the French resistance and they help him find weapons, transportation and missions to hurt the Nazi cause. Devlin must find Dierker, seek his revenge and help the French resistance succeed in repelling the Nazi occupation.
In the occupied spaces of Paris, the color is removed from everything around you, except for certain colors, like yellow for lights, blue for the French resistance and red, which is the main Nazi color. As you “inspire” the locals and complete certain critical missions, the color is returned to the world in that area. I thought that this small mechanic was hugely successful and made me feel the true ominous nature of the Nazis and their occupation. It also showed me the areas to stay away from when running away from the pursing Nazis. Unfortunately, these pursuits show some huge weaknesses in the controls and driving. I found myself running from the enemies way too much, which pulled me out of the experience. Even while running away, the red circle on the map I had to get out of felt very game-like. This was because the second I got out of this field, the pursuers would just stop in their tracks and turn around. This feeling came out in more than just the driving. It was the mission structure that hurt from the same aspects of gaminess.
From the first mission to the last, the game throws oodles of soldiers at you that are not very smart. I found myself walking right up behind some of them and perform stealth moves on them way to easily. The way that Pandemic Studios tries to combat this is through the astounding accuracy of these soldiers. An example is when trying to destroy a zeppelin, there would be soldiers far away that could hit Devlin with insane accuracy. In the later levels, a soldier with a machine gun would be hitting me from high above and killed me countless times. Death will come often for you, but you can take a huge amount of damage, which can help in tough battles. If you do get killed, there is a generous checkpoint system that allows you to try multiple strategies to get past certain missions. Overall, the missions are fun, but can seem a bit long in certain spots, especially when the story is told while driving clear across the map.
Outside of the main missions, there are a slew of sites that you need to “eliminate.” In each region there are towers, fuel stations, loudspeakers and tanks that have to be destroyed, with either dynamite or rocket launchers. These mission types are a ton of fun because of their variety. You could be destroying a tower, running over a loudspeaker stand or blowing up an entire bridge. It is within these little side missions that the game truly shines. The only part of them that I dislike are the climbing parts. After playing other games that have truly seamless climbing, the animations and controls in The Saboteur just seem unplayable. I found myself getting frustrated when having to climb a big building, especially during the main story missions.
Pandemic Studios’ final game, The Saboteur, is a solid game, but has numerous technical glitches. It just doesn’t have the polish that we expect from AAA open-world games. The story is a bit convoluted, but works well in such an awesome setting. The controls do not help. The driving, climbing and shooting just are not very fun. The variety in the missions, both story and side-missions, were great, but the mechanics behind them were lacking. I would recommend waiting until the price drops on this one before picking it up.
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Thanks to Electronic Arts for making this review possible.
The Saboteur trailer:
