The Saboteur: Game Review

In a nutshell, the best way to describe this game is a cross between GTA 4 and Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines. The game takes place in Nazi occupied Paris during WW2. You play Sean Devlin, an Irish expatriate and a tough as nails, hard drinking, womanizing  mechanic and race car driver, who decides to get mixed up with the French Resistance due to his own personal hatred for the Nazis. You play in a completely unlocked and open world of Paris and its surrounding countryside. The map itself is very large and satisfying. Dotted all over the map are German infrastructure such as radio towers, ammo depots, fuel dumps, etc. The idea is you go around on your own steam, sabotaging these things covertly for money and to unlock 'perks' that increase your chars abilities. Of course there are missions to follow like in GTA and they generally involve going to a place and blowing something up/executing someone/saving someone.

In terms of gameplay, this game kind of rips off and meshes together many other games. Firstly, the map and mission system is very similar to GTA, plus the ability to carjack anyone.  Secondly, Sean can scale any building in Paris, identical to Assassins Creed. There is even 'lookout spots' identical to Assassins Creed. Thirdly, the combat in it reminds me a lot of The Godfather 2, especially with the 'grab' feature. It leads to fun melee combat because in bar brawls and stuff you can toss guys over you head and through tables and stuff or pick up a soldier and toss him off the top of a watch tower. Fourthly, the driving around and feel of the town is SOOO much like Mafia, that it kinda feels like some sorta spiritual sequel to Mafia. Even the character animations remind me so much of Mafia. Finally, you can steal enemies clothes and disguise yourself, much like Hitman or Commandos.

Obviously, with every mission you can go guns blazing, but the Nazis then call in backup and you have a huge fight on your hands. Its very fun to play the game like Commandos, where you are kinda scouting the scene out and then picking the Nazis off one by one in a significant order, then hitting your target with some TNT and running like hell, scaling a building or whatever to make your escape as the bomb goes off.


Another super cool feature is the games use of colour. In Nazi oppressive areas, the game is B&W white just dabs of colour like in Sin City. By blowing enough stuff up or doing missions, you restore the peoples 
will to fight and 'liberate' the area, reigniting the colour in the zone and from there on the people in that area will help you by fighting back when you are being chased or by helping you hide.



Now, the down side. The huge elephant in the room is that the game is poorly optimized. There are legions of forums with complaints from people who have top specs yet cant run the game smoothly even on 800x600. I was playing it on that resolution with all graphics low and it looked HORRIBLE and unplayable. Luckily, a BETA patch was released which helped the prob slightly, but updating to the latest drivers helped TONS. I can play on medium now with no lag. I have Nvidia but I hear ATI users are really suffering. Another bad thing is the missions could be repetitive. Blow one thing up and you seen it all before, other than with each mission the task just gets a little harder.

I'm loving the engrossing storyline and I love the main character. He's fecking badass, but maybe I'm biased! ;)

Score: 8.0/10 - funnest game I played in a while.