The Saboteur review
It seems like the closed studio Pandemic is trying to go out with a bang, and that bang is The Saboteur, a WW2 action game, the last game from a once successful studio. It stars Sean Devlin, a tough-ass Irish race car driver who get stuck behind enemy lines in Nazi-occupied France, and he’s not taking any BS from Nazis, nos sir, he starts workign for the resistance, goes on mission after mission, raking up a ton of Nazi heads along the way.
This is not just another WW2 shooter, instead, it’s highly unrealistic and very fast paced. You play as Sean in a third person view, and your missions will vary from infiltrating Nazi bases, to blowing up railroads, doing sabotage and generally anything that pisses of your enemies. It’s set in Paris, and it’s pretty much open ended, meaning you can explore the city on foot, and in car, when you get one of those. Also, the city is riddled with Germans, and they’re constantly watching you and won’t hesitate opening fire if you even look suspicious. Which your Irish ass sure does.
The gameplay is fast pace and probably the opposite of WW2 shooters like Call of Duty, meaning that it’s anything but realistic, but still a heck of a lot of fun. You have the usual WW2 arsenal of weapons at your disposal, and the enemies are as dumb as you might expect. Which leads to the inevitable outcome any game like this faces: after a while, it gets boring. It also means that it’s not that challenging either, as you can literally get shot dozens of times, pause, regenerate your health, and move on. Enemies will unload on you at point-blank range, but you’ll still be standing. This is fun in the beginning, but eventually, you’ll be wondering; “what’s the point?”. There is no point to it really, it’s just a lot of fun in the beginning, and if you’re into it, it’ll be fun all the way. You get your missions by tracking down members of the resistance in the town, who’ll advise you on where to go and what to do. There’s a great “GTA” feeling about the whole thing, even though it’s a lot small scale here. Or rather, say, Assassin’s Creed set in WW2.
Visually, the game is rather bland, not ugly by any means, but it features something quite new: the Nazi controlled parts of Paris, is in black and white, a sort of contrasty and deeply saturated black and white, which gives it a great noir look. And when you free a part of the town, the black and white is replaced by color, the pretty Paris-colors that are seen elsewhere. It’s a great feature that uses the visuals in a good way, despite not having graphics like Gears of War or anything close to it.
In all, the game is a lot of fun, but suffers from lack of replayability and not enough challenge for the advanced players. Also, the game feels it could have used a bit more polish, and it’s unlikely that there’ll be a patch fixing some of the bugs and glitches, now that the developer is shut down.
The Good:
Fun gameplay
New take on WW2 shooters
The Bad:
Not challenging enough
Gameplay gets repetitive
Bugs and glitches
Overall score: 7/10
Popularity: 1% [?]
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