The Saboteur is a solid mix of open world game play, with the near perfect balance of mission driven story to propel the game along. You could think of it as Grand Theft Auto meets Assasin’s Creed, set in Nazi occupied 1940’s France. It certainly has the over the top fun and stereotypical characters of GTA, but with AC styled building climbing and far more interiors than RockStar ever created. It also has a blatantly publicised nudity enabling DLC (which comes free with the game) that would get any GTA game in hot water, but surprisingly, The Saboteur seems to get away with it – maybe because it’s based in France and not the good old wholesome US of A?
Back to the game, in The Saboteur you play a foul-mouthed, but highly versatile Irish mechanic cum race driver, Sean Devlin. To begin with you’re a happy go lucky, hard drinking, womanising guy who really only looks out for himself. But when the terrible Nazis kill your best friend right before invading France, you decide to escape to Paris and join the resistance, all in an effort to avenge his death.
And so the game begins. The story arc has you driving all over France, meeting people and proving your worth. At times this can feel a little tedious like GTA San Andreas, but for the most part flows nicely. Of course on the way to or from any mission, you’re free to cause a little mischief yourself, by stealth killing Nazis (theirs an achievement waiting if you kill 50) or blowing stuff up. Some of this mischief will aid you later in the game – blow up all the sniper towers and there will be no more Nazi snipers taking pot shots at you – but mostly its about having fun. Figuring out what buildings you need to scale to reach certain targets, then blowing them up and evading the now alerted Nazis is half the fun of the game.
The Saboteur has a little more depth than just missions and anti Nazi vandalism, there’s also the black market. You can buy guns, cars, explosives and such from the black market. But first you have to prove yourself (of course!), and then as various missions’ progress you’ll unlock more black market locations. Doing missions for the black market boss will net you income, but this can also be gained through – you guessed it – blowing Nazi stuff up, or just kicking open crates found (usually) around Nazi installations.
As fun filled a game as The Saboteur is, it does have a few drawbacks. Character control does get a bit iffy at points, especially if you’re trying a new route across the rooftops, but this is to be expected in a game as far-ranging as this. The stealth element is hampered by your character being all too noticeable when he dons a German uniform, rendering the act almost obsolete.
One absolutely brilliant decision by Pandemic however is the visual style. The first few part of the story are rendered in glorious colour – but then when the Nazis invade, everything becomes a dark monotone, with the red of the Nazi flags, and bright yellow of lights being the only colour. By progressing through the story and completing missions, the colour comes back, and the civilians eventually will start to help you, as best they can. This may sound like a gimmick, but it also works well as a game mechanic. It’s a lot easier to lose the pursuing Germans in the coloured parts of France, than in the German controlled black and white parts. It’s also a lot easier to see what your doing – making everything you do, much harder in an area that you haven’t managed to bring the life back to.
All in all, The Saboteur is a welcome chance to the more serious games, it puts a new spin on the worn World War 2 genre, and shows us just how much fun a GTA style game can be – a lesson that RockStar will hopefully understand before they release another dreary chapter in the GTA saga.
Reviewed on: XBox 360
Available on: XBox 360. PS3, PC
Reviewed by:
As for the ‘Midnight Show’ nudity enabling DLC, we’re not sure what it adds to the gameplay, but if you’re old enough to see computer rendered naked women, you can make you own mind up by watching the oddly NSFW video below…
