GameGuide

I must admit, that I really did think that Modern Warfare 2 would be my game of the year. But after finishing it’s lacklustre single player campaign in only two nights there wasn’t much left besides the online play. Not that this was a huge problem, as with the original Modern Warfare, its real value (other than a great single player campaign) was in the online play, having played it solidly for two years. It was the game that I always went back to when I got bored of the new games, and the only thing that made it a little bit tiresome was that Infinity Ward only ever released one map pack.

So Modern Warfare 2 could have conceivable made the cut based purely on the online play, if only they hadn’t dropped the ball. Infinity Ward decided that rather than have an open beta testing stage for the online play, they would test in house. As such, they didn’t have the man power to put the game through as many hours of gameplay as they did with the original. The result is that they release a game whose online play seems to have more bugs than a new version of Windows. 

Sure the new gameplay is fun, but the glitches and inability to find a decent game, or be sure that you’re going to be able to get in the same game as everyone else on your party all made for some rather frustrating sessions. Add to that the selection of maps, all of which are nice, but none as memorable as the originals, and the akimbo shotguns that can kill you instantly from halfway across the map and you have some serious issues that pour doubt on Infinity Wards ability to deliver a finished game on time.

With numerous other issues, and planned patches, it was the game that never ends that finally broke my resolve and caused tm to give up on Modern Warfare 2 – at least until the new year. Three mates and myself decided to have a game of Ground War: Domination, but after a little while we noticed that the scores were getting quite high and wondered what the time limit/score limit was. After an hour or so of playing our team was winning with close to 1,000-points. At the 1,600-point mark I noticed that the even though the points showed we were winning, the usual green and red stripes showing the game progress were absent. It dawned on me that this game was never going to end, so we had to back out, counting the game as a loss and not benefiting from the impressive number of kills.

The following night I decided to go back to The Saboteur and realised that I wouldn’t be playing Modern Warfare 2 for some time to come. The Saboteur was everything Modern Warfare 2 wasn’t. It was fun. Over-the-top fun. It didn’t take itself too seriously, and gave you freedom to do what you wanted. It brought back to me my love of the World War 2 genre, combined with my love of GTA style games. But in such a way as too better any of my previous experiences.

I knew that this was a game that was going to consume my life for the next little while. It was a game huge in scope, which without the benefit on online play would keep me entertained for the foreseeable future.

It’s not the perfect game – it has a few glitches, but because you’re not competing against people online, they don’t matter as much, and some of them just add to the humour of the game.

Pandemic seem to have borrowed liberally from other games, but have chosen all the right parts and then added their own style to make a cohesive whole.

The Saboteur won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, and will probably be passed over by many gaming publications, but for my money it does what gaming some times forgets, and that is to deliver a fun game with longevity. It’s the game, that no matter what other gams cross my desk in the coming months, that I will go back to time and time again, until I finish it. In that sense, it’s a little like Modern Warfare, the first one.

And because of that, The Saboteur is my game of the year for 2009.