Over the years Pandemic’s games have been a little bit ‘hit and miss’. Having had success in the last generation, with game’s like Mercenaries and Star Wars Battlefront, they failed to achieve anything similar this time around. Their lack of success caused EA to shut the studio down, still, their final title, The Saboteur will release this holiday season.

Even this close to release, I don’t think the majority of people know much about The Saboteur. It’s a game that’s been overshadowed by a lot of the big releases this year, but not one that should be overlooked by any means.

I think that World War II, as a setting for a videogame, has pretty much run it’s course. Then again all games set during that time have been, pretty much, the same. The Saboteur is a completely different WWII based experience. Rather than taking on the role of a solider involved with the fight against the Nazi’s, you play as Irish racing driver/ex-mechanic Sean Devlin.

Sean’s story is one of revenge. After losing a race to a German cheat, Sean and, best friend, Jules try to get their own back. Little do they know, their rival isn’t just a racer. After tracking him down and dispatching of his prize-winning car, the pair are captured, tortured by the Nazi’s and Jules is killed. So begins our hero’s story, Sean is now determined to find and kill the man who murdered his friend at all costs. Three months later we find Sean in Paris helping the French Resistance in their fight against the Nazi occupation of France.

The story is certainly an interesting one. It kept me engrossed the majority of the time and the WWII setting never took anything away from the experience. You run into all sorts of characters involved in the good fight, helping them out where you can. As with all games like this, there are mission sets you like and ones you don’t. The majority of the missions in The Saboteur were fair to good, but there were certainly a few I had to force myself to complete. You can also help out the French Resistance by completing certain tasks whilst negotiating the streets of gay Paris. Destroying anything remotely Nazi related will earn you contraband for you to swap on the black market for guns, ammo and anything else you might need.

On the surface the game is a GTA-clone set in the 40′s, but it certainly doesn’t have the problems a lot of these ‘clones’ do. For a start, it’s an open world game in an original setting. I can’t remember any ‘sandbox’ titles set during the Nazi occupation of France, can you? The character is pretty original too. Devlin might be the typical hard ass found in this type of game, but the fact he’s an Irishman certainly adds something different to the mix, especially when it comes to the humor. The missions are fairly different too. There’s all the typical fetch quests and people asking you to bump people off, but the time period the game is set in means the missions aren’t your typical run of the mill affair. Combine that with the fact that all Nazi soldiers are massively paranoid, and the game can become a more stealthy affair.

It’s not an overtly stealthy game though. In fact, stealth isn’t a requirement a lot of the time. You can just go in all guns blazing if that’s your preference. However, I often felt a certain sense of achievement when I got through a mission unseen. Of course, gunplay is necessary during your playtime too, and on the whole it works quite well. There was a few times my headshots didn’t seem to register, or it took forever to take down an approaching Nazi, but these occurrences were pretty infrequent. Hand to hand combat is probably the most troublesome combat mechanic of the lot. Stealth kills are, by far, the most accurate strikes and I used them as much as possible. However, if it came down to it I knew I could rely on my brawling skills to take down one troublesome fascist. More than one and I’d have a problem and usually end up pushing daises.

Your skills throughout the game are constantly being upgraded. Using a certain weapon or skill earns you perks. These perks add to Sean’s arsenal of skills and attacks and come in three different ‘grades’: bronze, silver and gold. Each of them harder to get, but all more effective than the last. This part of the game seemed a little under-explained and could’ve been better implemented than it was.

Climbing was a big part of the game for me and, coming off the back of playing Assassins Creed 2, these elements felt a little clunky. The gamplay itself worked really well, Sean can climb pretty much any structure, but compared to the free running skill of Ezio it doesn’t really stack up.

One of the most impressive parts of the game was the visual style. Switching seamlessly from Black and White to colour, the world will differ depending on how you’re doing in your fight. Once an area is under some kind of control by the Resistance, all colour will return. Those places still tarnished by Nazi rule remain washed out, with only the fascist’s red and Resistance members distinctive blue remaining. The game looks really good like this, if not a little dark, and I was a tad disappointed when the colour returned. Don’t be put off by the black and white, it looks really good.

The biggest problem I had with the game was the AI. Instead of being a little lacking, a la Mercenaries 2, the Nazi’s are super-paranoid and the littlest thing will set them off. This caused me a few problems and marred the experience somewhat. I really didn’t get why the Gestapo could see through disguises. It just seemed a little cheap to me.

The voice acting can be a little hit or miss too. Sean’s character sounds about right, as do most of the cast, but when it comes to characters like Veronique it can sound really bad. If that woman is really French I appologise, but I was half expecting her to say “listen very carefully, I shall say this only once”.

The Saboteur is a game I think few will experience this year, many buying it on the cheap in 2010. However, if you’re a fan of open world adventures and want something different to the modern day settings of GTA IV and Saints Row 2, I completely recommend it. The art style is fantastic, the gameplay is pretty solid and the story fairly interesting.

7.8/10

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