by ChiefJimbolaya:

©2010 Aaron Klein

The Saboteur merges successful aspects of several open-world games, most notably Assassin’s Creed and Grand Theft Auto, although the effort is hampered by minor control issues and ho-hum graphics.

But while technical issues weigh heavy on the game, the engaging three-act story set in dreary Nazi-occupied Paris creates a new approach to the Second World War in video games. One that rescues the game from its failings.

The Saboteur is Pandemic Studios’ last game. Electronic Arts announced the development studio’s closure last November, just weeks before The Saboteur’s release. In its ten-year run, Pandemic Studios was responsible for games like Star Wars: Battlefronts, Mercenaries and Destroy All Humans!.

• The Saboteur Trailer

The Saboteur is a third-person, open-world game that feels very similar to Grand Theft Auto. But where GTA puts the player in the shoes of a criminal, The Saboteur allows the player to feel good about his destructive tendencies. After all, it is not the police you are shooting at, but the gamer’s favorite target: Nazis.

The main character, Sean Devlin, is an Irish racecar driver. His main rival, German racer and Nazi secret agent, Kurt Dierker, sabotages Devlin’s chances to win the big race and murders his best friend. Devlin finds his path to vengeance lies in partnering up with the French Resistance.

Real-life resistance hero William Grover-Williams provides the inspiration for the game’s story. A French Grand Prix champion racecar driver, the British recruited Grover-Williams during the Nazi Occupation of France to help form an organized resistance movement.

The SS arrested Grover-Williams in 1943 and placed him in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, where he was executed in 1945.

Pandemic doesn’t break new ground in The Saboteur, but instead takes the open-world action concept to a new setting, Nazi-occupied France. The game’s most notable feature is the artistic style. When the game begins, most of Paris is presented in muted black and white tones, with the bright red Nazi flags being the only speckles of colour in the landscape. The sense of place in completed by a period soundtrack with songs from artists like Ella Fitzgerald and Nina Simone.

As the player completes missions to destroy Nazi infrastructure, the colour returns à la The Wizard of Oz to represent the rising morale of the oppressed Parisians.

These citizens show their appreciation by providing hiding spots when Devlin is on the run from Nazi soldiers, and can even be called to create distractions and fight alongside the player when situations get hairy.

The game’s map is humongous, and includes large swaths of the countryside surrounding Paris – The City of Light which provides an extra dimension to exploration.

Dotted across the landscape are Nazi installations ripe for sabotage. These could be sniper towers, propaganda speakers, fueling stations, radar equipment and military vehicle depots among other targets. The shear number of targets to sabotage is staggering, and extends the game’s playability considerably.

The player can take out these targets with a couple sticks of dynamite, but how you go about it is up to you. You could sucker punch a Nazi soldier and disguise yourself in his uniform to avoid detection as you get close enough, or you could pull out your Tommy Gun and head in barrels blazing.

Each target the player takes out cripples the occupying forces slightly, making it easier to avoid detection, evade pursuit and complete missions.

The Saboteur has some light role-playing mechanics in the form of a perks system. The system grants new abilities based on performance and objectives, and gives the player to feel more powerful as the game progresses without relying on experience points.

While The Saboteur is certainly a fun game, it has several issues that prevent it from reaching full potential, especially when compared side-by-side with similar new titles like Assassin’s Creed 2.

Graphically, The Saboteur is nothing special. Although Parisian landmarks are beautifully rendered, the rest of the buildings are remarkably similar. At high altitudes, faraway objects are either presented in blurry, low resolution or obscured by haze.

Glitches are another problem. Occasionally you will see Nazis floating in mid air, unanchored telephone wires and even objects popping on the screen.

Traversing the city itself can also be a pain. The 1940s were not known for fast, maneuverable cars, and most of the vehicles in the game handle like boats. Luckily our main character is a racecar driver, and this problem is alleviated with the introduction of specialty vehicles. Climbing buildings is a rough and tedious affair that requires constant button mashing.

A combination of dumb enemies and high hit points take a lot of challenge out of the game. Enemies often stand in place, waiting to be shot. They also quickly forget about the player if you disappear from view for a couple seconds.

Sean Devlin is a bullet sponge. It takes clips upon clips of ammunition to kill this guy, and he can fall from three-story buildings without skipping a beat. Devlin’s constitution can break the game’s stealth mechanics if players find it easier to shoot a place up instead of causing chaos in a disguise.

The game’s saving system is another source of potential frustration. When you die during a mission, you can pick the mission back up from the last checkpoint.

But when you die in freeplay, you have the option of reloading from a past save, or restarting from headquarters and losing your weapons. Either way you start anew at HQ.

So in practice, the game is punishing those who don’t save after every successful sabotage with a choice between lost progress, or lost guns & ammo.

You basically have to chose between losing progress or losing your guns (which can be acquired again for free if you paid to unlock them at the black market).

That is a choice that shouldn’t have to be made. If the game autosaved after the player completed a meaningful objective it would avoid this hassle.

A classic formula combined with an engaging story makes The Saboteur a fun game. But without the artistic use of colour and historical setting, it might be easily forgettable.

©2010 Aaron Klein

Note: Aaron Klein is a U.S.-based freelance video game writer. Read more of his reviews at cornfedgamer.com.

“7/10

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