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A gentle Irish mechanic turned angry Nazi killer, welcome to The Saboteur.

Nazi’s, good or bad they always bring entertainment to the gaming scene (I know that may sound rather disgraceful but I clearly mean this in a good way). So here’s your next opportunity to show your hatred to those evil Nazi’s and finally put a stop to their evil ways, once more.

However is this the final nail in the coffin for the 3rd Reich? Or will you find yourself parrying in Paris?

Average day in Paris, 1940.

Story – 7
An upset Irishman in Paris during the start of WWII. The game opens with a scene of the game’s main protagonist, Sean Devlin, having a few strong whiskeys to keep him warm during the wintertime. Confronted by one member of France’s Resistance to ask him what his problem is, Sean is not one to be made upset, the fact he’s Irish answers that one.

The game sets you off in an immediate prologue to let you know Sean’s deep hearted story. Turns out he used to be a racing mechanic and was once asked to race for his team. During the race he finds himself with the chance of a 1st place podium finish, except some Nazi has to ruin it all, Typical Nazi’s! The original story is actually based on a real life war hero called William Grover-Williams (I did my homework).

Attempting to hunt down the Nazi responsible he ends up getting his best mate killed, which in standard video game style sets off a guilt trip\revenge story line.

It’s safe to say that Sean has seen better days.

It’s rather typical summing it up in one sentence however you only ever feel the hatred towards the Nazi’s as you normally would. Sure the cut scene regarding your friends death is pretty heartbreaking but overall you want to enjoy the experience of killing Nazi’s with the hands of an Irish protagonist. We give thanks that a game has used a real life story (regarding a race driver turned Saboteur) but it turns rather shallow in getting to know each character, they all just tell you missions and that’s all that matters.

Being Irish you can expect the voice actor of Sean Devlin to pull off a few standard Irish funny lines, “Top of the morning to ya!” etc. We got the feeling that the actual voice actor for the main character really did struggle with sticking to sounding like a normal Irishman. Annoyingly he’s been portrayed much like the British are in WWII games, every so often he will drop a standard ‘Irish catchphrase’ which just makes teeth go on edge. It’s not natural.

Other voices in the game are well put together and sound rather believable, I just feel sorry for the Irish players.

I think she said her name was Paris.

Design – 9
The Saboteur is an open world sandbox game (a big one at that), which always means that the world plays much differently to other games on the Market. The Saboteur differs by having Nazi occupation taking the lead role, they have taken over the beauty of Paris and have quite literally sucked the colour out of the city.

Areas occupied by the Axis forces are plunged into a fully black and white colour scheme, with only major features glowing in Nazi red. Places\people of interest glow orange to outline available objectives (throughout missions) and key targets that need to be eliminated around the city. There’s lots of things to do a lots of things to blow up, happy days!

Once you have taken control of enough French resistance the city will begin to have colour and culture. These key moments play out after completing enough missions and can are rather lengthy events. Sometimes we felt that the game doesn’t progress at the rate we would of hoped, seeing as we were really keen to return more colour and safety to helpful areas.

Your friendly neighbourhood Black Market Manager!

The games currency is contraband, this can be acquired by taking out Nazi buildings and army supplies. These areas are dotted around the world and leave you with the chance to spend multiple hours collecting your 100% competition awards. The game offers you the chance to purchase maps from the Black Market which will dot onto your HUD all of the destroyable Nazi locations. This makes it 10x easier to go out and get full completion of the game as well as being quite a lot of fun anyway.

The Black Market, like most Black Markets, allows you to purchase weaponry, explosives, upgrades and maps. Weaponry includes most WWII style weaponry that you have come to expect and explosives include: dynamite, grenades and remote charges. Upgrades allow you to carry more ammo, improve your own abilities and also effect that of the Resistance.

The Saboteur’s Perks system.

The game also has it’s own Perks system. This is a 3 levelled system which upgrades 10 key abilities, which overall improves your Nazi killing skills. The first initial level of each perk can be unlocked with ease and will be naturally unlocked with the standard amount of gameplay, levels 2 and 3 are more pressing and ask for you to go more out of your way to level up.

These perks are a nice touch to how the game plays, however we didn’t really feel an overall improvement with having any of them. Sean still wises up and could easily take on and tackle some of the game’s harder missions. The only major upgrade was the speed of planting explosives, which was what we liked most, Explosions!

For a Sandbox style game it definitely carries a strong design aspect of the game. Everything has been very well thought out so that the player continues to collect contraband, upgrade perks and create a better playing environment.

Standard: Germany invades France.

Gameplay – 7
Open world games have quite recently become the next best things. Everyone loves a living environment especially when your living in it as well. The city of Paris is known as one of the most beautiful places in the world, so when you’ve found out that one of the world’s evils has taken it over, you might get a little mad inside. Especially with the “Feckin’ Hard” difficulty!

Here comes your standard 3rd Person shooter style gameplay with the add-on of the idea of ‘sometimes’ being a little stealthy. You can take people out in a swift movement by gently…killing them. It’s a little odd to see that the stealthy ‘assassination’ moves aren’t the quietest of actions on the planet. You quite literally sneak up behind a Nazi and instead of one quick swift break of the neck movement you end up constantly punching the guys head in, for a 5 second animation…nice!

The problem with the silent side of the game is the fact that there aren’t many utilities which have been put into place to help you out. You can happily kill a Nazi, steal his uniform and then act like him but you are then placed under even more rules of ‘stealthyness’ (new word, add it to the dictionary).

They wouldn’t think of looking here! Would they?

Like most open-world shooters, you have notoriety as well as the chance of the Nazi’s finding you and attempting to kill you. A bar at the bottom half of screen begins to fill up, when full all shit hits the fan. You would of thought that you could get away with simply eliminating the enemies and then the alarms would simply turn off, sadly this isn’t the case at all. The alarms only go off when your out of the ‘suspicion zone’ (the equivalent to GTA’s police ring) however those Nazi’s do like to follow you! You do also have the option of using hiding places which are dotted around the map, but if your seen about to use one of them, they’re useless.

You do however get the option at a later level to be able to full out kill the Nazi’s which are tailing you. Our disagreement is this only crops up when you have risen your wanted level to level 3 and beyond. You simply drive to a set location on the map where you can fight off the oppression with your fellow resistance members. However by this point your usually finding it hard to survive even fleeing the scene. We just wanted to kill those evil Nazi’s in the first place!

Night, night.

Parkour originated in Paris so quite clearly anyone who ever goes to Paris instantly knows how to climb buildings and structures, right?

Sean can leap from ledge to ledge as well as zip line from building to building (whist complaining about the pain). It’s not the strongest of the game’s mechanics as the animations and movement of the character are a little choppy. The camera angle averts upwards making the viewer have no recognition of the surroundings (even while being shot at) and going from ledge to ledge by tapping the jump button feels a little painful.

When your jumping from objects which you can ‘latch’ onto the animation isn’t smooth. It’s definitely not the same amazing smoothness of Assassin’s Creed and is definitely not the same speed either. Shaun, although seen as an Irish ‘bruiser’, doesn’t seem to have the upper-body strength to be manoeuvring around very quickly on the walls. He can run, but he can’t ‘jive’ (bad but I’m keeping that one in!).

Desaturate This!

Graphics – 8
The main take on the look of the game is all about capturing the essence of Paris in the 1940s. France was quite a ‘swindling’ city at the time, lots of good looking women and entertainment to keep you awake long into the night. Even in this game will you be asked if you wish to see full frontal nudity by entering a DLC code which comes packaged with the game itself.

As well as the chances to see a great amount of boobs, you’ll also be able to check out the sights of Paris is Black and white style.

The art presentation is without a doubt phenomenal, it works to it’s advantage to stick out amongst the crowd. No other games have done an art style like this and it pays off really well. The colours in the game bleed vibrance (especially in the countryside) giving the feeling of life and energy throughout the world.

Audio – 10
Give this man a Bafta, or something to do with Video Game music! Someone deserves a raise or maybe the chance to host Radio 2’s breakfast show? I hear they need someone good?

We had to go out of our way and talk about the amazing tunes pulsing throughout the city. The game has been inspired by the music of the setting and it’s all come together in one amazing package. Motown, Jazz, Blues, and those amazing Big Band hits will be blasting through your amazingly high quality 1930’s radio sets (you know those massive gangster boom boxes? Maybe not quite like that).

It’s all about placement with Graphics and audio, and we can happily announce that they have nailed it on the head!

The Saboteur leaves Paris with an explosion! It’s always a satisfying experience killing lots of Nazi’s. Thankfully other than just getting stuck in with the killing you also have the playground of an Open-world. The game has a rather good amount of features but they aren’t anything special. The game leaves you wanting more every time you put the controller down, especially those contraband locations. We’re just glad that we finally visited Paris!

December 4th, 2009 Posted by Thrungus | PC, PlayStation 3, Reviews, Xbox 360 Tagged under | EA, Game Review, Nazi's, Pandemic Studios, Paris, review, The Saboteur, Written Comment on This Post | Comments (0) Discuss this Post | On the XG:Forum

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