The Saboteur is an open-world game in which you play as Sean Devlin, an Irishman tasked with clearing France of the Nazi occupation one sniper tower and AA gun at a time. It was the last game Pandemic Studios, the studio behind Star Wars: Battlefront and Mercenaries, will have ever developed. I’m sure Pandemic planned for it to be their swan song, but unfortunately for their ‘legacy’ I cannot agree.
As I said you play as Sean Devlin, an Irish race car driver. Your racing team consists of a Frenchman (your best friend), his sister, and the Italian owner of your team. Sean just wants to race his car and sleep with various women. That is until a revenge prank goes wrong and you decide you want to destroy every Nazi you come across. The world then turns black and white and you have to fight to ‘liberate’ parts of France to give them color again. Doing this gives the people of that area hope and they will also fight with you in those areas against the Nazi forces to free France.
YAY :
- Blowing up the Nazi objects in the game (sniper towers, tanks, train bridges, anti-aircraft guns) is fun
NAY :
- When you start the game it tries to get you to buy or activate a DLC code that gives you side missions and allows you to see nipples on the strippers in your hideout. It actually tells you that one of the perks of getting this DLC is nipples being shown. I’m not making that up. No thanks.
- In the beginning of the game Sean DOES NOT care about the Nazis at all. Then you play through a flashback where that revenge prank I mentioned goes wrong and then you suddenly REALLY hate Nazis and want to destroy them. Yes, that flashback is occurring before the part where Sean says he doesn’t care about Nazis. No, it doesn’t make sense.
- All of the characters have accents, terrible accents.
- I never felt truly deadly. I know the game is called The Saboteur and not The Warrior or The Gunfighter, but the shoot-outs aren’t as fun as you hope they would be.
- The enemy A.I. is fairly dumb. The game allows you to escape your pursuers by hiding in sheds on rooftops they know you’re on. Also, if you want to get away during a car chase just drive off-road far enough and you’ll be free.
I did like blowing stuff up, but it just couldn’t grip me and give me the desire to play the game frequently. You can cause a much more satisfying amount of destruction in other games. The revenge story is also way too cliche and boring.
I’m sorry to say, but Pandemic Studios final game doesn’t end up being their swan song. They peaked while creating the Battlefront games. Instead their final game is more like their previous game Mercenaries, a disappointment to everyone expecting more than mediocrity. There are much better games to spend your time playing.
