"Top o' the mornin' to ya!"
By Ben Salter
Pandemic studios was recently dissolved by its parent company, but wanted to make sure that they went out with a bang with their final release,
The Saboteur. That’s exactly how the game begins. We’re presented with black & white world, with strong reds and yellows filtering through for dramatic effect. The whole thing feels very film noir and it’s almost a shame when the game switches to full colour. Couple this with excellent voice acting, and explosive gameplay and
The Saboteur starts out as winner. While it’s very rough around the edges, and becomes repetitive fast, it’s still a nice parting gift from Pandemic.
The Saboteur revisits the tried and tested videogame adaptation of World War II. However, it takes a different approach. Instead of fighting on the front lines we play as Sean Devlin, an Irish mechanic turned racing driver who gets caught up in France during it’s Nazi occupation. After being beaten in the Grand Prix by a cheating Aryan named Kurt Dierker Sean decides to play a memorable prank on his nemesis. Little does he know it would lead to his best friend’s death and him being caught up in a world of Nazi affairs, resistance fighters and explosions.
While the game itself is presented in an open-world it does a very good job of pushing the player into the main objectives. For the first few hours we are pushed into tasks by other characters in cutscenes. After that, however, it takes a leaf out of Grand Theft Auto’s book. Missions are displayed on the mini-map in yellow, and with a direction pointer on screen once you’re on a mission, but they need not be taken instantly. People are desperate in times of war and contraband becomes ever so important on the black market. Whenever Sean needs new supplies, such as weapons, medicine or pimped up vehicles from the 1940s he has to first make a little extra cash by acquiring rare items. Most of them can be stolen off Nazi soldiers, but if you feel like blowing shit up (and you begging doing just that) feel free to, as it’s likely to net you some cash.
While all sandbox games feel as if they’ve been playing GTA at times The Saboteur takes considerable influence from Assassin’s Creed. This is most evident by Sean’s unfeasible abilities to climb walls as fast as Altair and Ezio. After playing Assassin’s Creed 2 the climbing system feels very slow, clumsy and at times cringe worthy. You have to constantly mash the action button to make Sean cling on to the next edge, which is nothing short of really annoying. Put it down to bad timing, but every minor imperfection with the climbing system is exacerbated by the fact the Assassin’s Creed 2 is still in our console. The suspicion system is also similar to Assassin’s Creed as it alerts you to the presence of guards with an exclamation mark. A meter around your mini-map then fills, as the suspicion of the guard rises, letting you know it’s time to bail or face the fireworks. Once they’re on to you a red radius will appear on your mini-map in which the Nazi guards will attempt to look for you. While scaling the rooftops should you find a hatch to hide in the guards will simply walk right on by and you’ll be free to leave. It’s a bit of a GTA meets Assassin’s Creed mash-up, and while neither aspect is as good as its source material it still offers a bit of fun, albeit being quite rough around the edges.
The Saboteur does introduce a few new tricks when it comes to disguises. Sean can silently take out a Nazi guard and as long as nobody is looking quickly slip into their uniform. This enables him to be able to infiltrate Nazi bases and restricted areas as long as he walks slowly and acts naturally. Guards will get suspicious if he gets too close to them (probably the smell of all the Whiskey he drinks) and if he runs or starts doing something out of the ordinary, like jumping on the roof, they’ll discover him from a much greater distance. On paper it all sounds very well and good, but in practice it doesn’t work so well. Unless you enter a restricted area you actually raise more suspicion by being disguised as a Nazi than walking around as a drunk Irishman yelling "Top o' the mornin' to ya!" every 5 minutes. Should you be discovered you have about 30 seconds to neutralise the Nazi guard that’s planning to call reinforcements on you, which is impossible if there’s more than one. It’s a rather large problem when they almost always work in pairs and that game is so heavily focused on stealth and sneaking around amidst large explosions.
After the prologue the “go somewhere and blow something up” style missions become a little stale. Unfortunately there’s little in terms of variation as if you’re not blowing stuff up you’ll be killing somebody or stealing something for a majority of the game. Beyond that you’re either walking around waiting to be discovered as Nazi, racing cars as you are meant to be a racing driver, and generally trying to take back areas of France to save the people. Racing cars is a lot more fun than we thought it would be, and side missions such as collecting cars are there when you tire of the main story, and remind us of Sean’s true passion. We get the vibe of an average guy that goes out and saves the world from Nazi occupation (don’t quite remember that in the history books) but the story itself, followed by repetitive gameplay leave you glad that it’s over after 20 hours. That isn’t to say it’s bad. On the contrary it’s quite entertaining and has a distinct charm about it, but we can’t help but feel that Pandemic wanted to do a lot more with it, if they had the time.
The story is rather weak. It claims Sean has freakish climbing abilities due to practice climbing through bedroom windows at 3am. Due to his persona, of being a drunk womanizing racing driving Irishman, we think not. Never the less the game’s stylish black and while introduction intertwined with red and yellow along with some excellent voice acting is its saving grace. The dialogue becomes progressively worse but it’s still a joy to listen to Sean’s Irish accent abusing Nazi’s with high profanities in contrast to his more reserved British partner. While most of the game is played out in full colour it reverts to black and white with striking reds at strategic moments. The black and white filter accentuates the Nazi flag and blood splatter as only red, yellow and blue make it through at certain moments. It’s a much nicer design to look at than the vibrant colourful France, despite it representing the dark, gloomy, repressed France during that period. The environments are a little rough around the edges, and the black and white scenes help to cover that up. The main characters look great but the environments, when displayed in full colour, suffer from some terrible texture issues, and lack the polish that a game like this really needs to have.
The Final Verdict
The Saboteur sounds great in theory, and could have been a fantastic swan song for Pandemic. Unfortunately it feels like they didn’t have enough time with it as the gameplay starts to become repetitive. There are some great hybrid ideas from other games, as well as a few unique ones, but it just doesn’t work as well as it could have, or sounds like it would on paper. There’s some fun to be had here, and the persona of Sean adds an interesting charm to the game. If you’re up for some explosions and interesting stealth play, even if it doesn’t quite work, and most importantly a different take on the World War 2 genre then The Saboteur is well worth a look, and a decent way to farewell Pandemic.
Gameplay
7.5/10
Some great ideas that aren’t fully executed, but it’s always fun blowing up Nazis, especially when you’re a drunk Irish guy determined to save the world just for the hell of it.
Graphics
7.5/10
The character models are great, as is the black and white moments with red, yellow and blue shinning through, but let down by some poor environments.
Sound
8.5/10
Fantastic voice acting. The music is decent and fits the era.
Value
7.0/10
While there’s 20 hours of gameplay here a lot of it starts to feel repetitive too soon. Some interesting side quests will you get through it.
Overall
7.3/10