The concept of the game is more or less new, on its own. Well, we have a lot of WW2 games, and a lot of open world games, but this is the first one to combine these two settings. Kind of a GTA with Nazis.

 

Sean Devlin is an irish race car driver, who doesn't care much for politics or anything else for that matter, except maybe for half-naked babes. That all changes when a race in Saarbrücken turns into chaos and his best friend gets tortured and killed in the wake of the Nazi occupation of France.

 

Contacted by the french Resisténce, Sean decides to fight the nazis in the open world manner in Paris, by the way of sabotage. That would be the story line. Since this is an open world game, we have the typical stuff going on: we have missions to absolve, we get some achievements, and in the process we kill nazis. How well was this realized in the form of gameplay, well, let's see...

 

Gameplay

 

The Saboteur is an action game, much like GTA, it uses an open world concept, over the shoulder perspective, and includes shooting and driving. It has one thing GTA doesn't: Sean can climb buildings, just like Assassins Creed - of course Altair is much better in this - mostly also because the controls in The Saboteur are a bit jerky.

 

 

 

The rest is typical for this genre: Sean can drive cars to get to the mission checkpoints, there is even a radio (only one), playing some 30s and 40s tunes. While trying to absolve missions, many nazis will naturally get in the way. This problem aught to be solved of course. And there come the highlights of the game: Have you ever played Moorhuhn? Basically, the IQ of the nazis in the game seems to dwell somewhere between that of the "huhn" (chicken) and the cars they are driving. Surrounded by nazis? Oh noes!! What can Sean do now - will the Nazis now flank him? Toss a nade towards him, take cover and use some tactics? Nope! You can actually shoot em in the best moorhuhn manner. Or just let the moronic nazi drivers overrun their mates (haha, happens again and again) It is also enough to shoot in the general area of the body, no matter where you hit 'em, feet or head - they'll die for sure.

 

 

This of course totally undermines the stealth feature - Sean can do silent kills - because, why bother when you can simply do the Rambo on them?

 

It is also of no consequence what you do in the streets of Paris, as far as the french are concerned - you can drive around and overrun people, and except for a scream here or there, no one will care. You can also not talk to people - that would be undestandable for those on the street, but you can't talk to people in the night club either, except for some dancers. Almost zero interaction.

 

Anyway, although his acts of sabotage make for some nice explosions, after a while the game gets pretty repetitive. Mission after mission, achievement after achievement - you basically do the same things again and again.

 

It would seem that Pandemic Stuidios knew this of course, so they tried to cover the lacking action gameplay with boobs. Literally. So, if you are right now not busy killing 27 billion nazis, or blowing up factories in front of their noses, you can always go back to your nice Paris night club and watch the naked girls dance - isn't that something?

 

 

 

Overall, Paris looks nice, at least famous monuments, like the Eiffel Tower, although on a closer look, the textures are actually blurry, especially the buildings around. The character models look fine, except for the main ones, like Sean's best friend sister. In general, the visual setting is good. The main thing that stands out of course is the "mixed" style of the graphics - areas that are under high nazi dominance are black and white, while those that are free have color. This dual graphics setting make for some nice looks.

 

The sound on the other hand is not spectacualr, but good, bringing some fine tunes.

 

 

The idea to combine World War 2 with an open world game concept is something fresh, making for an interesting setting, however the gameplay, enemy AI and long time motivation are more than lacking, making this only an average action game.