If there’s anything in the world I can tell you about, it’s probably Hitler. I’ve studied the guy for years, learning all about the crazy things that happened in his life that caused him to begin World War 2. So naturally, anything involving World War Two is interesting to me. Hence why I decided to give The Saboteur a go.

For those of you that don’t know, The Saboteur is developer Pandemic’s last game before they closed their doors and ceased to be. Set in Paris during Nazi occupation, you play as an Irish mechanic, Sean Devlin, who seeks revenge on a Nazi general who killed your best friend right before the might of the Third Reich took control of France. How could they go wrong? Oh, let me count the ways.

Let’s start with the gameplay. Picture in your mind a good sandbox game… uh, Assassins Creed. Well, tell you what, picture Assassins Creed. Now imagine that instead of seamlessly running up a building without pauses, you have to stop and press A to jump to the next ledge, and so on. This, my friends, is not good. Then again, why scale buildings when you can drive around on street level? The driving mechanics are standard fare, and they work as well as any other game, with responsive steering and the like. Walking is a little odd, as you have to switch to a sprinting “mode” as such to sprint along, which can be a tad annoying to get out of when you want to turn a corner properly.

Then again, it’s not like you’re going to just wander round Paris and call that a game, are you? Sean’s a dab hand at the fisticuffs, and you can start beating people up by holding down the left trigger to enter “brawling” mode. The fighting mechanics aren’t anything new, and I’ve already managed to forget what button does what, but hammering X seemed to do the trick. That said, I spent most of my time shooting, the mechanics of which work well and allow you to blow away some Nazi scum with ease.

But what do you do for missions? Well, all throughout the time Pandemic were hyping it up, they mentioned their “quiet in, loud out” ideology. What this means is that they hoped people would sneak in, blow stuff up, and run away. Which is effectively how it works, although I found myself simply barging in with a machine-gun and surviving one too many times. But at least the stealth option is there, and it certainly is exciting to stealth kill a Nazi, steal his uniform, and mingle with other Nazis. Before blowing them up of course.

The graphics are interesting- to begin with. When you start off, everything’s in black and white, signifying the oppression felt by the people from those damn Krauts (Christ, it’s like being back in Media Studies). This film noir style is a nice change from colours simply being murky and brown like in most current generation games, but is a bit difficult to see in if you turn the brightness down low to add to the atmosphere. As you progress through the game, the people will start to feel more free, and areas change to colour to signify that the will has been restored. So, all that lovely noir styling is gone in favour for… colour. It loses the original charm, although I guess it had to be done, or else people may have lost interest and moved onto something with bright colours.

The voice acting in the game is, in a word, horrific. I forget who voices Sean, but there is no way that he is Irish. Hell, I could do a better accent than him. To compensate for this, the script over uses swearing, so you can expect Sean to cry “My arse!” at every available opportunity, among other phrases I feel slightly uncomfortable about typing. The rest of the cast is stereotypical at best, ranging from upper class British twit, upper class British woman, annoying Scottish guy, evil German general, and, of course, nasal French blokes. The soundtrack is mostly just jazz music that serves its purpose of filling in the background, except for “Feeling Good” by Nina Simone, which is always fun to put on in the car while mowing down Nazis. Aside from all that, you’ve got a collection of gunshots and explosions that work well and in sync with the weapons, but honestly that’s to be expect in games these days.

The Saboteur could have been so much more, but, like Mercenaries 2 before it, fell short of it’s potential. The missions are fun but repetitive, the graphics start off well and get worse throughout, and the voice acting is consistently bad. Still, if you enjoy dicking around on the streets of Paris, this is probably the only place in the world you can do so. Without getting arrested of course. Still, you could do so much better. Maybe… Assassins Creed 2?

Score: 5/10

Sick of World War Two? Actually liked this game despite it’s long list of flaws? Let us know in the comments!