Game Seeker

The Saboteur is Pandemic's swan song. Since the studio was recently dissolved by its parent company, this is the last hurrah from the ambitious development house that brought us Mercenaries and Star Wars Battlefront. Like Mercenaries, The Saboteur is an open-world, sandbox game that benefits from an impressive scope but is noticeably rough around the edges. he difficulty of presenting an open world game is balancing a player's freedom of choice with a storyline that pushes them towards the main objectives. The Saboteur manages to do both very well. As Sean is introduced to bands of rebels, British agents, and devious black market weapons dealers they are marked on the on-screen mini map with initials. The character or location that must be reached to advance the story is always highlighted in yellow. In this way the objectives are neatly displayed and players always know where the next most important task can be found. But to complete these tasks players will need to purchase weapons, and currency is mostly obtained through the liberation of separate neighborhoods. Paris is filled with Nazi encampments like fuel depots and sniper pits. A well placed explosive will take out these targets and net the player some cash. The option exists to strictly follow the plot or go Nazi hunting across the countryside.The Saboteur has one of the more intriguing setups of any game this year. Players are thrust into Nazi occupied France and given the opportunity to turn the tide of the war one explosion at a time. The setting is both sexy and dangerous, with a colorful cast of characters that border on period-piece stereotypes. You take on the role of Sean Devlin, a hard drinking womanizer with a past who has fled his native Ireland to try his luck at race car driving in Grand Paris. Sean's main competition is an Aryan named Kurt Dierker who cheats his way to victory and provokes Sean to get even off of the race course. What starts as a prank against Dierker quickly escalates to a game of life and death and ensnares players in a blood oath to kill him and remove his Nazi brethren from the country.

There's a fair bit of travelling on the way to and from every mission. Sean can steal any car on the road, or spawn them after bringing them to a garage. The driving mechanics are functional, but always feel a bit stiff, even in the best vehicles. Let's put it this way: escaping from the Nazis in an extended car chase can be entertaining, but driving isn't enjoyable enough to warrant jumping into the optional races or car collection quests.
Whether you choose to stick to the plot, or run off to bomb Nazis and collect contraband, the gameplay is relatively similar. Sean is an experienced brawler (he can kill an NPC with a single punch) a marksman, and an explosives expert. This translates to some loose run-and-gun gameplay and the ability to plant dynamite on Nazi equipment. In contrast to the subject matter, the combat is relaxed to the point of being silly. Clearly based on an arcade style shooter, ammo is plentiful and Sean can absorb about 50 shots from a sub-machine gun before death becomes an issue. Even then, health regenerates in a snap. That means players have plenty of time to plant a bomb, even while being shot directly in the back. It also means the thinly designed cover system rarely comes into play. Sean is essentially a one man army, and dealing out punishment to the Germans can be a lot of fun, just don't expect a very deep experience.

If, for some reason you choose to over-think the Saboteur and try to sneak up on your enemies there is a stealth system including disguises and sneaking. But a proper stealth mechanic requires subtlety, and that's one thing The Saboteur avoids completely. There's an indicator to let players know when they've been sighted, or are engaging in suspicious activities. But it fills up so quickly, that the system is almost binary. You're either completely hidden from your enemy, or alarms are blaring and guns are blazing. And if you're spotted in a "restricted area" where most missions take place, the alarms will continue to go off no matter how many guards you kill. Sean can always locate and turn off a base alarm switch, find a marked hiding spot, or escape outside of the base and attempt to leave the red circle on the mini-map. But this is always more trouble than just ignoring the alarms and blasting your way towards the objective.