The Saboteur [Review]

The Saboteur [Review]

Roydon Cerejo, Jan 12, 2010 1229 hrs IST

Overall it's good fun but don't expect anything new in the gameplay

Unique presentation, good graphics and sound, moderate system requirements

Monotonous gameplay, no damage system for vehicles, certain moves can't be performed when disguised

Expert Rating :

Expert Review

This game has been out for a while now and has got some rather mixed reviews. So we decided to find out for ourselves how good or bad it is. Saboteur is set in Paris during WWII and the streets are crawling with jerries who have set up camp terrorizing the citizens. The game has a distinct black and white look just like Sin City. However, colours like red and blue, which seem to glow bright, have been used, where red usually indicates the enemy and blue is the colour of the resistance.

A lot of gameplay elements have been borrowed from current games such the sandbox styled GTA environment, where you can steal any car you choose, climb any building and leap over rooftops like in Assassins Creed with a Hitman styled disguise system. All these elements should make the gameplay a lot interesting.

Gameplay

The main protagonist of the game is Sean Devlin, an Irishman, (which is very apparent from his Leprechaun accent) who is a racing car driver turned rebel due to a series of unforeseen circumstances. You are determined to break the German stronghold and so team up with your racing team's manager Vittore and his daughter Veronique, as you flee to Paris and take shelter in a Cabaret Hall that becomes your hideout. There is plenty of nudity in the game, at least in the Cabaret club, which can be disabled in the menus if you want.

Your first mission in the game is to take down a Nazi fueling station. This is where you'll get to learn a little about your skills. The first task is getting there, and this is where you get to drive. The cars are obviously from the WWII era and actually remind you a little bit of Mafia. The vehicles are easy to drive and navigate around the winding roads of Paris, but sadly there is no damage system for the cars, which means, no matter how fast you ram into a tree or a wall there won't be a single scratch or dent on the car!

Also, while driving up a slope at 50km/h, ideally the car should lift up from the ground once you clear the slop but over here it just seems to stick to the ground like its being pulled by some invisible force. Another really annoying thing is while driving along the countryside or taking a detour around a Nazi road block, the cars don't seem to be able to get past small plants, (I'm talking of 3ft tall plants) whereas it can knock down metal gates and street lights as if they were made of cardboard.

Anyways, getting back to the story, the plot is extremely simple. You basically go around Paris burning down certain areas where the Nazi have setup a stronghold. One cool thing about this is after you destroy these key bases, you essentially boost the morale of the people living in that area to join the resistance thereby restoring colour to that particular zone. This is captured very well as you drive around in black and white and as you near a "recovered" area of the city, everything is in full colour.

As you keep doing this, you meet newer members of the resistance and then you start doing little tasks for them such as destroying a German convoy or assassinating a certain Nazi leader. However, after sometime this starts to get really monotonous and you come to a point where you really can't play the game for more than an hour at a stretch.

In order to acquire weapons, you can either steal them after you kill a jerry or buy it from a blackmarket trader. You buy weapons and ammo with contraband, which are basically illegal goods. You earn contraband either by blowing up anti-aircraft guns, mini-fuel stations, high ranking German officials, etc. or by finding certain crates with a blue marker (symbol of the resistance) scattered around the city.

The game features an auto healing system, so when your screen turns too red you better take cover. Just beside the map there is a space that shows you Sean's current action. For instance you can't be acting suspicious around the Germans. Sneaking, climbing buildings, hosting a weapon will alert the enemy and a suspicion meter starts filling up. If you stop your activity then they'll ignore you, or else they will call for backup and sound the alarm. You can avoid this by taking out the enemy before he blows the whistle or then find a hiding spot like a public urinal or a shed indicated by green squares on the map. The alarm goes up to level 5, upon which the big guns are brought in - like a Zeplin gunship.

The final bit is the ability of Sean to disguise himself as a Nazi soldier or whoever he kills. You can only take the clothes of soldiers whom you've killed in stealth mode or taken down without the help of a firearm, which makes sense since if you shoot someone their clothes would be bloody. Once thing I didn't like is that you can't do a stealth kill when you're disguised, which is quite stupid and ideally should have been possible.

Do you agree with this Review?

The Saboteur [Review]

Overall it's good fun but don't expect anything new in the gameplay

Unique presentation, good graphics and sound, moderate system requirements

Monotonous gameplay, no damage system for vehicles, certain moves can't be performed when disguised

Expert Rating :

7

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