Rating: M
Players: 1
Genre: Action/Adventure
Publisher: EA
System: Xbox 360
Release Date: December 8, 2009

BUY

There have been many WWII games that have come out, so initially I wasn’t too blown away by Pandemic’s game Saboteur. However once I read what people were saying on Twitter and got my hands on the game itself, I changed my tune fairly quickly. You play as Irishman Sean Devlin (who is actually based off of William Grover-Williams) who winds up trapped in Nazi occupied Paris after a race goes awry in Saarbrucken, Germany. Once escaping to Paris, Sean meets up with Luc Gaudin and he begins to take his place as an undercover mercenary against the Nazis.

The game essentially plays out as GTA but in Nazi occupied France. Now normally I don’t play GTA much except for freeplay, but with Saboteur I found the various missions fun and kept going to hear more of the story and to see what developed. The controls are pretty easy to pick up for combat and driving. In fact I have to say the controls in Saboteur are much smoother to me than those in GTA. And just because it is similar to GTA does not mean the game gets boring.

There are many various mission you play through from sabotaging Nazi bases, winning races, romancing women and helping restore spirit to the people of Paris. That last part includes one of my favorite aspects of the game. When you first start off in Paris, everything is in greys with the only the reds in Nazi flags and banners accentuated. However as you complete missions you restore the people’s Will to Fight and the neighborhood regains color. Traveling between areas you’ve already restored the WtF to and areas still heavily occupied by Nazis is seemless and it really adds a noir aspect to the game which I love. Scenery aside, the character animations could have been done better and seem rather rough.

I am sad that this was Pandemic’s swan song game. It’s a good game and really brings together interesting historical aspects along with gameplay. At the time of this writing I haven’t finished the game completely as I’m still working on various side missions on top of the main storyline.  And yes, I did enter the code for the Midnight Show. They did a good job at rendering the girls’… girls, and if that floats your boat you won’t be disappointed. I guess it just adds on to that cabaret feel.

Review product provided by EA, and does not affect the outcome of this review.