The Saboteur Review

Liberator Of France
Darkness befalls Paris, France as the Nazis have set up in the city of love. One lone man creeps around the shadows high above the streets, snipers perched in their nest above him unaware of what is lurking beneath them. You climb up the ladder and pause to set an explosive on the ladder itself. Quickly you slide down and jump off the building right as the explosion reaches its climax, duck and roll down an alleyway, and hop into a parked race car you set up for yourself and drive off to your next glorious C4-powered fireworks show. Nope, you’re not playing an interactive version of Inglorious Basterds 2. This is The Saboteur. You play silver-tongued Irishman Sean Devlin, loosely based on real life war hero William-Grover Williams, who is out for revenge in any way he can, and out to liberate the people of Paris from Nazi oppression. Story rotates at first with some flashbacks of life before WWII and his racing career in Saarbrucken. Once the player gets far enough ahead the games, antagonist Kurt Dierker shoots out your tires and you lose the race. Devlin is furious and almost starts something at the track but is warned by his friend Vittore that they are Nazis and not to mess with them. Sean and his mate Jules follow Kurt to his home and ‘wills’ his winning racecar off of a cliff. Kurt catches up with them and is convinced they are British agents, he proceeds to execute Jules, but Sean manages to escape and save Jules’ sister Veronique and Vittore. They get out of Saarbrucken and the player finds Sean in a bar drowning his sorrows in alcoholism. This begins the tale of The Saboteur… yep that was just a prologue!

Boom, goes the dynamite.

Into The Fire
The game is so vast and huge, it’ll take you across the Paris city-state and countryside and deep within Germany itself. Besides the vast amount of story missions, racing and side missions, there’s just A LOT OF STUFF TO BLOW UP. That’s where the fun is. There are over 900 items of propaganda to destroy in the game, it’s fun and it’s satisfying, the more you do, the more you destroy and finish the story, the more color and freedom you give to the world around you. It all starts out in black and white, dark depressing tyranny, and it’s your job to shed some color on it. In a move that I can only describe as brilliant, as Paris attains more freedom, the more vibrant colors appear around you. You have to play the game to really acknowledge and appreciate this subtle value. Throughout the game, there are shops where you can buy guns and upgrade them and add things like silencers and get better weapons and even explosives. You can upgrade everything including your perks, which allow you to carry more ammo and increase your health by doing certain criteria. In these shops, you can also purchase maps that show you where all the propaganda to destroy is located in the designated area along with the postcards (items you pick up like treasures to collect for trophies) and viewpoints high above the city (think assassins view in Assassins Creed). Every car, truck, tank and racecar you collect will bring you one step closer to a perk and/or trophy. Vehicles are stored via a garage a la GTA series. Park it… done; go get another. The game’s currency, Contraband, also makes sense; it is basically stuff that was forbidden during Nazi occupation, cigarettes, liquor, which was hard to come by, books, etc. you get by doing missions and blowing propaganda up. There’s also a hidden next-gen version of duck hunt in the countryside, it’s a ‘great little Easter-egg’ and also a trophy. There is no shortage of things to do in this title, well until you’ve done everything that is, then you can just randomly kill pedestrians, but that’s mean!

Perty Colors!

The Legend Begins
There is no online to this single-player opus that is The Saboteur, but I don’t see what’s wrong with that. Are we that spoiled of gamers that we can’t appreciate the single-player experience no more? Did San Andreas have online? Did Saints Row 1? Did GTA 3 or Vice City? Heck no. But you know what The Saboteur has that they don’t? Nudity. Yes kids, this is an M rated game for a reason, if you purchase it, it’s packed with a code to download Midnight Show which will allow the women in the brothels to bare all, along with a backstage pass. Or, you could rent it and purchase it, or even if the copy you bought didn’t come with said code, it’s only a few bucks and besides nudity, it also gives a few added safe houses to hide from the Nazis. So it’s worth the few bucks. The Saboteur is one wild ride of a game, from racing a car at breakneck speeds, breaking Nazi necks, and sneaking around Paris, blowing stuff up, taking their outfits and impersonating a general, and walking right past security into a prison to break out your comrades, yea the AI is that cool that if you don’t walk like them, you will get caught. Oh, and you blow up trains, too. Basically if you don’t like explosions, this game isn’t for you. Still here? Good. The ending is something to leave the player wanting more, not to say there is no justice; oh there’s justice. I’ll leave it at this; expect to see more from Sean Devlin in the near future.

Quick Facts: Third-Person Shooter, Sandbox,World War 2 Time Period
Fun Game And Great Story
Positive: Stellar presentation, Art Style Is Superb
Plenty Of Missions And Objectives To Accomplish
Exhilarating Story
Negative: Once You Accomplish Everything, That’s It. No Replay Value
Story Itself Is Short
Some Glitches Are Apparent
Multiplayer: No
Difficulty: 3/5
Developer: Pandemic Studios
Publisher: Electronic Arts
ESRB: M
Length: 10-15 Hrs, More If You’re A Perfectionist
Systems: Playstation 3, Xbox 360 and PC
Release Date:
NA: December 8^th, 2009
EU: December 4^th, 2009
SCORE: 9.0

Anthony (ShadyDevil) DeCicco

Short URL: http://thegamershub.net/?p=2418

Posted by AnthonyD on Jan 20 2010. Filed under Playstation 3, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry