I just finished The Saboteur last night, and I figured it deserved a LTTP from me. The game wasn’t particularly ‘amazing’, but I found it to be memorable and charming. This was a flawed experience that felt repetitive at times, but I still had strong feelings towards it. This is one of the few times that I thought, “This game NEEDS a sequel”. Here are my thoughts:
Graphics & Art Style
This game came out in 2009, but I think it still holds up. Pandemic went for a cartoony-realism approach which was great, and I think the graphical degradation & blur used to hide the draw distance worked like a charm. My favorite part of the art style was how ‘liberated’ parts of Nazi-occupied Paris would be in full color (and very vibrant), while the yet-to-be-liberated areas would be in black and white. This experience-changing visual cue showing your progress in a given area is something I’ve never seen in games before, and I would love to see it more!
As for cons, I found many areas of Paris to be repetitive and copy/pasted. With the exception of the landmark locations, everything in the city looked the same.
Setting and the City
This was such a refreshing time period and location. 1940s Nazi-occupied Paris was a blast to experience, and it made me wish for more open-world early 20th century European games. Standing in a “full-color” zone and looking across the skyline at a black-and-white Eiffel Tower was genuinely breathtaking.
As for the bad, this game had a lot of the same problems other open-world games had. Most areas seemed dead, with the only interactive places being places to buy guns and cars. A big, gorgeous world with thousands of lifeless NPCs and nothing to do except continuously destroy Nazi outposts. If given more time with the game, I think a more interactive Saboteur 2 would be wonderful.
Gameplay
The shooting feels surprisingly good. Aiming is easy to do and fairly accurate, and using explosions as distractions is surprisingly rewarding. Driving is pretty smooth, as it doesn’t suffer from the slippery ‘driving-on-ice’ problems that most other games have. Missions can be completed in 2 different ways: stealth or Rambo-style, and there aren’t as many escort/drop off missions like in other large-city games.
However, this game does suffer from many of the same issues that other open-world games have. Some missions are at opposite ends of the map, which results in a good amount of driving. The lack of a fast-transport system makes this exceptionally bad. Climbing is cool, but broken and janky, and the stealth mechanics are equally messy. While driving is smooth, collisions are weak and basically pointless. Also, looking back on the black-and-white to color change mechanic…I wish it meant more. Other than the color, the gameplay in ‘liberated’ areas doesn’t really change.
Audio
Outside of the decent voice acting, this is the area where Pandemic missed out the most. So much potential with the music of the time period, and it was almost completely wasted. The few songs that do play are cool and sucked me into the time period, but since the soundtrack is so small, I found myself listening to the same songs over and over and over again. I’m guessing that this was a budget issue, since there weren’t very many licensed songs, so I think this area would’ve been greatly improved in a sequel. Likewise, gun fire sounds weak and unimpressive.
Verdict
I enjoyed this game. I will probably never go back and play this game again, but I really wish there was a sequel. This game is just a few adjustments away from being a classic, and I truly think that Pandemic would have refined this perfectly if given one more crack at it.
what a well realized world and climbing. I felt like I lived in paris, it was magic.
