A Review of “the Saboteur”

                Let me start by saying that if you don’t like the GTA series because it’s too modern and you can’t climb on everything and be all stealthy like in the Assassins Creed series; but don’t like the Assassins Creed series because it seems too old-timey and doesn’t have guns and cars like the GTA series, and you hold some sort of grunge against both series because you think there could have been a teensy bit more killing of Nazis in them, then The Saboteur is exactly the sort of hybrid game that you have been randomly wishing would exist someday.

                The game takes place during WWII (A war that has apparently not been done to death yet, despite all of the evidence that it has), and you take control of an Irishman by the name of Sean Devlin; who graduated from the School of Hard Knocks (Secondary school for boys) with honors and apparently went on to graduate from the University of Hard-Knocks with a triple-major in Competitive Urban-Free-Climbing, Competitive Racecar Driving, and Competitive Murder.

In the beginning of the game there is a rather long flashback to “three months ago” land where you find out that he used to be a mechanic, was recently a racecar driver, and is currently, for lack of a less terrorist-like term, a terrorist (But not a bad terrorist; a terrorist who terrorizes Nazis). And thusly, he is a rather likable character by today’s standards.

Sean’s days are encompassed by the climbing of buildings, the driving of cars that are faster than they should be, the killing of Nazis, the exploding of Nazi owned property, and variations of all four of those things. The game is honestly not very diverse in the whole gameplay aspect of things, but it’s just so damned entertaining that you can overlook the bad and focus on the not killing innocent civilians due to the moral implications.

Incidentally, if you told me that you played the entire game without accidentally killing at least 1 innocent person then you would be a liar. The civilian AI leaves something to be desired and seems to consist of around two commands: 1. If someone is killed or something explodes, you will run away. 2. If a car is coming towards you, jump out of the way without compensating for the fact that the car is trying to dodge you, ensuring a direct hit.

Nevertheless, this game presented me with many personal firsts in gaming. The first time that I have ever thrown a Nazi from a 150 ft. tower onto a cow on the ground below; The first time that I was ever forces to run from the middle of Paris to the northern outskirts of France to hide from a German fighter plane that was trying to gun me down from the skies by jumping in a well; and the very first time that I openly questioned the splash damage from blowing up an 80 ft. tall rocket and not being harmed 20 ft. away.

I wouldn’t say that there are a lot of things wrong with this game, but every aspect of it has been done way better by somebody else. Although nobody has ever put these particular pieces together before, creating the novel experience that is Saboteur. It may not be the best example of anything, but it pulls it off quite well and is definitely worth a look.

P.S.

One last thing. The lip-synching was mostly terrible and that peeves me.