Resumeplay reviews The Saboteur

The scene is a tavern, modest if not danky. Theres a clear tense division at the bar, one end a group of french, the other two irishmen. Everything goes well until a certain topic runs foul and a brutal, but fecking brilliant, brawl ensues. Now enough about the aftermath of the world cup qualifiers, let’s talk about Pandemic’s swansong; The Saboteur.

Set in World War II during the days when Germany held Paris under occupation, in a world map where Belgium doesn’t exist apparently. The game follows Sean Devlin, an Irish mechanic who escaped Ireland to seek a  new life in France as a Grand Prix racer. I know, totally random right? Correction, seems ol’ Sean is based on real life war hero William Grover-Williams. Well the race car driver turned spy part at least, haven’t a notion where the whole irish thing came in. Oh well, any break from an American marine is ok in my books.

The premise is very tempting, you roam Paris & other locations striking at the oppressing Nazi forces. As you do this Sean’s actions will eventually inspire the city to rebel. This is visible by the game’s ‘Will to Fight’ mechanic (Shortened to WtF for lols). When a part of the city is uninspired, it’s present in black & white noir esque visuals. In this state the people in the area are cowardly, scared and useless. However with a few well placed explosives, the area literally comes to life. Colour bleeds back into the buildings and flora, and the people rise up with new steel. This impacts gameplay and the world around you in many ways. For small example, when in Black/White the Nazi’s can push the civilians around and they will simply cry about it. When the area is inspired, the civilians push back when shoved and even rely behind Sean when he’s in bother.

The visuals in the game have me divided, the contrasting colour schemes are brilliant as the highlight the impact hat Sean makes and sets a perfect tone for the game environment. The actual graphics themselves however are something I would simply class as ‘above average’. The textures and animation somehow remind me of inFamous, but less tuned and more clunky. Although ‘remarkably’ any cutscene involving a woman’s knockers is presenting in full detail. Little bored at the office maybe.

The story of the game isn’t as straight forward as you’d think. It’s not just a vengeance story, although that is Sean’s primary motivation throughout the game. The first few hours are all trivially standard bar one or two impressive moments, but then things start to unravel and the whole things becomes more complicated, if not too complicated. Sean is after a German SS Colonel, the resistance want to free Paris, the SOE want…something, and every faction from every corner of France seems to think that the Irish have some sort of fecking magic to make all their problems go away. I bloody wish we did!

Maybe it’s the accent? Oh yeah about that. Sean’s voice actor Robin Atkin Downes, who’s most recent work as Tenzin in Uncharted 2 gave me SERIOUS doubts about his ability to impose an Irish accent, did a decent job. I say decent, he botched up a few times but never in the actual cutscenes or serious lines. The humour is there, from the savy sarcasm to the Derry hardliners. However, he doesn’t sound like a real Irishman but I will give the man credit as it is very hard unless you actually are Irish.

Now for the meaty make or break part, how it handles. I’m gonna get this out of the way and say that the brawling/melee system is totally buggered. I’ve never seen such a clunky or alarmingly pathetic fisticuffs bout in a game. They couldn’t even have just gone with a simple square button sequence like Uncharted, or even just a freaking square button masher! Instead they have this dodgy hold L1, then press buttons to attack. This has resulted in several moments when I simply wanted to remain incognito, and instead set off the alarm for simply putting my dukes up to a innocent wall or flower pot or something else that’s stupidly in-offensive. 

Everything else however, is surprisingly well done. The alarm system is a mix up of GTA area based copper chases & Assassin’s Creed’s retreat & hide mechanic. Only both of them do them better than the Saboteur. The gun-fights are always large, because as soon as you use a gun your likely to set off an alarm, and usually fun. It’s simple over the shoulder mayhem where surprisingly cheesy blood effects make it even better. There’s also a sort of character development here too, aside unlocking more guns. There called ‘perks’ and they essentially make Sean better at whatever you happen to do the most. Perks work like challenges, such as kill a certain number of Nazi generals with stealth or race around the city, and they improve things like his aim and allow him to use more hiding spots. There’s an extremely large amount of things to do, i.e blow up, and of course theres a cabaret & bar open whenever that takes your fancy. There difficulty in the game with four levels to pick, and even easy ain’t no piece o’ piss, and a couple of racing missions plus a lot of cars & guns to faff about with.

It’s a solid game, no matter what I expected I was always going to be disappointed with this being Pandemic’s final alleged outing. I expected more, but I’m not unhappy with what I got. Theres plenty to do with many options in the game, but unfortunetly nuking Paris isn’t one of them (Sad face). Rent it, you could learn to love the game and it’ll make a great buy, or you won’t and in that case you won’t have paid full price. Whatever you do, I can give you the Irishman & Resumeplay guarantee that it’s alot better than buying Tony Hawk’s Ride. (Das ist fact ein reader!)

So ends my year long obsession with EA’s Saboteur (On my 18th birthday ironically).

Tags: PC PS3 review The Saboteur xbox360