The Saboteur™

The Saboteur puts you in the shoes of Sean Devlin, an irish ex-race car driver turned reluctant freedom fighter for france. The story is honestly nothing to speak of. It's nothing but framework. It's all about freeing Paris (and it's surroundings) from the shadow of nazi occupation. Quite literally so, as everything under their control is drenched in black and white, with only the lights and and the symbols of both opression and freedom (red and blue) in color. Added to that is the constant rain and the darkend sky as if it's always night, creating a very interesting mood. I LOVE this idea. And it is up to you to end that night. Infiltrate compounds either with the help of disguises, parkour or the very straight forward method of gunning your way in, destroy enemy placements with the help of some good old dynamite, kill the leaders and escape the chaos you create to do it all over again. This mixture of Assassins Creed and Just Cause or Far Cry does hold up pretty well. But it goes on for far too long and the world offers you a bit of side content like car collecting, some perk grinding, one bare bones mini game and a dash of classic 2000's fan service. But none of these things are that fleshed out or fun. It's a shame that outside the story the racer aspect of Devlin is heavily underutilized. So is the ingame currency. After a certain point there is nothing you could spent it. Ammunition aside. It's strange. This game seems both unique but also lackluster. Buy it you wanna kick some nazi ass. It offers you plenty in that regard.

It is a beautiful recreation of paris during WWII. The story is engaging. Unfortunately, the difficulty varies too much. Some missions are very easy and others are impossible. It takes away from the story to spend an hour hitting reentry for the same mission.

Despite its age this game still holds up to this day. Characters and story are fun. The gameplay is a mix of "GTA" or "Mafia" and "Assassin's Creed." Gunplay and stealth have some room for improvement, but still get a passing grade. Being able to customize your vehicles would've been nice, but likely wouldn't be period-accurate. Fast travel (at least between hideouts) would've been nice too. The worst part of this game is probably the checkpoint-based save system that stores the last completed mission. And the (thankfully rare) open battles where you have to protect an NPC. Because these dimwits don't know how to NOT STAND OUT IN THE F*CKING OPEN. I wouldn't agree that some of the missions are too hard (at least on normal difficulty), but sometimes the game is not very clear about how it wants you to tackle a particular mission. Like the attack on Doppelsieg for instance. I kept dying over and over there until I realized that I should just drive past the Nazi forces and avoid combat entirely until I'm inside the compound. Definitely recommended. Now I only wish someone would make something like this as a proper open world RPG.

The swan song of Pandemic Studios. They always made fun games (Battlefront being my favorites). What you've got here combines some of Pandemic's own Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction (blow lots of stuff up, get money from said explosions to buy more explosives, repeat), a little Grand Theft Auto (set in am open world sandbox of a real world city, allowing you to steal various vehicles and raise your wanted level) and a touch of Assassin's Creed (climb buildings, assassinate targets, blend in with disguises). And look, it's a little clunky in the execution here and there; the open world sandbox, while packed with stuff to blow up, isn't as rich or lifelike as some games even from it's own time. The stealth can fall apart pretty quickly, and then you just have to blow everyone to hell. The story's merely alright, neither offensive nor particularly engaging. But I'm 11 hours in and still want to unlock more ways to blow up Nazis (or shoot them, or shank them, or run them over--the possibilities never stop being fun, and the game incentivizes diversity). It's not terribly deep but the core mechanics are satisfying. Well worth the price of admission.

Most aspects of the game feel unfinished or underbaked. But honestly it's so forcefully charming in it's execution and the visuals are so beautiful that I love spending time in the game anyway. It definitely deserves it's cult classic status but like all things that are cult classics, thats because they aren't fully realized and some of the lifting about what the game could have been is done by your imagination. But it is worth the time and like all great things it amounts to something greater than the sum of it's parts. The game is currently playable at 1080p without compromise, above that and you won't be able to see the perks screen or use map without crashing the game. Sometimes the video settings exe will work and sometimes it won't, but if it doesn't work for you, just navigate to it's config file in your documents and you can set stuff up there.