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Written by Tarth
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Sunday, 29 August 2010 11:33 |
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The French Resistance adopts an Irish attitude
The Saboteur from Pandemic brings the player to a sexy gritty WWII version of Paris, where the fledgling resistance is just getting on its feet. And what kind of help do they need? An edgy, vengeance filled Irishman. Despite the oddity of an Irishman in the French Resistance, Pandemic has created a fun sandbox game.
Saboteur has many traits that I enjoyed. It is colorful and full of life and nearly everything is able to be interacted with in some form. This ranges from being able to steal a myriad number of cars, to talking to burlesque dancers at a cabaret. Many of the backdrops are incredibly ornate. A particular feature I enjoy is the use of color; occupied parts of Paris are shown in drab rainy black and white tones, while liberated ones are shown in full color. This game is reminiscent of Crackdown in many ways. This is by no means a bad thing. Sean (our protagonist) is able to climb like a spider over almost every building you can see, providing a stealthy mode of transport and better vantage points for many of the missions. The rooftops contain hidey holes to escape from Nazis, supplies, and many objects to destroy.
Objectives in Saboteur are varied and in some cases incredibly long. The story is mediocre really, a typical vengeance tale with interspersed love interests. It is not surprising that that the story objectives were relatively short compared to all the side objectives of the game. This brings me to the most time consuming, and a bittersweet portion of the game; the free play objectives. These include killing generals and blowing up Nazi emplacements. My favorite emplacement being the anti-aircraft guns which you can take over and start raining havoc down upon the zeppelin in the sky, and ins some cases ground troops and other emplacements. Destroying Nazi property is also how you make money when not doing story objectives. I took great joy in blowing up a squad of Nazis who were guarding a V2 rocket right as they sounded an alarm that I was hiding in the bushes. Being a racer is part of the story, so of course there are going to be side missions that include racing, as well as later in the story too. The Nazi drivers are incredibly more skilled than all the other drivers too, making them the only real challenge.
Saboteur is fast driving, Nazi killing, and zeppelin shooting good time. From start to finish your Sean is the over the top macho Irish stereotype, probably too over the top. With that being said I will say that it was a fun time playing through the story, and the ending was quite macabre. Saboteur will be a game I find myself playing for quite some time just for fun. Saboteur is worth buying and if you like a good sandbox game will provide you with days of enjoyment.
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System: |
Xbox 360
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| Genre: |
3rd-Person Action
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| Experience: |
Finished the main storyline
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