The Saboteur

The Saboteur could have been one of the year’s most impressive games. Sadly, Pandemic tries to do too much, and players are left with a game that never becomes more than the sum of its parts.

A new example of a great concept poorly executed. The Saboteur could be a surprisingly good sandbox if Pandemic just finished it. This game has neat ideas and the potential for being funny, but its gameplay suffers because of its weak development.

This vision of nazi-occupied France is an interesting proposal but has some flaws in its conception.

There’s an abundance of things to see and do, and some great moments are present; however, they’re too few and the sense of missed opportunity too strong to make a convincing recommendation.

The Saboteur delivers some good fun with the atmosphere of its beautiful setting. On the other hand, gameplay could disappoint demanding players, used to higher quality productions. If you like free roaming and Paris, you should at least give it a try.

The Saboteur is another victim of the hype fever that nowadays some titles in development use to suffer. The historical context is very appealing, aesthetics and artistic production are well worked and it's a hooking story. It's even an attractive proposal to mix different genres to create a personal style, but fails to make a fully enjoyable adventure.

The Saboteur had potential, but is let down by a weak combat mechanic and some terrible stealth/AI issues.

It could have been much better, but also much worse. You won't regret giving this game an opportunity.

A solid swansong for a struggling developer. It vastly improves over Mercenaries 2 with a lot of enjoyable, explosive combat and a fantastic visual style. The characters and story leave a lot to be desired but it’s a fun ride and a cool take on the World War II genre.

Pandemic's effort is commendable, but The Saboteur feels like it had a saboteur of its own lurking in the code. No matter how many times I came back to The Saboteur, or how badly I wanted to love the game, the unrefined gameplay became less, and less tolerable.

A highly enjoyable game in its own right and it succeeds at being pure, rollicking entertainment. Players who are prepared to look past its derivative gameplay, will find its silly characters, ridiculous plot and even some of its technical flaws may just be part of the reason they continue playing it long after the first couple of hours have passed by.

Great visuals, unique WWII-era storytelling, and explode-and-run fun made me love the game, but the shooting, driving, climbing, and stealth gameplay made me want to choke myself. The game improves with time and is enjoyable, overall.

If the setting, style and attitude win you over, the gammy mechanics are that much easier to bear. [Issue#54, p.78]

As soon as you hit the city, the game's pace drops off, and the sub-par graphics and poor controls steadily bog down an otherwise terrific idea.

The limited variety of each type of weapon, the fact that Nazis can see through disguises too easily, the lack of auto-targeting for melee combat, and destroying Nazi property with dynamite over and over again does make boredom set in faster than it should.

The Saboteur, despite technical and gameplay issues, is a funny game that will carry the player in a wonderful version of occupied Paris, in the shoes of a rude Irishman in search of brutal revenge.

The Saboteur can be both addictive and engaging, but also rather stale, all at the same time.

A decent idea that falls short for a variety of eminently fixable reasons. [Feb 2010, p.80]

Unfortunately the reality is something that harks back to the darker days of open world games, its individual elements uninspiring and its story a poor patchwork of clichés sewn together with juvenile smut and swearing - and it's a melancholy swansong for the once brilliant Pandemic.

Not half as bad as the limp first few hours suggest. It's perhaps not the greatest company epitaph in the world but, as Devlin might say, while throwing himself out of a speeding car, knocking back a slug o' the good stuff and mashing a Nazi's head in with one punch: "It coulda been a lot worse."

But it’s a big game best taken in small doses: An hour or two of clamber up the side of a building, snipe some guys, drive like hell, lather, rinse, repeat was plenty. Any more than that and I started to think maybe the Nazis could just have France, if they wanted it so bad.

Great script but a mediocre game.

But while the combat and destruction portions of playing as the Saboteur are fun, the story and effect you have on the world are disappointingly underdeveloped.

But The Saboteur's gameplay systems never let you forget that you are playing a game, and the nakedness of the underlying machinery is one of the game's greatest shortcomings.

The Saboteur could have been excellent. It has presentation, usually solid mechanics, characters that you are at least interested in if not actually engaged by, and things look pretty when they explode. However, the simply unforgivable control and climbing mechanic is justtoo hard to get past - constantly interfering with your game to the point of swearing and projectile gamepads.

A beautiful but flawed farewell. [Issue#91, p.112]

The Saboteur had a lot of potential thanks to the unique setting, but this hasn’t resulted in a good game. The story never gets really interesting and the gameplay is too bare-bones to really make an impression. Not a great farewell for Pandemic Studios.

As it is, nothing really separates it and makes it unique. Despite the cool setting, this is by the numbers game design that you’ve played a million times before.