Thumbs Up:

Great color art scheme with good animations based upon true story.

Thumbs Down:

Borrowed stories from previous games.

Inside The Trunk:

• Price range: $42  – $59.95
• Publisher: EA
• Developer: Pandemic Studios
• Genre: Action and Adventure
• ESRB Rating: Mature 17+
• Platform – PS3, Xbox 360, PC
• System Requirements:
  • Processor-Core 2 Duo 2.4GHz, AMD Athlon 64X2 Dual Core 4400+ (AMD). Intel Core 2 Quad Q6580 3.0 GHz, AMD Phenom 9500 Quad Core.
  • Graphics Card – nVIDIA GeForce 7800GIX with 256MB Video RAM or ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro or Radeon HD 3800 Series
  • Sound – Directx 9c complaint sound
  • RAM – 3 GB and Hard Disk Space 7GB

The Whiz Kid Speaks:

The Sabotuer is a game based on Word War II like other dozen games, which are good recipe for boredom. However, The Saboteur is not a war game otherwise it is a story of personal vengeance about an incident happens in Paris during Word War II. This game includes 1940s trappings, old fashioned weapons, painful opponent and monotonous setting but it has only a few common with Word War II. The game is free roaming adventure game with a mission structure like that of Grand Theft Auto. Once we cover the clash between real war and over the top portrayal, The Saboteur seems to be a good time. The release of this game is one of the good surprises of 2009.

The Sabotuer games claims to be based on a true story revolving around Irishman racing car driver, Sean Devlin who accidentally gets involved in the struggle between Nazis and British Government and then forced to flee to Paris after the war breaks out. In Paris, Sean occupied himself in drink and bitter hatred of the Third Reich. The Sabotuer starts his mission to avenge the life of his best friend at the hands of a top Getaspo Agent, a high-ranking Nazi Officer, Kurt Dierker. In this way, he started his career as The Sabotuer and becomes prime recruitment material for the French Resistance. He takes up the German artillery and exhibit strange ability to regenerate his health like Wolverine X-man. Along the way, he gets caught up in Parisian resistance and simultaneously chain smokes his way towards ridding Paris of the Nazis.

The story does not depict the devil-may-care nature of the action. The cutscenes, documenting the terror that the Nazis are exerting on Paris, are dripped with drama. We found missions include mostly infiltrate, destroy and kill variety which shows fair usage of Asassin Creed Style platform.

The Saboteur plot starts with opening cutscene which seems uninspired and forced and an attempt to explain the premise quickly. The plot is no philosophical, it is placed wonderfully and feels like classic action movie.

Sean Devlin has to settle the score with the invading Nazi Army by finding and filling Dierker but he has to inspire the French people of occupied France. His home city is occupied by the cruel Nazi forces which makes the brief more personal. His finest efforts cannot save the life of his best friend and his friend got murdered in front of his eyes by same Nazi Officer.

Sean Devlin might be upset on this incident but as soon as he crack 10th whiskey in j ust few sentences, he turns into an Irish caricature. We found that each new cutscene comes with the dark news from the war front which works as fire to Sean’s quest.

The story is well done despite some visual discrepancies during the cutscenes. The dramatic tale highlights the harsh disconnect between depressing reality and ridiculous action. The user is able to deal the mission within multiple ways. We can either go all guns blazing or throw on a Nazi uniform and see how far the stealthy approach takes you. We found the gun play exciting but not perfect. The Hitman inspired stealth works well without being as clinical as specialist stealth titles.

Art Style in The Saboteur is most unique aspect. Nazi controlled areas are ominously dark and gloomy of all color with yellow tinge of window panes at night and red representing Nazi flags, arm bands and control points breaking the monotony of black and white which gives a suffocating and bleak feel for making the actions to free these areas. The colors are beautifully placed to easily show the targets.

Missions are presented in the standard GTAesque by a scarf faced person which is drenched in blue and standing out against the dire background. It clearly takes a clue from Grand Theft Auto because there are numerous missions dotted around Paris to perform sabotage missions. Beside the main mission, there are some side missions of destroying smaller Nazi installments such as sniper towers, radars, AA guns and propaganda speakers. On completing the mission, you will earn traband to buy weapons and ammon at dealers. At a point of time, you are blowing up a chemical factory, assassinating a Nazi general or breaking a rebel leader out of a prison camp. It also includes the interesting perk system to reward for excellence in various areas like snipping, gunplay, kills, driving and stealth.

As we said, the platform is inspired by Assassin’s Creed, stealth is inspired by Hitman and the area liberation system is inspired by inFamous which makes The Sabotuer to be based on borrowed ideas. The implementation of the story on the paper is good. The Sabotuer is not historically accurate; however, voice acting is so bad that it almost feels intentional.

As Sean completes the mission, he “inspires” every section of Paris, the black and white becomes flooded with color to show that Fresh Citizens are more likely to fight back against Nazis and becomes easier to defend against aggressive German Force. The shift of the scene from monochrome to color is so stylish that this game deserves appreciation for pure visual innovation. If you have enjoyed fanatasy aspect of Inglorious Basterds, then The Sabotuer will give you numerous Nazis to project your murderous urges onto.

Nitty Gritty:

The Sabotuer has everything which will be liked. Besides racing, stealth, murder and assassination it has more good like Sabotage (Life Saving), personal revenge and inspiration.

Popularity: 5% [?]