The Saboteur Review: Feckin' Bombshell

Pandemic Studios, my old friends. This now defunct game design studio is responsible for the Army Men series, Full Spectrum Warrior, and the original Star Wars Battlefront. Pandemic Studios was bought out by EA games in 2009-ish then promptly put to work on this masterpiece as their final project. Once their last title, The Saboteur, was completed EA then axed every Pandemic employee, and closed down the studio. EA has a knack for buying up smaller companies, destroying them, and then continuing along like nothing ever happened (stopkillinggames.com).

Anyway, The Saboteur is loosely based on a real-life historical figure from World War II Europe. There "was" an Irish mechanic that became a racer, that joined the French Resistance and blew stuff up. It didn't exactly happen the way it is portrayed in this game, but it is fairly close. I believe what he ended up breaking was a Nazi heavy water plant, not a nuclear weapon factory. Still quite the feat, and still important historically. Now, to go over my Big 4.

Gameplay is smooth and fast, which is not easy to do. Unlimited spring being available makes the game feel faster and give the player options to play their way. Gunplay is loose and a bit arcade-ey but satisfactory and fun. The unarmed combat is plenty for a game like this that doesn't heavily rely on it, but is needed for the disguise mechanic. Donning the uniform of an enemy combatant gives Sean the ability to sneak in to enemy territory, and is such a brilliant feature to add! The driving and selection of cars and other old-timey vehicles is incredible and never gets old. Every vehicle and weapon has a character of it's own and all feel like they are supposed to be there. Gameplay is overall excellent, not much to do to actually improve on it.

The audio/soundtrack of this game is phenomenal. Being a period piece, in the middle of World War II, the soundtrack is mainly blues, jazz, and classical orchestral pieces. There is very little fat on any track I was hearing, they are all professionally recorded and performed by experts in their artistic craft and really place you smack-dab in the mindset of folks of this era, even though they are modern rendition of older songs but we can let that slide. Some guns sort of lack a bountiful bass that would be an improvement, but at the same time, some of the guns sound great. Also, the gunfire and explosives are not too loud to take away from the conversations or the story. Audio design is acceptable, the soundtrack (for my proclivities) is fantastic.

The art style here is so good, especially for its time. The Saboteur looks great even by modern standards. Even without my Reshader program, there is a slight comic book or cell shaded quality to the graphics that add a lot to the overall presentation. The game being in black and white or monochrome color scheme until the area of France is liberated is genius game design. And what really drives it home are the bright colors this game brings. 2009 was around the time in game history that washed out browns and greys color schemes were becoming very popular with games like Fallout 3 and New Vegas, Call of Duties, and Spec Ops The Line, etc. I never liked that trend and I longed for the days of bright colors contrasted hard by the black and white of unliberated France, like in this game. I wondered for years after playing this title in 2009 why more games didn't like bright blues and oranges and colors in games. If I were scoring, the art style of The Saboteur receives my highest score possible.

The writing and story is nothing special. It's a box-standard vendetta ride with some cool historical missions thrown in. I like the Catholic overtones, I like the trash talking from Jules and Sean and Father Dennis. Santos being the traitor near the end of the game was actually a legitimately good twist, I must say I did not see that coming. Other than that, most of the main characters are fairly unlikeable other than Sean, Skylar, and Vittore and maybe Bishop. Everyone else is too whiney or too French to be memorable and impactful characters. Writing and story are passable, but just barely.

To conclude, if you are playing this game it's not for the writing/story, it is for the art style and gameplay. It is literally GTA in 1940's France fighting the Nazis. That is a home run of an idea for a game and it would be tough to mess it up. That being said, this is a grand slam, in other words, this game is better than it sounds. I will never play GTA again after learning that this game exists. The art is great to look at, every single scene pops and it's just beautiful! The soundtrack and audio design places you right in the time period and in the center of the action. A cinematic title like this can only benefit from great gameplay, which this title delivers, and then some! And the writing, story, and characters are just kinda there. This is a video ass video game, check it out.