Lots of bad reviews and a turkey award or two seem to be a shout out to Pandemic studios and their efforts to make their mark on the gaming world.
After the lackluster success with Mercenaries 2, Electronic Arts announced the team’s disbandment before their swan song was over. The Saboteur was released in December 2009 to an unanticipated audience and the mainstream media proceeded to trash the game. Granted, the different versions were riddled with bugs and the PC version suffered from crippling compatibility issues with ATi cards, but now that the game has been fixed it’s worth a look and Pandemic deserves a proper obituary, so to speak.
I started the game with very few expectations other than knowing it was a GTA sandbox and featured black and white visuals and some Nazi destruction action in the WWII city of lights: Paris. The controls were familiar, the graphics (on a heavy gaming PC) were excellent, and the soundtrack from the get-go was something others strove for.
The initial impression was that of a pleasant surprise. Sean (the lead) moved, sounded, and behaved in a satisfying way and was quite the capable hero. The cast and voice acting have been thoroughly criticized, but I had no problem living with either. In fact, Inglorious Bastards and Allo’ Allo’ with a dose of seriousness to keep things from getting out of control was good enough for me. Maybe the voice acting isn’t as ear-piercing if the person isn’t German, Irish, French, or British.
The main story is a bit bland but lacks the repetitiveness that most sandbox games suffer from. The main and side missions are varied and feature checkpoints for the bumbling and I can’t recall a mission that I would have hated or been totally frustrated with. This is something that rarely happens with similar open world games and a boon for us less twitch oriented gamers. As the additional mouse + keyboard and Xbox pad work perfectly together, the pad is recommended for driving and the mouse for letting the guns do the talking.
Then we get to the meat, the side activities are just wonderful. There are enough free game activities to keep even the most experienced gamer busy for weeks. Literally hundreds of dots litter the map of Paris when you’re looking for things to do. Blow up fuel depots, flak stations, train bridges, supply trucks, propaganda loudspeakers, watchtowers, assassinate generals and other dignitaries, sneak into bases and silently take out entire platoons of unsuspecting Nazis, steal cars, tanks, motorcycles and hit-or-run vehicles. on rooftops for supplies and vantage points…and this list only scratches the surface of what you can do in Paris if you so choose. To top it off, you gain new abilities (touch of death, for those silent looting from the front, etc.) and gear (weapons, cars, explosives, etc.) by accomplishing certain feats.
The game’s stealth mechanic has been criticized for being a difficult and less efficient method of progressing through the game, but I disagree. If you’re stealthed, I’d say you can expect that you’re not going to push through an enemy base as quickly as if you pick a frontal assault and pull it off. I really enjoyed the puzzle aspect of trying to take a full base without a single alarm and the satisfaction after I’d accomplished it was just overwhelming for me.
And then for the main character of any sandbox game, the city and the surrounding area. I don’t know if you have to be older or what is the reason why Paris spoke to me more than Liberty or Vice City or even the wasteland that I used to have as an insurmountable medium. Maybe the gloomy black and white graphics with red blood and flags with the very atmospheric soundtrack and the return of color when an area was released were the gimmicks that got to me, but I have to say I don’t expect any sandbox to top Paris in the short term. Beautiful, simply beautiful.
92 points and an essential label
Gorgeous:
graphics
Atmosphere, environment and soundtrack
Paris
Abundance of things to do and achieve
stealth and climbing
Cabaret
Donnerwetter:
Brief, but what’s the rush? There is a lot to do in Paris after the main story.
some errors remain
A dash of humor could have saved a lot
Go get this game, it’s already so cheap 😉