The title does not say it all.

The Saboteur is a third person shooter/adventure game that takes place in Nazi occupied Paris in the early 1940s. You play as Irish race car driver Sean Devlin who, after a series of unfortunate events related to Nazis, decides to start raising hell and kicking Nazi ass in the city of Paris. If those two sentences alone haven’t convinced you to try out the game then you’re probably a woman or not human; just look at the words “Irish race car driver” and “kicking Nazi ass.” It doesn’t get much better than that.

Let me just reiterate that: Irish race car driver who kills Nazis. Just think about that for a while.

Maybe you’re thinking, “Well anyone can make a game about Nazis and Irishmen,” and that’s true. But this game was made by an amazing team known as Pandemic, so with the storyline combined it’s, naturally, awesome. Despite the fact that EA fired every living creature in Pandemic studios, this last game they produced is an amazing one. And the fact that EA fired Pandemic makes the game even more enjoyable to play, simply because you’re spiting EA every time you play for it. As a matter of fact, if Pandemic hadn’t been liquidated, I’d recommend buying this game, but since they were axed they probably don’t get any royalties for this so I suggest creatively acquiring it.

Now let’s get back to the game itself. As I said, Pandemic did a great job with the content, the characters and even the storyline (compared to most other games nowadays). The voice acting is pretty good, the characters are all very unique and most of them are pretty interesting. And the fact that there are interesting characters is pretty impressive, considering the fact that the main character is a tough-as-nails Irish race car driver who slaughters Nazis in his spare time – it’s hard to compete with that, but Pandemic does it.

The game does have quite a few anachronistic elements to it, but they work to further immerse you in the world of 1940s Paris. Pandemic doesn’t try to hide their historically inappropriate elements in the game, but rather they use them to enhance the gameplay.  Level design is also very convincing, and it’s backed up by the system varying between color and black and white, depending on which areas of the map have been cleansed of Nazi occupation. Aiding the level design is the game’s soundtrack – an excellent compilation of old music and some newer music that further immerses the player in 1940s Paris. (Oh, I forgot to mention that one of the central locations in the game is a French nightclub with plenty of scantily clad French girls walking around – a nice way for an Irish Nazi killer to end the day.)

After playing this game, you’ll likely be wishing Pandemic was still around to make a sequel. No other game has so excellently pulled off such a badass character in a badass setting, while staying unique at the same time. And underlying everything I just mentioned is the fact that the game is open world, adding a great sense of freedom to everything else. The downsides to the game are rather minor. The soundtrack is a little small, but the music is pretty good so it’s not too noticeable. Also, some of the animations are a bit off sometimes, but it’s only in the cutscenes, making it pretty irrelevant. Overall, I recommend getting this game, maybe even buying it if you felt like it.

Final score: 9/10.

Saboteur Thread on OB Forum

Saboteur Official Website