The Saboteur is the swansong of the incredibly talented Pandemic Studios before being shuttered by the always accommodating and fun EA. Most notable for the original Star Wars: Battlefront games, as well as Destroy All Humans 1 & 2 and Mercenaries 1 & 2, The Saboteur definitely feels like Pandemic playing to their strengths once again, which is fitting as both a standalone game from them as well as their swansong.
The Saboteur definitely fits nicely into that eighth-gen open-world sandbox framework that was popular post-GTA 4, a la Sleeping Dogs and Assassin's Creed 2. The latter title is also a fitting comparison given that The Saboteur seems to borrow a lot of its ideas and their implementation from the Assassin's Creed games, down to the social stealth elements and parkour.
However, despite being an inspired approach to a sandbox game from a clearly talented team, overall The Saboteur can be best summed up as being "more than the sum of its parts". The art direction, voice acting, soundtrack, and gameplay concepts are great. However, the implementation of those individual gameplay concepts is where it stops short of being a cohesive package.
To elaborate, each of its individual gameplay elements can be best described as being "okay". None of them, from driving, shooting, parkour, melee to especially its stealth systems feel satisfying in isolation with too many jarring little details stopping them from being seamless and fun to play around with.
To use an example, stealth involves your usual sneaking but on top of that, you can wear disguises to try and enter enemy bases. This takes the form of a little cone of suspicion that gets wider depending on what actions you're doing (sprinting, climbing, etc), so you generally have to play it cool at all times. That would be fine if not for the fact that if and when you get caught and your suspicion meter fills, the knockout or stealth attack prompts don't always appear, and when they do, you only have a split second to hit them before the alarm is blown. From that point, you can either go through the tedium of escaping or shooting your way out or just reload the last checkpoint.
It gets to a point where you're honestly better just gunning it straight for the objective and not even bothering with stealth or enemies.
Each facet of The Saboteur's gameplay is like this, with hinky little details that impede the game from being fun. However, there definitely are times, particularly during the big story missions when each of these individually okay aspects come together to make things cinematic and fun, especially with the soundtrack in the background.
Again, the stuff that's great is great. The art direction in particular, with the world being black and white with specific splotches of color in Nazi-occupied areas and then becoming fully color once you've liberated them. The story is also a decent pulpy WW2 spy thriller adventure propped up by some great voice acting, especially from the great Robin Atkin Downes as lead Sean Devlin.
Despite the gameplay being largely disappointing overall, really The Saboteur is still worth playing for some good eighth-gen fun and adventure by a talented team that was clearly too good for EA and didn't get the respect they deserved, as per usual.
6/10
The Saboteur definitely fits nicely into that eighth-gen open-world sandbox framework that was popular post-GTA 4, a la Sleeping Dogs and Assassin's Creed 2. The latter title is also a fitting comparison given that The Saboteur seems to borrow a lot of its ideas and their implementation from the Assassin's Creed games, down to the social stealth elements and parkour.
However, despite being an inspired approach to a sandbox game from a clearly talented team, overall The Saboteur can be best summed up as being "more than the sum of its parts". The art direction, voice acting, soundtrack, and gameplay concepts are great. However, the implementation of those individual gameplay concepts is where it stops short of being a cohesive package.
To elaborate, each of its individual gameplay elements can be best described as being "okay". None of them, from driving, shooting, parkour, melee to especially its stealth systems feel satisfying in isolation with too many jarring little details stopping them from being seamless and fun to play around with.
To use an example, stealth involves your usual sneaking but on top of that, you can wear disguises to try and enter enemy bases. This takes the form of a little cone of suspicion that gets wider depending on what actions you're doing (sprinting, climbing, etc), so you generally have to play it cool at all times. That would be fine if not for the fact that if and when you get caught and your suspicion meter fills, the knockout or stealth attack prompts don't always appear, and when they do, you only have a split second to hit them before the alarm is blown. From that point, you can either go through the tedium of escaping or shooting your way out or just reload the last checkpoint.
It gets to a point where you're honestly better just gunning it straight for the objective and not even bothering with stealth or enemies.
Each facet of The Saboteur's gameplay is like this, with hinky little details that impede the game from being fun. However, there definitely are times, particularly during the big story missions when each of these individually okay aspects come together to make things cinematic and fun, especially with the soundtrack in the background.
Again, the stuff that's great is great. The art direction in particular, with the world being black and white with specific splotches of color in Nazi-occupied areas and then becoming fully color once you've liberated them. The story is also a decent pulpy WW2 spy thriller adventure propped up by some great voice acting, especially from the great Robin Atkin Downes as lead Sean Devlin.
Despite the gameplay being largely disappointing overall, really The Saboteur is still worth playing for some good eighth-gen fun and adventure by a talented team that was clearly too good for EA and didn't get the respect they deserved, as per usual.
6/10