Saboteur, the last game made by Pandemic Studio, now officially closed down as the next victim of EA’s long history of destruction of talented game development studios, just does not deserve all the hate from reviewers of prominent sites. To put it frankly, we have never liked any one game Pandemic has created so far during the years so we were oblivious when we heard of its demise. Now putting our hands on Pandemic’s swan song achievement of the combination of art and game we were awed by how much we managed to enjoy the game, despite all the hate out there, and especially because of the bad reviews, and that it had virtually no hype and advertising before its release, now the game is lodged in our minds firmly and will probably never let go for a long time. We admit, we are sad to see the collapse of Pandemic, because they have finally crafted something we love.
I don’t think most reviewers out there actually know how to review games properly. Gameplay-wise, there is nothing new in Saboteur — it is a sandbox game just like any other in its genre — a GTA clone. As for the setting, it is a little bit more unusual as you play an Irish mechanic/racer turns unlikely saboteur/assassin/revolutionist in World War II Paris during the Nazi occupation, inspired by a true story. If we wanted to rate this game on originality, it would rank quite low, but so would games like our favorite Infamous. In this game you might as well be playing Assassin’s Creed, well, a more modern version of an Assassin stuck in a Mafia-like GTA sandbox world, since most of your missions are going to be assassinations anyway and there are actually viewpoints for you to climb and view the city. I think all the bad reviews come from the slightly worse control than it should have been but frankly we found no problems getting along with the gameplay. To us, the gameplay gets in the way of telling the story no matter how good the gameplay is, so to fault Saboteur because punching someone felt slightly more awkward than it should be, it is not being fair to the game. Sure the game has crashed and thrown us to unintentional deaths or getting stuck between walls quite a number of times, but the dense frequency of the checkpoints made repeating short sections of the game enjoyable, much more so than having to drive a long way and repeat the whole first half of the mission like previous GTA titles, even if the game’s control responded better. There’s a lot of sections where the protagonist had to scale buildings and towers, just like in Assassin’s Creed; but strangely, as non-nimble and non-superhuman as Sean was compared to Ezio or Altair, I was never frustrated with the climbing because the game never made me leap to my death accidentally, which Assassin’s Creed did frequently, more so than having the player perform assassinations.
Taking the context of the gameplay outside of Saboteur, it becomes something like an artistic masterpiece, a virtuoso black and white film that tells a story of struggle, passion, remorse, rebellion, through its expert use of sparse and distinct colors within its gray world — and you soon find out that colors mean something — freedom, inspiration, paradise — whatever floats your boat. Maybe Saboteur will remind you of Sin City and MadWorld (the wii game we never played), but it ends up as something original, even as the sum of all things it plagiarized (ahem, drew inspiration is probably a better word). And its witty repartee yet sarcastic but well-written dialog and tightly-paced plot will capture your full attention as you play the game and get immersed in the world
At the end of the day, Saboteur’s control doesn’t flow as flawlessly as a game like Infamous, but we can’t recommend it any less, for it is crafted with heart and love of making a true visionary piece of art that carries within the soul of its narrative, and we certainly enjoyed our tour through the quiet yet treacherous Paris with its inviting brothels and sexy French accents much better than the countless rendition of the fictional Liberty City and its constant rivalry of street gangs, no matter how resplendent it was with pointless distracting activities that are supposed to be fun.
Confession: I never climbed the Eiffel Tower a few years back during my trip to Paris because of my impatience for the long queue, who’d have known I’d get a 2nd chance in a video game. I didn’t go into the Cabaret either but took a photo right in front of it, and I am pretty sure the Cabaret in Saboteur is infinitely more interesting than the real half-deserted one in Paris.
