POSTED 20/1/10


THE SABOTEUR

Electronic Arts
PS3 (also on Xbox 360)

“I hate Illinois Nazis.” – Jake Blues, The Blues Brothers.

“I fuckin’ hate fuckin’ Paris fuckin’ Nazis.” – Sean Devlin, The Saboteur.*

Movies tell us that war is hell. It’s also rather drab judging by The Saboteur, an open world romp set in WWII Nazi-occupied France which takes a lot of cues from Grand Theft Auto IV, mixes them in with a bit of Assassin’s Creediness and adds a dash of De Blob.

Yeah, cool – huh? Yes, De Blob, one of the acest Wii titles ever. For there’s a great game mechanic at play in that Nazi-held areas are all colourless and blah, whilst those that have gone the ‘vive le résistance!’ route have had their joi de couleur restored.

The player takes control of Sean Devlin, a toilet block-mouthed (potties aren’t nearly of a grand enough scale to suffice here) ex-racing driver who’s hanging out in Paris looking for somebody to punch.

Recruited by Le Résistance, he’s soon running around beating up unsuspecting Nazis, blowing up their supply dumps, torching their merch and driving up a storm in clunky old ’40s mobiles to restore that couleur. There are stealth manoeuvres, but they’re not nearly as much fun.

Whilst not possessing the magnitude of GTAIV, The Saboteur shares a similar gaming vibe. The swansong of Aussie developers Pandemic, at times it’s easy to think that given a little extra time before their life support was yanked by EA may have resulted in a masterpiece.

Instead, The Saboteur is good, but with rough edges. Kind of like Sean, we guess.

* Please Note: Quote may actually be completely made up.

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