Coming back to the quieter life of the midlands rejuvinated my old past time hobby of console gaming. So after seeing this particular game from an old work-colleagues apartment, I picked it up from the local GAME store.
I've got a feeling that this game has been totally underrated and probably labelled as Grand Theft Auto with a modded skin of an Irishman and Nazi's. Well I can't deny that that would be the easiest way for me to describe it to other gamers, however I give kudos to Pandemic because this game has quite good to play on my regular evening basis. Here's a trailer to give you a taste of the game:
I liked the fact that you could literally go anywhere you wanted. Climb anywhere, run anywhere, there's a mass amount of land and sea to explore which just makes the world of Saboteur a great French playground. It's nice that if you see the Eiffle Tower far away that you can actually head to it's direction to see the real thing!
I even swam to the edges of the sea (to see how far I could get - I was actually curious to see if there'd be any French coastal sharks waiting to chomp my leg off), eventually swimming past sea mines they will kill your main character - but that's okay, curiosity killed the cat after all. There's plenty of activity, people to harass and things to blow up inland before you'll even think about wanting to take a swim.
Here's a little justification the games design team, I more often did choose to jack cars, drive straight in the direction of the arrow (usually in the center of my screen), knock down fences, dump cars where I couldn't get past stone walls, climb the walls, run across fields, swim, etc etc. There's a lot of scenary, hidden mini games and just running through cities, country sides, heavily armed forts, railroads, wilderness to empty roads. Along the way there were a lot of nice scenary to be seen (which I know won't ever be seen unless players go outside the box once in a while).
The characters, the setting, the dialogue, it's all put together nicely. Sean Devlin (our Irishman protagonist) carries a lot of funny little speeches, you'd warm up to this character pretty quickly. Drastic colour-scheme changes between Nazi and Resistance influenced territory capture the atmosphere of the oppressed and the happier worked well. Having the power of the red colours highlighted in the black and white morbid areas really gave me a sense of warning and awareness of the Nazi Regime.
I feel the story cut-short at the end but then I guess, what is there left to tell? Maybe my attachment to Sean wanted me to see one of those '10 years later' kind of FMV endings. Still the main plot of the story - divided up in portions that you can choose to play whenever you wanted - were good enough for keeping me excited and gripped. Yes there's nice freedom to the game, although the story is underlying in a good side - you can run around with your own fancy of good or bad morals. It was pretty interesting to see how much havoc you can wreak in a town, how aggressive can you get the army to be when you start gunning people, blowing tanks up, shooting down airships and so on!
TinyShaz recommends the gamers to play Saboteur and it feels a little sad to hear some people got this and never finished it or got bored. It's well put together and deserves credit to bring gamers a new fictional historic theme - I'd say at least 8.5/10.
Lastly I'm going to leave you with a bundle of video recorded amusements, these are the things that I managed to find during my gameplay. Some people will think I've carried my previous work at SEGA into my personal gaming - It's just my natural gaming habits, I've always been a curious kid. So here are the funny sides to Saboteur (obviously some that they wouldn't want you to see) - Pandemic needed me in their QA Team! Hehe - give me a job!
Okay this first one isn't a bug - more of just amusement at how Cows are pieced together and my sense of gaming cruelty. Come get me virtual RSPCA!
Poor lady hangs herself from the ceiling, she's not proud of her job.
I wanted Sean to set a bomb on a tower but he kept jittering on the spot, looking like he was having a ...
I kept dropping my phone at this point (sorry!) but you can see glimpses of a soldier running in the air!
* One of the best random bunch of bugs in one video! - A.I stuck inside a pillar, Nazi soldiers spawning on a road before me, wierd teleportation when entering and exiting a car!
* SPOILER ALERT* Don't watch this last one if you intend to finish the game or want to play it!
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