The Saboteur - PS3

Yes, it's true. I finished it! After having started it a year ago, I buckled down and stuck to it. It's not that it's a bad game, it's a very enjoyable game. I just got distracted by other shiny things.

Good things about the game for me are nit-picky details:

- Not every window is lit at night. Which makes sense. Why open-world games insist on lighiting every rooms in beyond me. I liked that.

- NPC people walk at different speeds. Some people walk normally, some walk faster with determination, some have a jaunty saunter. It give credibility to them, where usually everyone walks at the same speed and is just a mass of moving blocks.

- People come out of buildings, knock on doors, stop to talk to each other. Again, gives more believability. Because I feel these games are about immersion. Like the holo-deck.

- Running over nazis with my car and hearing the thump. No guilt about it whatsoever. Not so much when I would accidently bump a civilian, escpecially during high-speen chase scenes. Those make me feel really bad. I'd sometimes stop to see if they would get up. Some did sometimes.

- Shooting nazis. Who wouldn't. The splurts of blood were nicely animated and satisfying.

- The explosions were nicely done. It was very satisfying to watch those balls of blazes go up and the target crumple in a massive heap of junk.

- The story was fun. A lot of over-the-top action set pieces.

- Jumping from the top of the Eiffel Tower. Yeah, you die but you fall for sooooooo looooooong. Thrilling. :P

- Art direction is nice. The stark black and white nazi occupied quarters are gloomy and hard edged. And the liberated neighbourhoods are lively and coloured. The textures are a little bit blurry and spotty in places though. :S

- Punching cows. They just don't react, until they completely burst apart in a juicy spray of blood and cuts. Made me laugh every time.

Not so good things:

- The climbing was disjointed. Sean is not the nimbles of climbers. Which makes sens in the real world, but makes scaling buildings a long and slow series of button mashing.

- There is WAY too much stuff to destroy. I finished the game and there were still about 50% of destructable targets on the map. It was dotted with white!

- Sadly, the story feels truncated. It finished kind of abruptly and flat. This game brought Pandemic's demise, sadly and it shows in it's rough unfinished edges.



- The French accents are TERRIBLE!!! lol. It was kind of amusing though. I speak french, so I know bad accents.

- Sean can disguise himself with a killed nazi's uniform to infiltrate. Except that he only puts on the top part of it ... leaving his cargo pants and big boots. Now, why stop there? It looks very obvious and a bit silly.


So in essence, the game was fun and I'm glad I came back to it. It's sadly underrated and deserved a better fate.

And now for your enjoyment, PUNCHING COWS!!!