LogFAQs > #957835869

17. The Saboteur (Xbox 360, 2009)


Pandemic Studios was quite the underrated developer in its 11 year history. Most notable for the Mercenaries, Destroy All Humans, and Star Wars Battlefront series, their swan song, The Saboteur, was their finest work.

The Saboteur is an action-adventure game in the vein of Grand Theft Auto that takes place in WWII-era occupied France. You play as Sean, an Irish race car driver, as the consequences of his actions and the events around him force him to become the titular role. I am a huge sucker for 2000s-era open-world games, and The Saboteurs World War II-occupied France was a great one. It was the perfect size and featured a lot of urban and rural environments. In the beginning, most of the world was in a striking black-and-white art style. Sure it can actually lead to some unnecessary hecticness in combat, but it was a small price to pay. True to its period are the weapons and vehicles at your disposal. Like many games from that era, they copied and made the climbing style mimic Assassin's Creed. Not as good as the real thing, but it was one of the better efforts out there.

While it is pretty standard stuff, the game is a lot of fun to play, and an experience I like to go back to every few years. However, there is one real reason why my feelings toward this game keep rising and rising over time, all the way to a Top 20 ranking here: This is probably the most satisfying Nazi-destroying game. There are plenty of games/series, most notably Wolfenstein, about giving Nazis what they deserve, but it is underwhelming that while you tend to kill a ton of Nazis, they will always come back and you dont seem to be putting a dent in their numbers/operations. The Saboteur to me was a godsend. While the Nazis do have a seemingly endless supply of them, that isnt the focus here. You are a saboteur! Around Paris and the French countryside are hundreds and hundreds of opportunities to screw over the Nazis efforts, reduce their influence, and eventually drive them out. Theres propaganda objects to destroy like speakers and statues, military efforts to blow up like AA guns, radar stations, and armored vehicles, as well as VIPs to assassinate like generals.

That shit doesnt return. If you destroy a fuel station, it isnt coming back. Finally, I could give the middle finger to the Nazis hundreds of times and see the fruit of my labor whenever I wanted.

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KCF can't actually be a real person but he is - greengravy
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