The Saboteur Review
A fun title that presents an engaging setting but is a bit unpolished in terms of gameplay
As mentioned before, some of the presentation in Saboteur is stellar. The character voice acting of Sean remains very strong and memorable through the game, though some of the lesser characters are quite below par compared to the lead. The black and white style definitely creates an interesting atmosphere that hasn’t been done this well before. It really puts you in the mood, and sometimes it even feels regretful that you’ve liberated an area and have to play in full color now – though this makes the return to Nazi-occupied parts of the city even more daunting. You even get to live through the initial infiltration of the Nazi forces into France which is quite a rush to play through. Not everything is top-notch though, as some facial and body animations are very odd and do not look realistic. Some character models and textures look a bit low res, and shadows are quite poor in some places in the city. The visuals are of acceptable quality overall, and our test system (Q6600, 8800GTX, 4GB Ram, Win7) had no problems maxing out the settings. Though there were a few framerate issues when a huge firefight got started, but overall the game ran stable and no crashes were experienced. The sound in the game is authentic, much like the city, its cars and pedestrians. You will hear many catchy 30’s tunes as you drive around, and the background music in the game is well presented overall. There was an issue though, with car engine sound sometimes disappearing if you drove for a while without letting go of the gas (which you often have to in pursuits). It was easily restored by letting go of the accelerator, but it is an odd issue.
The unique black&white presentation makes for an engaging experience
The Saboteur is, as some players may call it, “yet another open-world” action game that allows the player to take many paths to and from the objectives. However, it’s not all that repetitive or cliché as you may expect. There is a very good setting in place with an interesting colorless presentation and a character that has the potential to carry a franchise (though this may not happen now). Alot of the gameplay elements are indeed recycled from other titles, but it is done with attention to detail along with little tweaks that arguably make them better and more fun to play. The Saboteur may be rough around the edges, especially concerning some key elements such as climbing. But there is plenty of content to play through and with so many choices for carrying out your objectives, chances are you’ll be having quite a blast.
Our ratings for Saboteur, The on PC out of 100 (Ratings FAQ)
Performance
(Show PC Specs)
CPU: Intel Core i7 CPU 930 @ 2.80GHz
GPU: Sapphire Radeon HD 5870 Vapor-X 1GB
RAM: 6GB DDR3
OS: Windows 7 Professional 64-bit
GPU: Sapphire Radeon HD 5870 Vapor-X 1GB
RAM: 6GB DDR3
OS: Windows 7 Professional 64-bit
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Jan 10, 2010 03:23:48 (Jan 10, 2010 03:23)
