A confused game that cannot hold my attention
The Saboteur in short is a game that is just confused about its identity. As mentioned in other reviews it takes bits and pieces from other open world games and mashes them together, but never achieves a complete identity. Contradictions are simply all over the place in the game. For example, the game at the beginning tells you to take to the roof tops a la Assassin's Creed. While the rooftops are good for nailing down some easy cash on targets the climbing mechanic is slow, the buildings aren't all connected and almost non-of the main storyline takes place in that area. I always found myself grabbing a car and zipping across the city to get where I needed to go.
Another conflict of intent is the battle mechanic. While the gun play itself is rather good, the game sets itself up as a stealth game at the onset. That is great and all, but most of the story missions are full out shoot-em-ups that quickly escalate the alarm level. When you are on a base doing a mission a base alarm sets off which is fairly manageable for that mission. As soon as you complete your mission however, you will find the world alarm level is set to the highest level and it is almost impossible to escape without dying. There is a huge contradiction here as to what the game wants from the user and how it manages stealth and action gameplay.
The other annoying contradiction in the game is the awareness of the Nazi's to your character. You can for the most part walk freely to any area on the map as yourself. Put on a Nazi uniform and if any Nazi gets within a set radius of you the instantly become suspicious? What? How does that even make sense? It defeats the entire purpose of a disguise in the game.
Despite its problems however, the game does have some positive lights. The art direction on the whole is very well done and the game is beautiful. It is one of the few open world games that transitions from a city to a rural and then to a small town environment effectively. The gun play and driving in the game are for the most part also well done and I rarely found myself frustrated with the driving experience as I did in other games.
Unfortunately in the end though, the problems with identity lead me to just put the game down as I couldn't deal with the frustrations any longer.
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