Great Game With A Few Bad Apples
Ok for those of you that do not know the story is this is a nut shell. You are Sean Devlin a Irish runaway, turned racecar driver. During a race in the country of Germany you loose because a dirty cheating German named Dierker ruins your chances and takes the win. Get mad, storm Dierker's facility, best friend dies, you escape, moved to Paris and boom that's where the game starts.
Well before I start the review I must say that I have been waiting for this game for 8 years. Game Informer covered it a long long time ago and then the game sort of disappeared. So my expectations for this game were rather large.
GAMEPLAY: ( 8/10 )
If you have played GTA you have played The Saboteur. The controls are very basic, but they work really well. I have not noticed virtually no slow down either which is odd. I have had 3 tanks, 5 Gestapo Cruisers, and at least 12 Nazi's firing at me and it was seamless. Hit detection is probably some of the best I have seen in a long time. The NPC's also have really good aim which makes the game challenging.
GRAPHICS: ( 8/10 )
Graphics are decent. The game does look familiar......OH YEAH Mercs. 2. The graphics are the same Mercs 2 which is kind of depressing. Cut scenes, gun play, driving, character animations are pretty much all the same as Mercs. 2. I understand that Pandemic had a short time span to finish this game before they disbanded. I am not saying that the graphics are bad. That is far from the truth. It is just sad the game did not get any real polish because if they had more time the game would have looked surreal. Black and white to color? Believe it or not it works!
SOUND: ( 8.5/10 )
After a while the Irish accent kind of grows on you. I don't understand why Sean Devlin can drop the F*** word without any coverup but consistently says the word "arse" instead of ass. Just bothers me. The game itself is littered with accents: German, French, Irish, Italian. All done really well and make you feel as if you, yourself are in Paris. The engine noises of cars are the only noises in the game I thought were really bad. You can have a car that has a nice rumble of the exhaust and drive through Paris like your a total badass, but driving on a country road at full speed the car sounds like it is going to die. Explosions have a nice bang and follow through with a nice crisp aftershock. It's refreshing to blow stuff up. When shooting a Nazi I am filled with joy anyways but to hear the sound of the gun doing it brings the smile to my face. The sounds of the weapons are good for the game but definitely not true to life sounds. Talking, singing, banter are all perfectly executed, without the ambiance the game would suck.
STORY: ( 6/10)
Why is it that game companies think that WWII games have to live up to ACTUAL history? Inglorious Bastards was a great movie that was not afraid to stroll away from history and have fun re-writing it just for the sake of good and fun cinema.
The story in this game was bland and weak and I think that a monkey wrote it? Keep in mind through this boring story the game is packed with little exciting pellets of food to keep you moving. Otherwise the game would be set down after 30 min. I must say that the games pace does keep you interested a little but the Sabotage and carnage one can cause with simple explosives is candy for eyes. There is no greater feeling than sneaking up behind a fuel depot, surrounded by 5 guards, planting a remote bomb, and from behind a bush blowing that place sky high. It does not matter if it is a guard tower, AA gun, tank, fuel depot, or any other Nazi occupied location. Blowing them up makes me smile like I'm 10 again. The game has hundreds, maybe thousands of locations to blow up and tear down that never seems to get old. The missions are fun and you never get that GTA feeling where your doing the same thing over and over again. Mainly because every mission is slightly different or WAY different from the last mission you had to do. Side missions are fun but for some reason seem to be slightly harder. If your
interested in the game (your reading this so I guess you are) you have probably heard or read that the game starts in black and white then as you restore hope to the people of France the game slowly comes back to color. One word AMAZING. The
gorgeous look of the countryside as your driving and the screen keeps changing from color to black and white is really
a work of genius. The story is stupid and boring, but you get through it because you get to have fun along the way.
SUMMARY: ( 8/10 )
With a bad story and sometimes sketchy graphics the game is by far a definite purchase. I highly recommend it. I guarantee that there is tons of fun to be had in this 2009-2010 sleeper hit. Pick it up and blow the ARSE off some Nazi punks today!