Do you know what happens when mix all the colors together? Basically nothing, you just get an unimpressive grayish brown that can only be used to describe dirt. And this is exactly what happened to The Saboteur, a game developed by Pandemic Studios and published by EA: they took everything good out there and threw into a blender hoping for a magical result. Unfortunately what came out was not a rainbow, but an abomination that feeds on gamers’ fears.

The first thing that drew my attention was the name.  Saboteur – a game I loved back in the days when Commodore was the tip of the technological iceberg and two-frame animations were acceptable. That game’s main character was an athletic female ninja with no notable background, so because of that name I was kind of hoping for something similar when it came to The Saboteur. You can only imagine my disappointment when all I got as main character was this Irish bloke, formerly a mechanic, currently race driver employed by an Italian team in which the mechanic is a French guy that has a sister that the Irish man loves. Luckily, to simplify things, the leading man gets the French dude aka his best friend killed by ze Germans in the first hour of gameplay (Jules – RIP, you shall not be missed), the war breaks out, the focus switches from racing to a whore-house/cabaret in downtown Paris that is owned by the father and managed by the mother of Veronique, Jules’ sister. This is where the French resistance comes into play, recruits our bulky hero, exploits his hatred towards the Krauts and gives him wannabe interesting assignments, probably the ones that no other sane member of the resistance accepted. The game also features a Spanish individual, head of a wide spread network of weapons dealers, some dressed like Arabs, a promiscuous female British agent, a catholic priest that is no longer a priest but still acts like one, a French writer that was rich before the war, many innocent pedestrians and many not so innocent Nazi Germans. Pointless and unattractive nudity is the glue that holds everything together and it comes in so large quantities that I can’t help but wonder who exactly from the Pandemic developing crew was and probably still is in such dire need of sex. Now that I wrote everything down, I’m starting to think it makes perfect sense, but I’m still disappointed since there is no sign of the female ninja. If you forgot which female ninja I’m talking about don’t worry, it’s perfectly understandable, the human brain has its limits.

One can not look at The Saboteur and analyze its features without comparing them to the original ones, to the sources of… let’s say inspiration. On the ground level the sandbox gameplay resembles that of GTA so much that words such as copyright infringement and lawsuit immediately come to mind. There are differences of course, but many of them only come to underline that a copy is never as good as the original. You can assault pedestrians for example and even kill them if you choose to, but there is no reward in doing that since they are part of the good guys and the Irish man is their friend. You can do the same when it comes to German patrols, but they only drop weapons which are awful to begin with and you can purchase them at special dealers throughout the city anyway. Stealing cars is also an element that was not forgotten and neither was the fact that you can store them in your garage, but most of them lack so much in speed, looks and maneuverability that sometimes you wish you could just walk to and from your assignments. But since the distances that need to be covered are impressive and since usually after completing a mission all hell breaks loose and you need to get away as fast as possible, cars become a dreary necessity. The missions I mentioned usually fall in the areas of kill that guy, steal that thing or destroy that objective, so nothing spectacular here either.

For a break in monotony you could try a stealthy approach in solving them, but that would mean that you are gifted with nerves of steel and a patience that can only be compared to that of Sisyphus. That’s because all the elements that have been ripped off games such as MGS or Splinter Cell and plastered onto The Saboteur, come in direct contradiction with the ones originated from GTA. The first ones are about being patient, cunning, observant, while for the second ones the accent is placed on speed and strength. The fact that you are given a choice is a good thing, but the problem is that the environment and the enemies are built in such way that the best approach is blowing everyone’s head off and then simply strolling into the place you were supposed to infiltrate. There are so many flaws when it comes to the stealth part of the gameplay that I don’t even know where to begin. For example how can you respawn enemies behind the player and in the same time expect him to control the battlefield through stealth? What’s the point of a disguise if you can’t use it at close range? Why is sneaking a less effective way of infiltration than walking in plain sight? Anyway, the stealth system is joke and I can only suspect it has been implemented with the sole purpose of frustrating the player. If that’s was the case then I can only applaud the developers since the game managed, not only once but plenty of times, to make me wish I could break something in order to cool myself off.

But the list of “things they stole” does not stop here. Oh no, there is much more! I said the game strongly resembles GTA, but that is true only on ground level. There is also third dimension to the sandbox, there is verticality when it comes to exploration. This is where the Assassin’s Creed layer was added to the recipe, but again it was done without much design skill. You can climb buildings, but the whole process is as simple as pressing one single button over and over again, thus it can only be described as being extremely boring. You can then try running across building rooftops only to discover that you can’t do that for more than a few seconds because of two reasons. First: the guards that see you will consider your actions suspicious and will raise the alarm. Second: the jump and grab system has been implemented following the definition of non-intuitive gameplay leading to a main character that clings desperately to ledges when the height difference between two rooftops equals only one foot and then seconds later jumps to his death because he went through the wire that connected two other buildings instead of grabbing onto it. This leads to a complete loss of the feeling of freedom you might have got from the parkour available in Assassins Creed. As a result I can’t help but wonder: what exactly is the point of climbing buildings if fun is not part of the reward? Admiring the view is out of the question since it’s really not that good.

And this finally brings us to The Saboteur’s graphics, which many have already described as being spectacular, stylish or impressive. Oh, please! This pseudo-description probably came out because the areas of the city that are controlled by Nazis are painted in black&white with some specks of color here and there. Not entirely a bad idea, but to me this screamed “rip-off!” once more since it resembled the concept behind movies such as Sin City and The Spirit so much that I can only imagine how big of a Frank Miller fan was the art director behind The Saboteur. And once you take that element out of the equation, all there’s left doesn’t hold enough graphic value to impress even the most untrained eye.

It’s really a shame that The Saboteur, a game that should have been Pandemic Studios swan song, came out to be such a big disappointment. It’s really a shame that instead of working on originality, so much work was invested in borrowing elements from other games, elements that offer little or no product value. And it’s really a shame that now, after playing this game, I don’t feel bad about the fact that EA closed down another studio. Pandemic Studios and The Saboteur are things that are better forgotten.

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