"Nothin' to see here. Nope. Nobody special. Ignore the mick with the bomb."

The Saboteur is an action-adventure video game developed by Pandemic Studios and published by Electronic Arts.

Story
The Saboteur is set in 1940's France occupied by Nazi Germany.

You play as Sean Devlin, Irishman who emigrated to France to escape his criminal past. With multiple talents and personal vendetta against German forces, he becomes a worthy addition to expanding French Resistance in Paris, with goal set on liberating the city from the Nazis.

Gameplay
Saboteur is an open world game with third person perspective that features most of the aspects you can find in games from said genre. Complete quests to further progress in the storyline or venture into Paris, some of the French countryside and even a little part of Germany to demolish Nazis! After a prologue of course.

As name of the game suggests, gameplay is all about ruining the day (and night) of occupants with sabotages, assassinations, overall carnage or all 3 aspects at once! Most of the quests in game will involve these elements, with occasional escort, tailing or defense thrown into the mix to offer a rather usual objective cocktail.

Sean is a versatile and creative man so he won't have any problems with achieving his goals.
On the ground he can utilize a wide variety of vehicles to travel, from civilian sport cars to military machines used by occupying forces, with latter often offering extra firepower. All vehicles can be stored in garages across France too, if you will manage to snatch one and deliver it.
Plenty of places have to be reached on foot, and there is a solid amount of restricted "No Irishman" areas. As a good climber, rooftops of Paris are natural habitat for Sean. Parkour helps avoiding forces on the ground, removing higher elevated threat and opening up the possibilities of approach. Disguise can be useful too, but it comes with own limits. You don't want to run around too much or get close to certain people who will see through. Actions you perform will affect Nazis looking at you. Standing and smoking is A-Okay but climbing on buildings, entering military vehicles or pulling out a weapon will make them suspicious. Be suspicious long enough to alert enemies, starting a deadly chase. To escape you have to look for hiding spots or get away from enemy range to once again become ordinary citizen.

Sean can carry 2 firearms, and game allows you to pick your work tools from a wide arsenal. Small pistols and submachine guns, shotguns, sniper rifles for long distance and more, though you unlock and expand what you can use by making enough progress so at the start your choice is limited. You can get personal and let fists do the talking too.

In Sean's line of work, bullets are good, but explosives are even better! That's why he carries (and along the game will use) more than enough of dynamite to blow up half of France, with extra grenades in a spare pocket. Use against sniper nests, anti aircraft guns, military vehicles, radars, fuel stations and everything else enemy placed, including enemies themselfs! All of these count as "open world objectives", and while constantly blowing stuff up is fun, there are other side tasks you can do. Eliminate generals, loot up supply chests, collect postcards or nail a sweet stunt jump! Activities earn you contraband, games currency.
Find a local black market to stock up on explosives, ammo, buy upgrades or new weapons.

Most unique aspect of Saboteur lies within visuals. Areas occupied by Nazis are covered in black and white with only few distinctive elements highlighted, such as blood, Resistance or German symbols.
Complete missions to free districts, giving vibrant colours and feel of life back. What should be obvious, there is less enemy forces and more of resistance (and helpful citizens) in freed areas, with opposite in Nazi controlled zones.

To wrap it up, game offers unlockable Bonuses you get by completing certain challenges across multiple categories. Kill specific enemies here, blow up vehicles in certain amount of time there, these are fun and worthy of completion, as perks you unlock within will make your life easier.

Playtime and replayability
Completing everything game had to offer took me 30 hours. However if you will only focus on necessary quests you can wrap up the storyline even in 10! So like with open world games it tends to be, playtime is very player dependant.
One full playthrough should satisfy your destructive needs, especially as you are free to roam around the map after you finished the story, letting you wrap up everything or simply cause more chaos.

Pros and cons
Saboteur has two main things going it: Fun entertaining gameplay, and great visual style. It's enjoyable to dive into bases and blow everything up, kill dozen of Nazis loud or quiet way, and participate in a chase to wrap it off! Parkour, simple stealth mechanics, and wide arsenal of weapons grant you a great freedom of approach towards your goals. Ton of - even if repetitive - side tasks to take care of during open world exploration will keep you in 1940's France for a while, but as my numbers state it still keeps it in decent lenght especially when compared to modern open world titles, and you can always just focus on missions instead if you start to feel bored.

Visual style is self-explanatory, noir black and white filter you get when exploring occupied areas is fantastic, it's a shame there is no option to constantly keep it on, as while colorful and decent looking, areas lose their charm when liberated.

When it comes to negative elements, storyline. While Sean is a fun character to hang around with, generic revenge plot and rather weak execution of story do make you focus more on mayhem and fun gameplay. Flat ending with little cliffhanger doesn't help either. There is also plenty of technical issues which sadly affect patchless Steam version and generally game does feel like it could use extra wrap up time, felt by elements such as clunky controls and rushed design of certain environment areas.

Final words and conclusion
PC version of the game comes with "The Midnight Show" patch/DLC. It adds extra hiding spots and a VIP room at the cabaret with minigame and spicy midnight shows...oh and it adds nudity option you can turn on or off.

The Saboteur delivers fun gameplay focused on mayhem and open approach with great visual style. Technical issues and lack of polish won't stop you from blowing everything up and enjoying it!

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