The Saboteur

I completed The Saboteur's campaign last night, and I still haven't really gone in-depth on its title feature - that is, sabotage. I could go on and on about the intricacies of the game's radar, how it notifies you of Nazi suspicion, line-of-sight, advantages and disadvantages of a disguise... but suffice to say, there is an extremely robust system of mechanics that allows you to expertly infiltrate and pick apart Nazi installations. Climb up a guard tower to take out the lookout while nobody else can see you; set off an explosion on one side of the base to draw attention to it; plant charges behind objects so no one notices until it's too late.

The system involves careful planning and strategy, but also gives you the freedom to go in guns blazing if you so desire (and have the hardware for it). And screw-ups are no big thing, with plenty of opportunities to escape Nazi retribution, and fairly lax dying penalties if that doesn't work. Even barring that, though, I'm way more impressed with The Saboteur's stealth system than with anything I've seen in Metal Gear Solid. This game really delivers on the premise of covertly reducing the enemy to rubble.

Which is great, because the campaign is not nearly as impressive. The pacing is all wrong: missions tend to come in spurts, with too-lengthy action sequences - often multiple missions in a row - followed by complete dramatic breaks. The last couple missions of Act 2, and the entire third Act, were basically like watching the last half of Indiana Jones without stopping. (Except with a slightly sillier plot, and a much less satisfying ending.) The optional side-missions help, and are structured in a much more friendly, episodic way, but there aren't all that many of them.

Although the plot in general isn't too special, and most of the characters are disposable, Sean Devlin is a great protagonist. He's a rough-and-tumble anti-hero who you'll be rooting for all the way. Plus, he swears like a, well, like an Irishman, which gives all the game's tense moments a necessary shot of "Fuckin' Hell!" commentary.

The Saboteur isn't perfect, not even mentioning relatively infrequent but sometimes rather bad bugs. What it is, though, is incredibly fun. Provided you enjoy killin' a lot of Nazis.

Better than: Red Faction: Guerrilla (without driving a truck through a building, even!)
Not as good as: Grand Theft Auto IV (in GTA, at least, non-Nazis -mobsters are still fun to interact with)
I'd buy a sequel: so, come on, guys

I may have seen the ending, but I'm not done yet! I've still got almost half of the game's Freeplay Targets left. There are plenty more Nazis to kill.

Progress: Finished the story, still killin' Nazis