The Saboteur – Hands on Preview
November 4, 2009 by Darren Pain
Filed under Previews
On Saturday 31st of October I got my hands on the highly anticipated title The Saboteur at the Eurogamer Expo in London.
A demo of the title had been provided for players to try the game out themselves, and upon it loading up the first thing I noticed was the colour which worked so perfectly. The effect of walking around a village on a nice bright sunny day then looking into the distance and seeing a castle with Nazi flags in a grey colour just really showed how evil the place is set to be. The demo began in a church, at which point you are told that you need to steal a truck and ambush the German castle. You’ll see German soldiers walking around on patrol and a key element of the gameplay is not to draw suspicion to yourself – if you approach one of them your HUD on the bottom left hand corner flashes yellow to warn you, rated on a scale that includes “suspicious” etc. The first time I tried getting into the wrong truck and was seen by a German officer, which was immediately bad news for me because as soon as he spotted me he was on the radio to alert more guards. This also completely changed the HUD to a flashing red to represent the panic of attempting to get out of their sight. It was at this point that I first got shot, which causes the screen to become covered in blood around the corners – it looked really effective. These German guards do not mess around – as soon as they are on to you, you really have to fight them off. I eventually managed to acquire a gun and began fighting back at which point I was able to get a couple of nice headshots, that cause comic book blood-effects to splash out – it really looked great when you see it. However, I unfortunately didn’t survive long meaning that I would have to start over.
So I started up the mission again to find I actually went to the wrong truck – oops! Now that I was on track to the correct truck, things went much smoother. As I got to the truck and climbed in, a voice over from a member of the Resistance began, stating that she had put some clothes in the truck for a disguise. The clothes are a German uniform which was a necessity to help you get into the German castle. As you drive past German patrols you can now see a flashing yellow light on the HUD with the word “disguised” to let you know that the Germans don’t suspect that you aren’t one of them.
The next bit of the game was probably the best for me. The art style alters due to whether you are in a Civilian occupied zone, or that controlled by the Germans. This causes a transition from colour to black and white respectively, and it changes so effortlessly. You could really feel like you were leaving a much happier area, into a dark and oppressive place. I carried on driving up the long road to get to the castle doors, but seeing as I had no volume on the TV, and got distracted so missed the subtitles, I didn’t know whether I had to blow up the doors with the charge in my inventory or just ram straight into the door with the truck. I chose the latter option – who wouldn’t! Fortunately, it worked and I was in but straight away my cover had been blown and lots and lots of German soldiers came through to look at what the problem was. This caused immediate issues for me as I was now completely surrounded by soldiers, meaning that the best option was to run away and hope for the best, yet they were still following me. I jumped into the water to swim away but even then I was still getting shot at – it looked great though as the bullets were hitting the water right next to me. It was a real challenge to get away from these groups of soldiers, which I find very rare for a game these days.
Having finally made it back to shore, and after all that time trying to get away from the soldiers, I was killed again! Back to the beginning yet again I thought, yet I was pleased to find I respawned back at the castle door just before I had rammed into it. This time I was ready for them! I smashed into the door and was out of the truck in a flash; I selected my weapon and started shooting. Now when I mentioned earlier that the headshot blood effect was great, this was even better in black and white. The whole dark red blood shooting out from the enemy really did look good. I managed to kill these soldiers and now my objective was towards the top of the building, so I had to climb. This was the first moment within the game that I had used the climbing mechanics, and they worked really well – to me they felt a bit like Assassin’s Creed which is great. Whilst I was climbing I noticed there was a thunderstorm brewing in the background, which was very clever. As a flash of lighting appeared, a full range of colour would appear and then disappear back to black and white. It was a great little touch to the game and works so well. Having reached the top of this section of the castle, I was then greeted by some more German soldiers. I managed to take them out and go to the next section which was back down on ground level, but the other side of the previous area. When I got to ground level I looked into the sky to see a huge blimp which had a Nazi symbol on the side. I was now thinking, I wonder if I could get into that. So I began to make my way towards it, killing some more German Soldiers in an effort to get closer and closer to the blimp. I eventually found a stairway leading up to the blimp and was really looking forward to seeing what was going to happen. Just as you get onto it, a cut scene began showing a high ranking officer in the German army. Obviously without volume I couldn’t tell what the characters were talking about, but graphically the cut scenes looked very impressive. During the cut scene there is a fire fight and the blimp begins to catch fire as it takes off. You are now put back in control and while everything is burning away you have to follow this soldier. The ending of this chapter shows you sliding down a zip line with all the metal falling in from the blimp and flames all around you, it then shows the outside of the blimp and then shows “The Saboteur, to be continued.”
Now that is what you call an ending to a demo! This really got me thinking as to what was going to happen next? I only had a quick play through and I am now really looking forward to playing the finished product, as the whole colour idea is simply fantastic and adds an art style never really seen within previous games – Pandemic Studios really seem to have created a potential master piece here.
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