The Saboteur™

A forgotten game. The graphics are dated but it's still a fun game to play.

I played this game when it was first out on the 360 and have wanted to play it again. I enjoy the story it is fun and you get to shoot Nazi's which everyone loves. There are some cool mechanics in the game (the colour arrives once you liberate an area) and overall its a fun game. Only problem i had was the screen size which was easily adjustable by creating a config file

missions not showing up after completing lots of those little white things. can happen to you. waste of my time.

I mean, it's just not good. I mean that with all due respect.

The game is an attempt to use the GTA gameplay model, throw in some building climbing, make it a Nazi theme, and then give it about a C- average and you've got this game. Everything about it falls short of the level of execution you'd want from the game. I am trying to keep in perspective that this game is 2009 but that was when GTA 4 came out. That said, metacritic shows this game with a 73/7.8 while GTA 4 has a 98/8.3.

The storyline is moderately entertaining and the only thing that had me even remotely interested is the satisfaction of killing Nazi's, but that can only take you so far. The game ends up turning into more of a driving sim than anything else given the amount of time you're driving without fast travel options (or at least none I discovered). The map is peppered with ways to accrue currency but it is so boring and repetitive while also every time jeopardizes the risk of drawing attention and of course that leads to a whole world of annoying situations in escaping the alarms. In fact, the whole alarm/heat system if you will is generally tiresome.

The graphics are of course tired, as expected. I like the noir element where very little color is present except with very specific highlights followed by a sort of "healing" of areas as you move the story along. The combat is... well it's very arcade and simple. As is the driving generally speaking.

Overall, it's not that this game is terrible, but it's also not great. It's very average and mediocre, and at this stage where the population of games out there to be played is limitless, I wouldn't suggest using your limited time to play this game. I see what the developers were trying to do, but in the end it just feels like a game that tried to ride the coattails of the success of GTA with their own twist and ended up making something so blah that it raises the question of if any of the team who made it would even recommend it.

A WW2 game that reminds me a lot of Assassin's Creed and GTA.

It's Just cause, but you're killing Nazis in Paris. When you start the game go to options and switch nudity on, it's hilarious.

You play as Sean Devlin, an irish racer fighting Nazis in World War II. You get to blow stuff up, sneak around, and cause chaos in Paris. One of the cool things is how the game world changes from black-and-white to color when you take back areas from the Nazis. The driving and fighting are okay, but it's really cool how you can approach missions in different ways. The story is about revenge, and the game has a great atmosphere. It’s not perfect, but it’s a good time if you like open-world games and blowing things up.

Most interesting game with great atmosphere and story alongside with "fanservice" if may I say, you can change it from start menu option if you know what I mean. This game is amalgamation of Assassin Creed, GTA, racing game, Hitman, and etc. Buy it and you won't regret it. Because of EA takeover, sadly this game is the last game from Pandemic Studio before closed permanently by EA.

¶ One of the most underappreciated open-world games available is The Saboteur. In the game, you take on the role of Sean Devlin, an Irish racer who is seeking retribution in Nazi-occupied France. Occupied Paris feels gloomy due to the game's distinctive black-and-white art style, and it is immensely exciting to restore color by liberating regions, but that "special" noir sense quickly fades.

¶ The AI is occasionally stupid, the parkour is clumsy, and the game is a little janky, but it's still a lot of fun to blow up Nazi strongholds, sneak through enemy facilities, and avoid crazy automobile chases across Paris. This game has soul despite its flaws, and the soundtrack is amazing and the atmosphere is excellent. This could have been the beginning of something epic, therefore it's unfortunate that Pandemic Studios closed after this. This game is a must-play if you enjoy open-world mayhem and classy historical settings. One of my favorite video games as a kid.

the main character is Jacksepticeye 6/10

I got to kill Nazi/commy bastards.

Highly Recomended
10/10

it's like a ww2 GTA in a way, but with more jank but in a good way.

Amazing game, this really is a hidden Gem, I can tell that already and I have only played for a couple of hours so far.

You might want to check out Reshade mods and Flawless Widescreen mods as this game is quite old, but once you tweak things a bit, it looks great on a modern system too.

In one review, the acting has been described as a 'cheesy spy movie' plot, I would tend to agree with this but this just adds to the charm of this game, there are a number of 'laugh out loud' moments.

Definitely worth the 9 pounds I just paid for this in 2025

killing nazis is always fun, i will 10/10 recommend this to anyone who despises nazis

I'm not entirely sure how I stumbled into the Saboteur. Maybe it was the Zero Punctuation review of Nioh among all things. Soon enough, I started seeing posts in my algorithm that glazed this game as a forgotten gem, and while I can see where they're coming from, a lot of people neglect to mention the amount of jank this game is covered in. The parkour feels janky, the mission design always almost asks you to escape Nazi's (which is surprisingly hard) at the end, as if the concept of a mission ending any other way was new. The shooting has some moments of jank. Cars are unreliable in their handling. The story feels weirdly janky. There isn't a fast travel system, or waypoint system, or shortcut for the full map, making navigating a nightmare. And my god. Is the steal absolutely bizarre. Every system that goes into the steal mechanics are all poorly executed.

I think this game is ultimately good. It has moments where things come together, and what it does is enjoyable, it's just similar to a half-baked cake. It's yummy, but can feel like a slog and a bit structurally weak.

One of my favourite GTA3 clones from the Xbox 360 era.
My only complaints are really minor:

• that the Nina Simone banger over the end credits wasn't written until 1 year after VE day
  
• the lead not being French felt like some focus group said "PC has to be an anglophone or it will hurt sales". At least he wasn't a fucking American again.
  
[*] top-tier car collecting perk is somewhere between "aggressively hard" and "outright impossible". The perk benefit isn't super essential, though, so you can just decide to not try for it.

amazing game, just a little buggy, C'mon EA, we know you can do better.
the story is gripping, and mechanics are pretty decent. think Just cause/Asassins creed with better music
Also, best main character ive seen in ages

I've played this game on 360 back in the day. There's no steam achievements, but it's still a great game. Is it outdated? yes, but it is an older game after all. It's still worth the money. Graphics are passable on high settings. It could use a remaster but lets be real they ain't gonna remaster this masterpiece of a game. You can turn off or on the nudity, which I turn on, cause it's a mature game. I recommend it to anyone who likes beating, and blowing up Nazis which has been a great pastime for us gamers amirite, yes i know I am. Still a gem.

My apologizes for my review as i am not a great reviewer. I blame the moonshine I drank, since i rarely do reviews. But I had to least this one.

9/10

I wish they added the achievements.

Amazing game screw you EA for shutting a gaming company that's littraley better than you sucks that there's no achievements but they probably will cuz they only realesed it in 2024.But yeah the story is about a Irish guy named Sean Devlin who has a Nazi target Kurt Dierker and yeah the game is very good the story is very very good in my top 3 favourite video games of all time and trust me Ive played alot of video games.

GTA but set in WW2 with clear enemies
i love it

The first game I've ever played! And this one made me love playing games.

Beat this game on console years back. One of my favorite single player games. i recommend for anyone looking for a stealthy fun open world game.

This game is exceptionally good value for the money, the graphics are decent enough, in fact i bought a Microsoft 2018 game and i think the graphics of this game were much better. The old time feel is great tho could use a few more songs which begin to get repetitive, tho it does have a really nice cinematic score when the action occurs this build up the tension nicely. The jumping and climbing can be a bit perilous at times and feel a bit clunky however you get used to it.

The video settings were not accessible to me from the main menu and thought in the beginning i would not be able to run the game, however if you the ignore video settings and press play, it works fine. There are ways to access the video setting through the config file if u search the forum but i never bothered..

The open world in the game is very good, it feels fun driving in the french quaint countryside, and you can unlock some nice sporty cars. The car physics handle well.

You can tell a lot of work went into this game, the voice acting is good and the cut scenes are interesting.

The only annoyances i had was even tho i selected a fast car as my main getaway car, if u are far out in the countryside for some reason they will deliver the basic starter car which is an old clunker. I tried many things such as blowing up the car of which it should not be available for delivery but still gets sent anyways. Whilst annoying it is still manageable u can car- jack a slightly better car if needed.

You get the impression that the game was supposed to have a lot more missions and content as the amount of collectables dotted around the map are insanely plentiful. Certain regions feel as they were supposed to have more resistant cells and NPC contacts for mission and to use as temporary base for that area, so gets annoying that if u save in that far region it puts u back into the city on the next load up,

That being said this was an awesome game to play and very much enjoyed it. Once all the missions are complete and the end credits roll, you can still continue in the world and take out more enemies of which are like mini missions anyways with some collectable guarded more so than others. if you were to continue to collect the items around the map this would increase play-ability for many weeks if not months as there is simply a crazy amount to get.

I should also mention before playing ensure your task manager is set to always on top as sometimes when exiting it crashes and the only way to end the task is with Ctrl _alt_ delete. If your task manager is not set to always be on top the game will cover the task manager and you wont be able to kill task.

I loved this game when I first played it on my XBox 360, and replayed it recently in my steam deck. It’s 16 years old but still holds up - the storyline is absorbing and the gameplay is so much fun. Blowing stuff up, creeping around, climbing buildings in the city, escaping nazis, running around the countryside. It looks beautiful, and has loads of replay value.

Terrible. It tries to be a cool stealth game, but fails miserably.
Game mechanics are clunky and outdated.
It could've been an Assassin's Creed killer, but instead it feels like something completely messed up.

Don't get me wrong it was a great idea, setting and good soundtrack, but the execution is a big let down.

Art of Sabotage.

[hr]Seeing this classic EA masterpiece finally released on Steam last year was great news for me. In short, The Saboteur is an open-world action game set in WWII, where you play as an Irish resistance fighter, Sean Devlin, taking on the Nazis in occupied Paris and seeking revenge.

What I love about this game is it feels like a mix between Grand Theft Auto (for the open-world and free-roam aspects) and Sniper Elite (with its stealth and sabotage mechanics). Being a saboteur is all about The Art of Sabotage. The graphics are dated, but the voice acting has so much charm and style, and the story is perfect. Also, the facial expressions? It's great.

Tons of great features in this classic game. Completing tasks unlocks perks, and if you're struggling to unlock the next perk, you can just buy them from a shopkeeper. Also, you'll get a punishment perks, such as hiding spot is disabled for 1 minutes. (How did I know? I’ve had a few accidents while driving). Sean has ability to climb buildings like Assassin's Creed. How the color changes around you as you exploring the city and how it affects the environment. Hiding spots when you're being chased. Calling the Resistance to aid you in the battlefield. My favorite hiding spot is kissing a woman.

Main missions are marked with gold square while side missions are marked with black and white square. Green marks hiding spots, and white marks Nazi targets for sabotage. Side missions are repetitive, but it's a good way to earn contraband and bring color back to the city.

Contraband is your currency for buying weapons, upgrades, and other useful stuff. You earn it by completing side missions, blowing up Nazi stuff, such as towers, alarms, vehicles, and fuel depots.

I only hate there’s no shortcut key to open the full map—you have to go through the pause menu every time.

As great as it was in 2009.

On of the best endings I have ever seen. That piano melody is perfect - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SgnzDsq-Lw

Art style > graphics

Feels like Mafia mixed with Sniper Elite. Had a lot of fun playing this one.

These old games have more of a style and charm than most modern games.
not even an hour and i'm hooked.

Edit : got it on gog. It's working fine with the exe available on reddit (see below). No performance issue, 1080 without stretching. This version should be removed tbh or slashed to 99ct as a tinkering project. Otherwise, it's a really good game.

I don't recommend this version because it doesn't work for me but I'd recommend people to try. There's not a lot of games like this anymore.
Be sure to test it right away. Despite all its known issues, steam refused my refund for being after 14 days of purchase.

I've recently discovered this one. It looks like a really nice game and I wish I could have played it back in the days.
For the very little that I was able to play, it really feels like Mafia 1 but in WW2 europe. It seems to have some good game mechanics, sound, music AI and scenario. The whole package.

However, after trying every patch and mod I could find on the web, the best I could get is a highly unstable experience that would end up in freeze and crash (win 10 / nvidia 1660ti / ryzen 3600 ). I'll check elsewhere as gog seems to have an updated version (the gog patch is available but doesn't work on this version).

If you're having issues, look up the pc gaming wiki website and the .exe available on the reddit thread "i cannot run the saboteur gog version on my new pc". Afaik that's a compendium of all available tips and tricks you could try.

Edit 2 : it's a really good game and very much worth it for anyone who enjoys older games and Mafia I. I've finished the story but without the PS3 achievements it's much less fun to push on.
However the game is still open to explore afterwards because the main story doesn't go through every part of the map.
There's a lot of fun vehicles from slow tractor to powerful tanks. Lots of weapons as well. The story is interesting and the character are nicely designed and voiced. If the steam version had worked it would be a complete recommend.

Again, for me the gog version was it because they actually updated the game, apparently not just the exe because using that exe (available to download) on the steam version is no use.

The voice acting and writing in this game are excellent. The graphics are...dated...but it is 100% worth playing!
Can't believe I had never heard of it before.

In for a penny, in for a fockn pound. Great game

Oh Saboteur. Seeing this game appear on steam was like witnessing an old friend walk through the door. Firstly before I begun this review, let me say don't be fooled by the short amount of time I've played this on here, when I had it on consoles I threw at least a hundred hours of time into this game. It's still just as wonderful as ever.

Pros:
- The only GTA-like set in WW2 that I can think of, specifically set in nazi-occupied France and a small part of Germany.
- Cars control well, the physics for driving is solid and high-speed chases are something to enjoy.
- You get to kill nazis and destroy/steal their big toys or treat them to the lead from your own hardware.
- An upgrade system that's fair with its situational requirements and presents rewards for gaining them. Plus should you come across a couple you wish to skip (like the car skills to get the big tanks stored and available in your garage), you can pay your contraband currency to do just that.
- Just like GTA you can go on a rampage in a tank.
- Exploration is encouraged. Lots to see, lots to do, lots of explosions to create and rare cars to add to your collection.
- Enemy AI presents a good challenge for you without usually getting too unfair. German installations are all around the city and can spot you if you try to hide on the rooftops, all the incentive to destroy them and turn more pockets of the city in a safezone for you. Still though, you can choose to escape a conflict easy enough. Just find a good hiding place marked on the map or drive off into the countryside until you're out of their alert zone.
- Pretty good story overall and the people you'll usually be speaking to are pretty likeable characters that have a good reason for being where they are.

Cons:
- The parkour is tolerable most of the time but climbing and getting around is rather slow and jumps you think you should make sometimes won't be made and will leave you sprawling on the wall while german gunfire turns you into swiss cheese.
- The suspicion meter works fine outside of restricted zones but when you enter them while not disguised, enemies kind of detect you instantly if you enter their sight.
- Keeping a disguise on during city walks can be downright inconvenient. Your area of suspicion increases for just running and increases hugely should you choose to sprint.
- If you're noticing a pattern here, yes stealth can be its weakest point and being caught with your pants down in a restricted area means you'll usually die in seconds.
- The game's beginning will feel very limiting in terms of what you can do until you finish a few missions for your allied pals.
- There's a few very tedious upgrades to unlock like all the car hunting ones...
- Sometimes you'll get into a situation with the nazis and the only thing that happens is you get shredded in seconds. On the attack they're merciless to anybody out of cover, and they can also hit you while you're in a vehicle so on rare occasions you might find yourself dying in a situation where you should have made it out. It happens but very rarely, it's just something you have to put up with.
- It's really easy to get the nazis alerted and chasing you down when you don't want a fight. A quick destroying of a propaganda post or running over a patrol about to harass a civilian can result in some jackass you didn't kill off blowing that whistle even when you're well and truly away from the scene. True to its genre it's a GTA-like, so be prepared to play it more like an action game than a stealth one.
- As this game's pretty old, don't expect any big content updates or bugfixes like your usual modern games. This one's well and truly finished for all the goods and bads that come with it.

Seriously EA? Could you have made this more broken? In this day and age having to launch a separate program to adjust the video settings? Not only that but you provide us with video options that break the game. If you set the resolution or refresh rate too high, then the game can't handle it and goes to the lowest settings (even though those are available options and may even be the auto-detect settings). I know the game is around 15 years old, but if you are going to re-release it you can at least make sure the options we have available are actually FUNCTIONAL.

This game is a lot of fun and I have only found it 15 years after it had released. Despite being old graphics-wise, the game concept still is good. It is not too hard and I just had fun clearing areas of occupation. If I had to point out one annoying thing, I would have to point at accessing the map via the menu requiring multiple clicks instead of just keybinding it to a key was very annoying. Apart from that, give it a go, it is worth it!

Golden Era EA. Free Roam, Free Climb, Kill nazis. Nice game with a fun story. follow the video setup instructions to get this decent PS3 port running well.

It's not open world like advertised. It's very linear and there is a cut scene for everything. I mean EVERYTHING. Die? Cut scene. Bar fight? Cut scene. Some lady being sassy? Cut scene. Also it makes no sense for the guy to almost assassins creed climb up nearly everything while everyone else is a clueless idiot. The Nazis are almost comicbook and the stereotypes are rampant.

I have played this game 30 hours. And have barly played the man story.

Its fantastic to run around in a Noir movie Paris, assasinate soliders and blow things up.

Its like a GTA game but you have soldiers and warmashines to attack every where. + you can climb every building. A fantastic game i rekomend to everyone.

AAA Gaming have a LONG way to go apparantly XD this old game, with mechanics, graphics and story are just so much better!
Sabotage zeh Germanz in Paris ect. whats not to like XD

Playing an Irish mercenary, in Paris, killing Nazis. What more could you ask for? Super underrated open world game with similar gameplay as something like GTA, but set in WWII era France. Fun and engaging gameplay and mechanics, with an intriguing enough story. I like that the game doesn't take itself too seriously. The art style is super neat, and I like the morale gimmick with the occupied sections going from black and white to over-saturated color when liberated. Also, awesome parkour elements, and tons of explosions. I totally suggest this hidden gem to anybody. It's definitely one of a kind.

It a nice game :-)

NOTHING TO SEE HERE, JUST A MICK WITH A BOMB!

Loved this game first time around and love it again now, sure if it was made today some things would be better but still a great game and better than many open world new games.

Word of advice, don't rush through the missions, enjoy the freeplay targets.

Regards spec, seen some comments about flickering from some people, I had no issues played beautifully.

At first I thought it was too cartoon like, but the more I played it the more I discovered how much fun it is. Lots of missions, collections and free style things to do. Killing Nazis, blowing stuff up and liberating Paris makes for a compelling story. It was worth the price,

irish man causing havoc in france 8/10

A hidden gem, that`s what this game is indeed.
The game mechanics let you drive and collect cars, race cars, even tanks, use a big variety of firearms and explosives, do a lot of parkour on every building, go undercover as an enemy soldier and you can also go to watch strip club shows.
There are a tone of open world activities that that make you really feel like a saboteur.
The story by itself is a classical revenge and being the knight in the shining armor that liberates a WWII Paris ocuppied by you know who...

THIS is how you make a historically inaccurate game with vague communist propaganda included, for all you commissars we call "game devs" nowadays.

Bit buggy but otherwise fantastic story/game

Unplayable, looks horrible, settings are minimal. Looks like it could have been a good game on old Tvs but not for our current age.

If you can get this on sale then this is an open-world game worth playing through.

Pros:
There are a lot of free play targets and doing most of them gives you the feeling of helping the liberation efforts through eliminating guard outposts, towers, etc. Doing these side activities can even help the missions be even easier since there will be less enemies over all.

Great sound effects, you really feel the impact of the explosions and gunfire. Great music as well if you're into music from the 50s.

Gunplay holds up well, its a third person shooter so that's not saying much but the shooting feels solid and there are a sizable amount of guns to choose from.

The story is serviceable. The main character does bring the life through cliche one liners and quips. I wish there were more character interactions and quests though.

Cons:
The game is pretty buggy, none of it was game breaking but there were times where enemies will glitch through the wall if they're following you.

The car physics are a bit strange that it often bumps into the road when approaching a slightly elevated route.

The free-running is also a bit janky, I was trying to climb a certain building for about an hour and the jump to get there does not seem to be intended at all. It felt like doing one of those mario speed running jumps just to get the free running to register the terrain as climbable.

The radar installations are a death trap, too many times I tried placing explosives only to get stuck on the rotating blades and die in the resulting explosion. Stay away from moving objects in general, physics in this game is more dangerous than the Nazis.

There's not really a lot to explore, the map is just basically Paris.

Note:
If you only play the missions, even including the side missions, you can probably finish this in less than ten hours. I was pretty surprised to see that I was already in the endgame.

Overall its a pretty good game, although I would say its not a game to grind out in one play session, its more of a game to come back to weekly and play a couple of hours each time.

shows its age in mission variety but no worse than any gta or assassins creed from 2010. Great to play over a holiday season, fun to blow up nazis and the voice acting is superb.