The Saboteur - Xbox 360

One of the many little joys of gaming is finding a great game that you've never really heard of, or heard much about. It happened when I played Metro 2033 and it happened again when I played The Saboteur.

Up until the point that I played it I really knew very little about The Saboteur. I read its review in OXM, but I'll be damned if I can remember one thing they said about it. They only thing I remember from the review was that it was a sandbox game where you fought against the Nazis and that the areas you had liberated changed from black and white to color. I remember thinking I should play it, but I didn't really follow through by adding it to my Gamefly queue or anything. Months passed and then one day while shopping at Target I saw it on clearance for $4.75. That's a hard deal to pass up.

It took a couple of weeks after I bought it to finally get around to playing The Saboteur, but man am I glad I did. Simply put, The Saboteur is a really fun game. It may not be the most original game, but I'll be damned if I didn't enjoy every bit of the thirty two hours I spent playing it.

I'm a boy. I like explosions. There are a lot of them in this game. Seriously, you spend a lot of your time sneaking into Nazi installations and blowing them the hell up. That is when you're not driving around in fancy cars, shooting Nazis, or climbing up buildings like Spider-Man.

Yes, you are Irish brogue Sean, a race car driver who also happens to know how to use pretty much every gun and explosive known to man as well as how to scale the sides of buildings as easily as walking up a flight of stairs. You are the Irish James Bond. So when Nazis kill you're friend you decide to wreck their shit up in Paris with the help of the resistance fighters you will meet along the way. You'll do quests for these people to help further their cause, everything from sneaking into buildings and blowing them up to assassinating Nazi higher ups.

The game gives you a fairly decent option of how to complete your missions. Feeling stealthy? You could always steal a Nazi uniform and plant explosives in key areas without them knowing... you also have the option of packing a car with explosives and driving it through the front gate. Just remember to bail out before you hit the building.

Is the story deep? No. It's your standard fare pretty much. Is it going to win any game of the year awards? Probably not. You know what though? At the end of the day if a game is fun I'll play it and enjoy it. Sometimes I don't want some intricate plot with twists and turns. Sometimes I don't want to be lead on a journey through a magical story that will change my life and blah, blah, blah. Occasionally? I just want to get in a game where I can cause a lot of destruction, drive fast cars, blow up buildings, kill Nazis and have a hell of a fun time doing it. And you know what? The Saboteur allowed me to do that and enjoy every minute of it.

Squid.