Saboteur

It is said that the beginning and end are the two most important moments in a film.

A great beginning hooks the audience into putting up with a lot of rubbish in the middle. A fantastic ending makes them leave with a positive impression, wiping out the memories of bad performances and ill-judged scenes.

Saboteur has the first part down to a tee, starting as it does with an explosive race from a Nazi ship, explosions booming all around as you run, forced this way and that by the collapsing hull.

Unfortunately, it ends with a text screen detailing how you fought your nemesis and won, without letting you do either.

Saboteur puts you in the shoes of ex-racing driver and flat-cap wearer Sean Devlin, who’s helping out the French resistance so he can get close to tracking down and killing the Nazi officer who murdered his best friend.

To help him achieve this aim, you get given nothing more than a historically dubious heartbeat sensor and helpful waypoint markers, showing you exactly where to go next.

Getting to where you need to go, however, is a completely different story, because not only are there numerous, gun-toting Nazis patrolling each level, but Sean has an annoying tendency to stick to walls when you least want him to.

This sticking is part of the slightly wonky stealth element that exists in the game. Double-tapping a direction makes Sean cling to a wall from which you can peek around corners and watch patrol patterns. A successfully executed stealth-punch from behind using the ‘5’ key instantly takes down an opponent without any hassle.

It doesn’t really work, though, because Sean walks at the same speed as the enemy, and to run you have to, er, double-tap a direction, which often just causes him to stick to another blasted wall.

So fist fighting is pretty much unavoidable for most of the game, which is irritating because it’s a bit rubbish.

As opposed to other titles that use the ‘5’ key for punching, in Saboteur moving into an enemy elicits a punch, if you want to or not. Coupled with the unclear animations it’s a bit of a messy button-mashing affair and completely unsatisfying to perform.

At least the gun-toting Nazis have the decency not to kill you with, I don’t know, their guns.

Not everything is terrible, though. The graphics, while having basic animations, are detailed and clear, and the bonus advice for finding secret locations in the bigger console version is a nice touch.

On the odd occasion where the stealth works, it’s even rather good in a Metal Gear Solid-lite kind of way. But these moments are fleeting and when the game abruptly ends after 30 mins, it won’t leave a particularly positive impression.