The Saboteur

Sin City. Grand Theft Auto. Inglorious Basterds. Moulin Rouge. Indiana Jones. Daniel O’Donnell. All these things seem to inform Pandemic’s World War II-set open world kill-’em-up.

It’s German-occupied Paris as a big-budget action movie: explosions, preening Nazi race drivers, base-jumping off the Eiffel Tower and sexy secret agents. By which we mean it’s trashier than a gossip magazine.

As Thomas Haynes Bayly once wrote, “absence makes the heart grow fonder.” And we have certainly had a lot of time to accrue fondness for The Saboteur. This unique sandbox title from Pandemic – developers of Mercenaries and Star Wars: Battlefront –was announced over two years ago, and to say that information has been scarce since then is an understatement.

Nazi-occupied France in the 1940s... What do you mean youve been there before? Many, many times? And you could walk down every rue and plaza blindfolded, the amount of times youve liberated the city from the Germans? Okay, we admit that our first reaction was exasperation on discovering that our pals at developer Pandemic were at work on yet another 360 WWII title - but luckily they also realize that theres a lot of competition out there, which is why Saboteur has been packed