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
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.
Dec 12, 2007
Pack up your plasma rifle because its time for us to don the wizards cap and break out the dice. Sacred 2 doesnt have a lot of competition on the 360, but then thats because its closest rival is the average superhero romp Marvel Ultimate Alliance. Youd have to go back to Baldurs Gate: Dark Alliance II on the original Xbox to find something vaguely similar. Newcomers to the series fear not: Sacred 2 takes place 2000 years before the first game, so no experience is
We're genuinely excited about Sacred 2: Fallen Angel for the PC. The promising title looks like the next natural step for those with any love for dungeon crawlers like Diablo or Titan Quest. Unfortunately, we doubt the 360 version will strike the same chord, as its audience may be unfamiliar with the mostly PC-centric genre.Visually, Sacred 2 has come far since its predecessor first released. Small details, like blades of grass swaying gently
Although well-received by critics, the first Sacred was much bigger in Europe than in the US and UK. It had a robust and entertaining combat system, which only rarely succumbed to the fatigue of repetition that the genre is known for.
Every day, some gat-toting punk game blasts its way across your console, frontin' like it's the next Grand Theft Auto... unless you're an Xbox 360 owner, in which case you're still thugless. Veteran developer Volition aims to change this with Saint's Row. On one hand, as yet another would be heir to the Grand Theft Auto empire, this ambitious prince may discover too late that it'll take more than mimicry to dethrone the reigning king. On the other hand, this is indeed one ambitious prince ...
We can just imagine the brainstorming sessions that went on deep in the bowels of Illinois-based Volition as it pondered the way ahead for the next generation of its games. And it would have boiled down to this: "Erm, how about we do a GTA, but, er, make it better? Stick it online or something?" "Yeah, that sounds good."
And so Saint's Row on 360 was born, with its gats precisely targeted on Rockstar's jewel in the crown and anything else of its ilk out there on the game shelves. But is this
Are you sick and tired of Grand Theft Auto-derivative games? Wait, let's rephrase that: Are you sick of reading about GTA-derivative games? If so, we're wasting each other's time here. But you're urged to keep your mind open, because Saint's Row might just change your mind about the free-roaming drive-and-gun genre.
The most striking aspect of the game, of course, is the graphics. Saint's Row wasn't just put on Xbox 360 so that its publisher, THQ, could charge an extra $10 at retail. While the
Let's get one thing out of the way first: Saints Row is almost exactly like Grand Theft Auto in every way. However, lacking any other game like it on the platform, this seemingly cookie-cutter version lights up the 360 with combustible mayhem on an order not yet reached by other titles
After mere seconds of play, the controls display a simple elegance that is instantly recognizable if not totally easy to get the hang of. Once you've scored a gat, you can shoot anything you like simply by
