The Saboteur

The Saboteur sets up one of those delicious "what if?" scenarios that games are so good at: it's essentially Grand Theft Auto transplanted to occupied Paris in 1940.

You take control of Sean Devlin, a hard-bitten, cynical and imaginatively sweary Irishman who was a car mechanic and nascent racing driver, before a nasty encounter with SS bigwig Kurt Dierker on the eve of the war saw his best mate Jules murdered, and Devlin relocate to a dubious Parisian adult club, the Belle de Nuit, and join the Resistance. While adhering to the free-roaming, third-person action-adventure blueprint popularised by GTA, The Saboteur brings plenty of its own to the party. Parts of Paris dominated by the Nazis, for example, are rendered in grimy black-and-white (until you strike blows against the oppressors and they regain their colour), Devlin can climb buildings and hide from Nazis (like in Assassin's Creed) and, Hitman-style, he can steal Nazis' uniforms (as long as he performed a blood-free kill) and employ stealth, although if he gets too close to enemies, they will see through him.

An excellent Suspicion system endows the Nazis with an authentically paranoid outlook, and black marketers and garages keep Devlin well supplied. The storyline, in which Devlin performs missions for different wings of the Resistance, plus British Intelligence officers Bishop and the beautiful, flirtatious Skylar – all the while seeking his nemesis Dierker – is excellent, and as the game progresses, the missions become satisfyingly elaborate. The game's systems, too, are so well set up that you can take different approaches to fulfilling those tasks, something of a Holy Grail with such games. Although at times you suspect that people in 1940 didn't talk in such a 21st-century manner, the game's evocation of Occupied Paris, backed by a period soundtrack, is thoroughly convincing, and several missions centre on the city's enduring landmarks.

There's only one major downer, and it doesn't involve anything that happens in the game: after it finished The Saboteur – by far the best game it has ever made – Pandemic was closed down by a credit-crunched Electronic Arts. The Saboteur, though, serves as a perfect epitaph for the unfortunate developer.