Saboteur for the PC, and a warning for ATI users

[CeeKay]

this is due out next week, but apparently there are issues running it with an ATI graphics card.  I imagine it may get fixed eventually (by Pandemic, oh, wait....), but I figured I'd give a heads up for any of you grabbing this for the PC 

[Blackjack]

Gee, too bad they shut down Pandemic. Maybe they'd be able to fix this.  Then again, maybe they were in such a hurry to finish before security escorted them out, they didn't have time to bug-fix.

[kronovan]

Yup, makes we wonder who's going to fix this. Absolutely unacceptable quality control IMO if EA doesn't come up with a patch.

[Blackjack]

Couple initial reviews are pretty ugly (apparently the AI is pretty bad, and it's a make-or-break in such a stealth-game), and it sounds like Saboteur is a rather sad send-off for Pandemic.   I guess their fans will say they got taken off the game before they could complete it -- and the cynics will say it's just proof it was time for them to disband, and move on.

I guess the ironic thing is reviews say the monochrome look is very cool. And yet the whole "turn zones to color as you free them" ruins said look.

[CeeKay]

a patch to fix the ATI issues is due Friday, but it is also a beta patch.

[Gryndyl]

Couple initial reviews are pretty ugly (apparently the AI is pretty bad, and it's a make-or-break in such a stealth-game), and it sounds like Saboteur is a rather sad send-off for Pandemic.   I guess their fans will say they got taken off the game before they could complete it -- and the cynics will say it's just proof it was time for them to disband, and move on.

I guess the ironic thing is reviews say the monochrome look is very cool. And yet the whole "turn zones to color as you free them" ruins said look.

I think the reviewers missed the boat on this one. This is getting my 'underrated game of the year' award.

As to the AI; yeah, it's not perfect but it's at least as good as a lot of other games I've played and enjoyed. The game feels as if it were balanced for the AI being as it is; any smarter and some areas might become borderline impossible. The AI have about the same smarts as the police in GTA IV and it feels appropriate for the game.

Yeah, the stealth aspect of the game isn't perfect but then again using stealth is completely unnecessary. Typically I'll use stealth right up until I manage to blow my cover and then it switches from an stealth game to an action game. As you get further along and unlock more abilities stealth becomes more feasible.

What the game is, however, is a big open world destructo fest in Nazi occupied France. The ambiance is fantastic, the black and white/color gimmick is cool and the music is dead on perfect. The cars are fun to drive, the voice acting is solid. Lots of exploring to do, lots of things to find and lots and lots of things that need the kiss of dynamite.

This game deserves a lot more players than it managed to scrape up.

[Tokek]

I'm interested in this game but I'm waiting for it to go on sale on Impulse.

[rshetts2]

well thats pretty cheap of you.  If everyone thought like you the company would probably go under!  Oh wait... never mind they already did

[Tokek]

well thats pretty cheap of you.  If everyone thought like you the company would probably go under!  Oh wait... never mind they already did

If you look at my location, it's not available in my neck of the woods, not legally anyway. Impulse won't even sell it to me since I'm not in the US/Canada region, so hopefully, by the time Impulse has it on sale, I'll be able to buy it from them and support the, now defunct, developer.

[Victoria Raverna]

well thats pretty cheap of you.  If everyone thought like you the company would probably go under!  Oh wait... never mind they already did

If you look at my location, it's not available in my neck of the woods, not legally anyway. Impulse won't even sell it to me since I'm not in the US/Canada region, so hopefully, by the time Impulse has it on sale, I'll be able to buy it from them and support the, now defunct, developer.

You can buy it from EA Store (Goto ea.com.sg then find the link to the store) which was where I got it. You'll pay in Singapore dollar which is cheaper. Problem with EA Store is that there is no guarantee that we'll be able to redownload it a year from now. So you probably need to keep the download cache files (EA Download Manager's). I bought The Sims 3 + First Expansion and Saboteur from there. There is also at least one store that sell original games (imported from Singapore) at Mangga Dua Mall which carries EA games.

[theohall]

Picked this up via Amazon Download for 8.75.

Fun game.  It's got the original Mafia feel in terms of story and the writing actually had me laughing with the double entendres during the Prologue. 

While I've seen the gripes about AI, that doesn't matter to me if the game is fun.  And this one is just plain fun.

[Blackjack]

Oops, I received this as an Xmas gift and I'm an ATI user.  

[CeeKay]

Oops, I got this as an Xmas list and I'm an ATI user. 

have you tried running it?  I'm curious if they fixed anything in the patch they released.

[Giles Habibula]

I don't use an ATI card myself, but I found this on a review from April 2010 at Amazon:

Just a quick note for those worried about picking this game up to play with their ATI card. It absolutely DOES work once you download the 1.03 beta patch. In fact, it works so well I've been playing it every waking second since I picked it up last week. It's so immersive and addictive it's actually cutting into my work productivity.

Amazon's Saboteur PC page. And I see it's come down to $8.75 now for the disk version. Anyway the review quoted is third one on that page.

[CeeKay]

I don't use an ATI card myself, but I found this on a review from April 2010 at Amazon:

Just a quick note for those worried about picking this game up to play with their ATI card. It absolutely DOES work once you download the 1.03 beta patch. In fact, it works so well I've been playing it every waking second since I picked it up last week. It's so immersive and addictive it's actually cutting into my work productivity.

Amazon's Saboteur PC page. And I see it's come down to $8.75 now for the disk version. Anyway the review quoted is third one on that page.

thanks! figured for 9 bucks I could take the risk, it's downloading right now off of Amazon 

[Tokek]

I use an ATI card and the game runs. However, I do have a bug with the map that is part of the ATI problem. When I zoom out or in and move around on the map screen, the map markers (current locations, waypoint marker, etc) don't scale / move with the map, so they're practically useless.   The game runs fine though.

[CeeKay]

I'm happy to say I fired up the game and we got boobies! everything runs smoothly so far.  I only got up to start of the flashback but the first prologue was smooth as butter.  I was kind of worried, ater all I'm running on a quad core with 2 ATI cards crossfired so my rig had the whammy on it for the game, but the beta patch fixed things right up.  of course I didn't try running it without the patch, but I'm assuming the download was version 1.0.

[Freezer-TPF-]

I'm happy to say I fired up the game and we got boobies! everything runs smoothly so far.  I only got up to start of the flashback but the first prologue was smooth as butter.  I was kind of worried, ater all I'm running on a quad core with 2 ATI cards crossfired so my rig had the whammy on it for the game, but the beta patch fixed things right up.  of course I didn't try running it without the patch, but I'm assuming the download was version 1.0.

I've been wondering about how patching is handled for Amazon-downloaded games.  It sounds like you just use the regular retail patches?

[CeeKay]

I'm happy to say I fired up the game and we got boobies! everything runs smoothly so far.  I only got up to start of the flashback but the first prologue was smooth as butter.  I was kind of worried, ater all I'm running on a quad core with 2 ATI cards crossfired so my rig had the whammy on it for the game, but the beta patch fixed things right up.  of course I didn't try running it without the patch, but I'm assuming the download was version 1.0.

I've been wondering about how patching is handled for Amazon-downloaded games.  It sounds like you just use the regular retail patches?

yep, that's what I did.

[Freezer-TPF-]

Cool, thanks.  I've been very pleased with the Amazon mp3 downloads so I'd like to try the game downloads at some point. 

Does this game require that GFWL junk?  I thought it did, but I don't seen mention of it anywhere.

[Giles Habibula]

Cool, thanks.  I've been very pleased with the Amazon mp3 downloads so I'd like to try the game downloads at some point. 

Does this game require that GFWL junk?  I thought it did, but I don't seen mention of it anywhere.

No it doesn't.
At least not the disk version that I have, so I'm assuming the same for d/l versions.

[CeeKay]

Cool, thanks.  I've been very pleased with the Amazon mp3 downloads so I'd like to try the game downloads at some point. 

Does this game require that GFWL junk?  I thought it did, but I don't seen mention of it anywhere.

No it doesn't.
At least not the disk version that I have, so I'm assuming the same for d/l versions.

dang, thought I answered that yesterday.  nope, no GfWL on the download version either, although it wanted to install the EA Download manager, which I didn't let it due since there's only the one patch so there wasn't much point in it.

[Blackjack]

I finally opened up my gift copy of this and played some over the weekend. It looks pretty awesome (it probably deserved some sort of Presentation award). The gameplay reminds me quite bit of the first Mafia game at times. Fisticuffs feel a bit sloppy at times, but fun.

I installed a beta ATI issues patch I found on Fileplanet, and so far (knock on wood) haven't run into any ATI videocard problems.

I'll share some screenshots later.

[theohall]

The Fisticuffs stay sloppy, especially since they set it up so you eventually get a stealth kill ability.  Combine that with the ability to switch uniforms and the game becomes more of a stealth/shooter game.  But it can be played however you want - which is what makes it fun.  Enjoyed it enough and actually found every single map item before taking it off the hard drive.  Some of the view-points are a challenge to reach.

[CeeKay]

Damn, totally forgot I have thus on my hard drive. I'll have to put a shortcut to it on my desktop so I remember it's there.

[Aganazer]

I've been playing a lot of The Saboteur lately. I think its my favorite GTA-alike. All the little features are so well done. The clearly visible disguise radius on the minimap, the glowy handholds when climbing, the visible timer on explosives, the little notification of someone watching you. Its a brilliant UI. The simple fact that it has all these features in an open world game is cool enough.

Its a damn shame that Pandemic Studios was closed down.

[CeeKay]

ran into an interesting glitch last night:  I found a general with 2 guards flanking him, and accidentally triggered the guards near him.  after losing them I went back and saw him standing on his own, with his red dot being the only one on the map.  so I go stealthy, sneak up behind him and do the silent kill.....

only to find myself killing a regular soldier, and the second stepping out of the general.  somehow when they reset the clipping system broke and all 3 were standing in the same spot.  I escaped again, and then the game CTD'd as I was stepping out of the hidey-hole, so I called ti a night.

that's the first time I can recall having an issue, it's been smooth so far.

[CeeKay]

hmmm.. I could have sworn there were drawbacks to running down pedestrians in this game from when I played it on the 360 but so far it doesn't seem to matter if I take out a whole church group to whack one Nazi with a car.  am I misremembering or was that something that took effect later on in the story?

[theohall]

hmmm.. I could have sworn there were drawbacks to running down pedestrians in this game from when I played it on the 360 but so far it doesn't seem to matter if I take out a whole church group to whack one Nazi with a car.  am I misremembering or was that something that took effect later on in the story?

If you take out enough civilians, you lose access to safe zones for 1 minute.  Take out enough more and that time increases.  That was the only drawback I ever encountered in the PC version.

[CeeKay]

aw man, I had a rgeat escape last night.  I was attacking a Nazi compound out in the countryside and starting to run low on ammo.  I was trying to figure out how to escape when I noticed a train heading towards a bridge I was near.  I took off, bullets flying everywhere, and jumped off the bridge just in time to land on the last car with just enough health left to not die.  I proceeded to ride the train out of the area and found a safe shack near the tracks to hide out in.

[Blackjack]

Although I like what I played, it doesn't strike me as a "saves the company" kind of game. Me thinks Pandemic's "crime" was that it never created a truly self-perpetuating franchise (i.e., a franchise where pasting succeeding Roman Numerals onto the game and title modifers becomes a license to print money although often the original developer ends up squeezed out down the road). I thought maybe Mercenaries would do that but it didn't quite get there.

[CeeKay]

I use an ATI card and the game runs. However, I do have a bug with the map that is part of the ATI problem. When I zoom out or in and move around on the map screen, the map markers (current locations, waypoint marker, etc) don't scale / move with the map, so they're practically useless.   The game runs fine though.

I have started running into this.  when I was just running around the city proper it wasn't a big deal, but now that I have missions in the countryside it's becoming a hassle to find stuff.

[CeeKay]

F@#K.

I finally got the alarm to level 5 last night and just as I'm about to clear the alarm zone the game CTD's.  so close to winning that evasion gold perk 

I did have to LOL at the way they handled airplanes for the alert, they made them a bit too agile.

[CeeKay]

OK, kinda annoyed they never fixed the Super RDX bug.  if you die or even re-load (as in quitting the game and starting back up later) it disappears from the vendor and you're stuck with regular RDX.

still pluggin along, been focusing on perks.  I got most of them except the gold in racing, sabotage and mechanics.  I may just buy the mechanics one since collecting every vehicle could get boring, and besides I bought the silver one in that group too.

[theohall]

OK, kinda annoyed they never fixed the Super RDX bug.  if you die or even re-load (as in quitting the game and starting back up later) it disappears from the vendor and you're stuck with regular RDX.

still pluggin along, been focusing on perks.  I got most of them except the gold in racing, sabotage and mechanics.  I may just buy the mechanics one since collecting every vehicle could get boring, and besides I bought the silver one in that group too.

The Mechanics gold can be difficult with how spread out all the vehicles are.  Collecting one of the tanks for one of the perks in that class (forgot if it was silver or gold) was a major pain in the butt, since you have to get the tank back to a garage and it's top speed is like 5 mph.

[CeeKay]

finished up tonight.  didn't try to destroy everything simply because it'd take forever, but it was a fun ride.  I could see them getting one more game out of the series, but it definitely wasn't franchise material.  I think they went a bit over the top with the 'Terror Squad', and was kinda worried that Dierker would show up in a mech at the end but was pleasantly surprised.

One thing that kept on bugging me was the song that played 'It's a new dawn, a new day, it's a new life... for me'; it sounded familiar and I just realized that Muse did a version of it.