Saboteur has been a game that has had some showing but from what we'd seen at Eurogamer this year, our verdict is that it could likely be one of the underground Christmas hits.

Saboteur sets itself in the WW2 era during German occupation of France in company of the French resistance. It is another WW2 game, however, not like every other WW2 game, it delivers its stated unique twist making you almost forget about its worn-out setting. There are in fact several twists in this game that have some quite blatant inspirations.

This had probably been one of the more content rich games of the event in terms of length and offering. There were three varied missions/stages to choose from, two of which we had witnessed, and one which we played ourselves.

It is worth stating before trying to explain the base of what this game is about that it is being developed by Pandemic Studios. Hopefully now you have a canon expectation of what this game might be, and look, like.

There's a hint of corniness and quirkiness from the get go with this game, although for the short period of time we had, sometimes it was hard - whether we should have been taking this game seriously or not. These thoughts first came from the frequent setting colour changes while playing the game, at some points you're playing in black and white with hints of bold colour to represent German army insignia and important symbolisations, while some parts are in complete colour in an almost 'Fable' stylised world. We quickly came to figure, after seeing one mission being played, that the fully coloured areas are where French population are with strength in fighting against the German occupation, and the black and white areas are where they are weakened or at loss of morale. The system Pandemic studios calls this within Saboteur is "Will to Fight"; that is the measurement of the resistance in one area. When you complete enough missions or rid the Germans of a space the 'Will to Fight' will increase.

Having jumped into a chosen mission we were met with a lengthy in-game cinematic piece introducing a few characters - including your own, Sean Devlin - and the mission at hand. The character you play as is an Irish man in almost too stereotypical kind of way. Bright green eyes and typically over-rated Irish catchphrases; this is definitely someone who extenuates humorous character.

From what we could muster from the mission prologue we were dealt with a guessable sabotage based mission, it seemed by secretly infiltrating a German stronghold we then had to plant charges. The first few minutes of playing we definitely saw some of their experience in developing Mercenaries shine through, the basic and 'pick up and play' controls and 3rd person view of the character was one indication, yet the open and free-roam map of where the missions took place was the most dominant.

The first part of this mission was directed almost entirely, this was maybe because it was very early on in the game, but I'd like to think it was because of the vastness of the map and the ease of confusion when given a vague mission objective. We had to follow a marker on the map that led us to a truck that we then had to use as a disguised delivery vehicle into the stronghold. This was when the game opened up another interesting element, clothing disguises. It is completely possible to kill a German and take his uniform and use it to cautiously sneak your way into, or through, otherwise very difficult locations. In this case we were given the disguise via the mission, and used the truck to creep effortlessly into the enemy base.

One thing that hit us when being a little too ambitious in disguise was that enemies get suspicious. There's a meter around the map on screen that rises when you do anything unusual, when this is fully lit guards are alerted and your disguise is blown - I won't hint at too much what game gave them this idea, but it also has a self explanatory name.

Even know this idea wasn't exactly unique, it had shown that this game has a lot more than meets the eye, maybe opening up even more into something that gives you freedom in undertaking missions.

Once we reached the base we had to take out a few German guards who were too persistent for covertness to take place, so we were forced to shoot them. This is when things became a little all too familiar, the guns were slightly under fulfilling of their task; it would take more than a shot to the head with a rifle to take down a single enemy. Enemies themselves had a tendency to stand out in the open as well, again, reminding us of Mercenaries. It wasn't that surprising after that that death followed quickly, offering regretting partaking in the full blown fire fight.

I suppose these are a few things that can be tweaked and played with for those not to seem too apparent, but even if they're still existing, Saboteur doesn't give the impression to be a game for all out gunfights.

Saboteur came across as more of an open/sandbox type title than we had originally imagined, and it had some of the best elements of games already out on the market. If it makes the most of those without shying away from detail, and on top of that manages to keep a solid identity, we'll look forward to seeing how this game expands beyond the few missions we experienced.

Saboteur will be ready for a very near Christmas release of December 8th internationally.