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Listen All Of Y'all It's A Sabotage
Product: Sabotage
Company: Replay Studios
Date: 07/16/2007
Avaliable On:

Sabotage, by Replay Studios, was shown at this year's EIEIO event, during E3. Sabotage is a stealth game with a female protagonist, Violette Summer, a character based on the real-life WWII spy, Violette Szabo.

One thing that really makes Sabotage stand out is the fact that most of it takes place in "flashbacks," and, as such, has a very surreal presentation style. The game starts with Violette doped up in a hospital bed, trying to remember what events led her there; there is a voice-over narration which is all in past-tense, as Violette remembers the events of her past which led up to her current predicament. The graphics are handled in a very surreal manner as well, as it's not a truthful representation of what actually happened, but, rather, how Violette remembers it. The environment is very detailed and the locations were studied and reproduced in-depth, but the textures and post production effects were modified by tweaking palattes and using strange lighting effects and filters. The end result is a game that has a true beauty to it, that goes beyond simply realistic graphics.

As Violette Summer, you are a trained assassin and spy, with over 40 different maneuvers with each weapon and ways to sneak up and take out enemies silently. You'll also need to watch out about leaving bodies just lying around - soldiers are trained to notice things like that.

One interesting and, possibly, unexpected benefit to being trapped in a hospital bed and fighting enemies in your head is that you can use a "Morphine shot" to even the odds a bit and get yourself out of tight spots. When you administer a morphine shot, the screen brightens to a white hazy version of what's going on, time slows down for everything but you and you're running around in your hospital gown. When used correctly, you can reposition yourself to a more beneficial position or even avoid damage from explosions around you by getting out of the way as they're going off.

Before going into a mission, you are given an opportunity to allot some skill points, to help prepare you for the particular mission at hand. As you play through the game, you gain more of these points. The points can be allotted to Strength, Morphine, Stamina, Stealth and Firearms, each having a maximum of 5 points.

Sabotage is slated to be released in September of 2008 for the Xbox 360 and PC and will have about 12 missions.

Geck0 aka Robert Perkins

GameVortex PSIllustrated