The Saboteur & "good games"

So, i've been playing The Saboteur in the last few days. And overall, it's a good game. But there's a LOT of games i would give the "overall, it's a good game" response to. There aren't a lot of games i would say "woah, this is horrible and i wish i'd never played it/seen it" for. Except something like Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing. Go to Metacritic and look for the lowest ranked PC game. I bet it's still there. Most games have some kind of redeeming factor.

The Saboteur points something out that should be obvious - if something in a game makes it good, then that something is worth taking to another game. As an example, ever since Assassin's Creed made parkour based gameplay popular, just about every large sandbox-y game since then has had it as a primary feature. Infamous, Prototype and The Saboteur itself to name a couple.

GTA4's game style is quite clearly mirrored in the general play of The Saboteur. The game plays very much like a GTA in the middle of France, with less angry gangsters and more foreigners. It's also a "sandbox" like said game. You can "go almost anywhere and do almost anything". And most of the time that sees me hooning around in a race car, stopping almost every single time i find a freeplay target just to go blow it up (and there are a LOT of them). But i enjoy doing so, when i'm not sneaking around trying to shank people to steal thier uniform.

Yes, the game has stealth as a primary feature. Yes it is a bit wonky at times, and yes the occasional clipping issues while wandering around do detract from the gameplay and irritate you. But they don't make the game unbearable. They just frustrate you on occasion.

Despite the flaws (not the least of which is the voice acting), it it still a good game. I enjoy playing it. Unfortunately, not everyone agrees with that statement. There are a lot of game critics these days - some of them highly paid - that spend a lot of time dissecting games like this and marking them as a writeoff. An increasing problem that has spread to a lot of gamers too.

Protip: Play the game for fun, not to nitpick it to death and spoil the entertainment.