The Saboteur

The first two hours of The Saboteur fly by in an exciting blur of focused action and solid voice acting. World War II may not be the most original setting for a game these days, but developer Pandemic has thrown together an open-world exploration of Paris that sounds very appealing. Unfortunately, as soon as you hit the city, the game's pace drops off, and the sub-par graphics and poor controls steadily bog down an otherwise terrific idea.
You waste plenty of time driving across the map to talk to a single character, and then making your way all they way back to the start for more than one mission. Not that the game itself ever drags -- nothing stops you from focusing solely on the story and quickly progressing through the narrative. The Nazi forces you meet on the road are easy to avoid, and the parts of the world you'll spend the most time in aren't intimidatingly large. Rather, the pacing isn't nearly as good as the beginning. Outside of the story, there's not much to do; each mission-giver only offers one or two additional missions, and the only extras left are to blow up Nazi towers, vehicles, and weapon emplacements.