Now this is a game I can be excited about and then some. An open world third person action game set in Nazi occupied France. Even better, your character is Sean Devlin, an Irish race car mechanic turned underground resistance fighter.

Somehow the Nazi's have ruined your life and you are out for revenge and with the help of the French resistance (oh la la!) and British Intelligence (boo) its up to you to wreck terrible vengeance. I'm really hoping Pandemic play up the famous animosity between the Irish and the British in Saboteur, although they've taken a pretty bold move making the character Irish. Just to be clear you're playing an Irishman planting bombs and blowing things up... and everyone's, okay with this?

The game plays out in an open world 'stylised version' of Paris, meaning the devs didn't have the money to go there so they just looked at lots of photos. Expect to see all the usual landmarks such as the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame and ladies with sexy accents who smoke a lot and wear lacy things.

The game describes its modus operandi as quiet in, loud out (must... avoid... innuendo) so half your usual mission will involve sneaking in and stealth kills and the last half will be blowing stuff up and shooting people. Sounds damn good to me. I'm more than partial to the old stealth gameplay and adding in a generous amount of blowing stuff up combined with go any where gameplay and car jacking. Lets just say I'm pretty interested in this game. Think of it as GTA: Occupied France.

Rooftops and vertical gameplay are an important part of the mix and although the presser doesn't mention any Assassin's Creed style climbing it does say you will be fleeing over the rooftops of paris on several occasions. Using the rooftops for surprise attacks and sniping will also be a big part of The Saboteur. The more I hear about this game the more I want to get my hands on it.

As you push back the Nazi forces and dismantle their hierarchy one dead officer at a time there will be a visible difference in the cities environment. The gloomy grey environment of the games begginning will give way to bright sunshine, flowers in window and smiling girls in dresses riding push bikes around. Depending on your level of success the citizens of Paris will even start to help you out and rise up against the occupying forces.

The game sounds an awful lot like Velvet Assassin (which was initially called Sabotage, now we know why they made that change) in which you play as real life resistance fighter Violette Szabo who was reputed to have killed dozens of Nazi's before being captured and suffering as unpleasent a death as you can imagine in a concentration camp. While Velvet Assassin focuses more on combat and taking out the bad guys, The Saboteur seems to focus more on its mission based open world structure. Seems a little strange that two games with such similar settings and premises should be released so close to each other. Hopefully Pandemic can address some of the short comings of there previous open world game Mercenaries 2. A game I was very psyched for after the original Mercenaries on the Xbox only to be dissapointed.

The Saboteur is looking at a mid year release.