‘The Saboteur” is not an easy game to like.

The whole operation feels like “Grand Theft Auto: Europe.” That might have been interesting three or four years ago. But “GTA’s” gameplay isn’t aging well.

I think “The Saboteur” would have gotten a warmer reception from me if it had gone into a time machine and come out three or four years ago. As it stands, here at the tail end of what has a been a strong release year, it feels like a game that was made in a biosphere by a group of people who were obviously very talented and very gifted, but who were not receiving news, especially game news, from the outside world.

The world has changed. And here’s “The Saboteur,” showing up in December, late to the 2009 party, the wrong game for the wrong time.

The game tells the story of the hard-boozing, race-car-driving, womanizing, Irish bachelor named Sean Devlin. He’s the embodiment of so many cliches that he actually manages to be vaguely interesting on occasion. When Devlin loses a car race unfairly to a cliched German, his quest for revenge winds up getting his French friend, Jules, tortured and killed.

This leads the mourning Devlin to Paris, where he connects with Jules’ attractive skirt-wearing sister. He joins the French Resistance and holes up in (of all places) the back room of a La Cage aux Folles-type boob bar. And so begins our drive-there-do-this roster of missions.

Following the “GTA” blueprint to the letter, Devlin is introduced to various characters who give him things to do and reward him with contraband and weapons in return. Frankly, most of the missions aren’t terribly interesting, and I seemed to complete a large percentage of them merely by luck. For example, one mission had me assassinating a German officer who had cut off the hand of a Resistance fighter. First try: I sniped his bodyguards, then shot him. Fail. Second try: I attempted to fight all three in hand-to-hand combat. Fail. Third try: I sniped his bodyguards, but left the officer alive and attempted to corner him in an alleyway and beat him to death with my hands. (The handless guy who’d issued the mission had asked me to deliver a message to the officer before killing him.) Maybe I encountered a bug in the game, but when I approached the officer, I was inexplicably rewarded with a MISSION COMPLETE message.

Huh.

Really?

Another mission had me freeing a group of French prisoners — at least, I believe they were French — from an outdoor Nazi compound. I frantically ran from cell to cell, freeing each prisoner while getting shot at endlessly by the nearby guards. The screen turned more and more crimson the closer Devlin was to death. Again, I wasn’t sure I was doing any of this right — it certainly didn’t feel right to me, with the screen being almost solid red — but suddenly, though I’d limped my way through most of it, and had gotten shot about 87,000 times, the mission was completed, and I was successful.

I realize the game is really just “Mercenaries” with cut scenes, and that this is a step forward for Pandemic, master of the story-less open-world game. But the writing should be better. It lacks the crispness and credibility that “The Ballad of Gay Tony” (at least, the first few hours of the game I managed to endure) has in spades.

But something sort of miraculous happened. Well, two miraculous things happened.

No. 1: I realized how important it is to cull Nazi targets from the city. The city is littered with these targets, each one represented by a white diamond on the map. Getting rid of a target typically involves sneaking up on something, like a Nazi-occupied sniper tower, and planting a charge of dynamite at the base. Boom. Target is eliminated in a very gratifying explosion, and the white diamond disappears from the map.

No. 2: The game taught me who Madeleine Peyroux is (American singer-songwriter of French descent; very much alive, but she sings like she’s from another era). She sings a cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Dance Me to the End of Love” in the game that stayed in my head long after I powered down my PlayStation 3.

‘The Saboteur’

No rating provided.

PS3

Electronic Arts; Pandemic Studios

ESRB rating: M for Mature

Gaming news

‘Uncharted 2′ wins top Video Game award

LOS ANGELES — The cinematic action adventure “Uncharted 2: Among Thieves” nabbed three prizes including game of the year at the Spike TV Video Game Awards.

The PlayStation 3 exclusive was named top game for that console and honored for its graphics at the awards show, which featured appearances from Stevie Wonder, Green Day and Jack Black. Snoop Dogg and The Bravery performed.

Wonder presented the best music game award, won by “The Beatles: Rock Band,” and called for more titles accessible to the disabled. Jake Gyllenhaal promoted his movie based on the “Prince of Persia” games, due out next summer.

The show also featured new previews of upcoming titles, including “Medal of Honor,” “Batman: Arkham Asylum 2,” “The Force Unleashed 2” and “Halo Reach.”

— The Associated Press

New game releases

The following titles were scheduled for release the week of Dec. 20:

• “Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers” (Wii)

• “Savage Moon: The Hera Campaign” (PSP)

• “Guitar Hero: Van Halen” (Wii, PS3, PS2, X360)

• “Pallurikio” (Wii)

• “Dragon’s Lair” (DS)

• “Twin Sector” (PC)

• “Supreme Ruler 2020 Global Crisis” (PC)

— Gamespot.com

Top 10

DOWNLOADABLE TITLES

The editors of Game Informer Magazine rank the top downloads for the month of December:

1. “Grand Theft Auto: The Ballad of Gay Tony,” X360

2. “PixelJunk Shooter,” PS3

3. “Call of Duty Classic,” PS3, X360

4. “Madden NFL Arcade,” PS3, X360

5. “Borderlands: The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned,” PS3, X360

6. “Gyromancer,” X360

7. “Qix++,” X360

8. “The Beatles: Rock Band Rubber Soul,” PS3, X360

9. “Excitebike: World Rally,” Wii

10. “0 Day: Attack on Earth,” X360McClatchy-Tribune News Service