XIII

The Good
I didn't even know this game was released until recently. According to Mobygames, it was released in the beginning of October? I found that very strange, since this game was hyped to Hell and back during developement, and yet when it was finally released I heard absolutely nothing about it. That really led me to believe that the game was a huge flop. And I read some rather unsettling reviews on top of that, and a lot of people complained about terrible stealth missions. Oh, and the lack of a savegame feature...ugh. Everything I heard of this game just made me think more and more that it wasn't worth it. But thanks to online game trading sites, I managed to get ahold of a copy quite easily, and I must say that after finishing the game, I'm just astounded that this game isn't getting more attention.

This is the first cell-shaded game I've played, and boy did they take the time to make it absolutely perfect. The comic book graphics, the panels that appear on-screen, the three-panel still shot when you kill someone from a distance, in particular, is just wonderful. I've never been a big comic book fan, but I just love the style in this game. In almost any part of the game, were you to take a screenshot, you may not be able to tell whether it was in-game or part of an actual rendered comic book. Bravo, Ubi Soft!

XIII is a first person shooter. Despite its comic book style, it's still just a first person shooter, but it doesn't fail there at all, either. Plenty of guns to keep you occupied, head-shots (almost always) are instant-kills, walking makes you quiet, and lots of vents to crawl through. You sometimes take on enemies one at a time, sometimes you take down fifteen at a time. Lots of things you hide behind, and you can even use parts of the environment (knives, chairs, bottles) to aid you in combat. If you're not a first-person shooter fan, the game probably won't entertain you, but if you are a FPS fan, this game is great.

Also for use in your arsenal is a grappling hook, which, unlike many other games, works wonderfully. You can't use it anywhere, and in fact, it's only used in key parts of the game, but it works. You might have to use it to swing to a ledge, and you'll find that it works great. You won't be surprised by some strange force of physics that throw you around like a rag doll in the wind. Using it to sneak down to some bad guys talking about their evil plans was great fun.

There are about thirty-five levels in all. The levels are varied enough, although the sequence of advancing through each level doesn't change much. Outdoor areas tend to lead you through the environment, up hills, through swaps, accross snowy fields, etc. Indoor areas lead you through vents, computer rooms, smashing windows. What I mean is, you pretty much know what you're going to be doing in any level based on what kind of environment you find yourself in. Call this a good or bad thing, if you want.

The storyline is also intriguing. The whole "d00d I can't remember who I am!" thing has been done to death, but thankfully the story isn't really about that, so much as it is about the "Number" guys and their evil plots. Learning about yourself and regaining what little of your memory you can was a lot better when it wasn't the main focus of the plot. XIII is one of the few first-person shooters I've played lately which really had me glued to my seat. I didn't beat this game just to beat it, I beat it because I wanted to see the entire story.

It helped that the game isn't very hard at all. Bosses are tougher than normal guys, but not THAT much tougher. You won't spend an hour trying to beat a certain spot. At least, I didn't. I found the game to be very easy, and I liked it that way. I'm tired of realistic "die in one or two hits" FPSs, just because they make you exercize the quicksave/quickload buttons until your fingers bleed. No, this game isn't realistic, it's a run-and-gun game that's loads of fun to play.

I heard a lot of people complaining about the stealth missions. I can only think of one level in which took me more than three tries to beat because of the stealth elements. Seriously, I don't get what the big deal is. Yeah, if you want to just run in and kill everything, then you're probably going to really suck at the stealth missions...but heck, you don't even really need to be that stealthy. All you have to do is knock out the guards before they can reach an alarm, or hide the bodies well enough that a passing guard won't find it. I loved the stealth missions. They were easy, they were exciting, at times very tense. Bring on more stealth missions like these!

The Bad
The only thing I really didn't like about this game was the voice acting. Everybody does a fine job except for David Duchovny. I don't know why they spent the money to hire the guy to do the voice acting, considering he has about a total of ten lines in the entire game that aren't "Oh" or "Unf!" or "Who am I?"

Also another thing that annoys me is that there is no lip-syncing. When a character talks, it looks like they're chewing some bubble gum.

The Bottom Line
XIII is one of the best first-person shooters out there. The storyline is great, the graphics are breathtaking, and the style is everything it's hyped up to be. Don't believe the poots that found the stealth missions too hard, because honestly, they're not hard at all.

Aside from Duchovny's voice acting ability and the "bubble-gum chewing" lip-syncing, I find this game almost flawless.

The Good
The graphics were what first attracted me to this game. The comic book style is not only visually pleasing but also integrated into the gameplay elements. For example if you wait by a door the words "TAP TAP TAP" represent the presence, and also the location and direction of any guards moving on the other side. Also panel overlays often show views of important items or dangerous situations. Hopefully a sequel will expand on these elements.

Underneath all the comic book gloss is a solid story and some good gameplay elements. My favourite sections were the stealth sections which are done very well even with the absence of a MGS style enemy view cone. The AI on the average soldiers is quite good which makes up for the disappointing AI on the boss characters. This is not a game where running in and blasting away will get you very far.

The ability to knock-out guards with things you find around you is a nice idea. Unfortunately, the tedious throw aside animation means that if you miss you'll have to stand there in a hail of bullets before you can perform a follow-up attack.

The music tracks help to complete the mood of the game and are in keeping with the overall style. The idle chatter of the guards are also an amusing diversion when you have to play the same section several times.

The Bad
I didn't get off to a good start with this title. Firstly I couldn't install from the discs - I had to copy the files to the hard drive first, and then install from there. Secondly, the copy protection system wouldn't let me play the game even with the disc in the drive! I contemplated cracking the game but eventually found out that the copy protection data doesn't exist on the install disc and you have to use the first game disc. I regretted my decision to persevere with the legitimate system later when it turned out you still had to disc swap even if you installed the entire game (what's the point of having the option if you still have to disc swap?) These pathetic anti-piracy efforts are only annoying for legitimate customers of course!

While most of the levels are well balanced, the boss levels are another story. They aren't hard because they have better AI or skills than the normal bad guys: they're hard because you have to hit them so many times. For example a direct hit with a rifle grenade will barely touch most of the boss characters, yet the splash back from this same grenade could well kill you! You are more likely to fail these levels through lack of ammunition than through lack of tactical skill. Only persistence will eventually get you through.

The save game system is quite flaky too. Several times I had to play the same level two or three times because the game didn't save properly.

The Bottom Line
It is an interesting twist on the first person shooter, with a distinctive graphical style, and well designed plot. But beneath the style it brings very little new to the genre.

The Good
XIII's most impressive defining factor is the confidence of its storytelling. Shamelessly wearing its influences on its sleeve, the game manages to meld elements openly borrowed from 24, The X-Files, Metal Gear Solid and other obvious sources, as well as the mythology of recent history, and in doing so, create a whole that is graced with a life of its own, rather than the pastiche of dead second-hand parts that may be expected.
One of this year's great disappointments in cinema, for me, was Sokurov's Russian Ark. That film attempted to tell a large, overarching story entirely in the first person, with quiet, melancholic narrative brushstrokes applied by its unseen narrator (here echoed with ghostlike similarity by David Duchovny as the eponymous protagonist).
Comparison between cinema and videogames, as art forms at large, are usually a risky business indeed; but XIII manages to succeed precisely in many of the ways Ark failed: the first person, usually a clunky, viscerally distant perspective (cf. Ellroy's White Jazz, EA's Rising Sun, and, of course, Russian Ark), is here employed confidently and adeptly to tell a story filled with twists, double-crosses, flashbacks, hallucinations, even the odd tried-and-true visual cliche of "this person is on drugs"-cam.
Perhaps it works so well because the visual style is so confident. XIII's graphics are not excellent. At times, the game looks downright silly: large, unwieldy polygons attempt to emulate explosions, mazes of hedge and brush in later levels are rendered in unsophisticated meshes of texture (videogames just can't do foliage, particularly up close, but to see failure after failure is disheartening, particularly when there are so many things the medium can do ably). However, this doesn't matter as much as it would, perhaps because the game doesn't sell itself on any tired ideals of visual realism or graphical smoothness. Like the intentionally rough, mixed-media collage that forms the visual style of Miller's later Batman works, or the stylized-to-11 look of any Western cartoon worth the time of day (Samurai Jack, Spongebob), XIII may not always look spectacular, but it does manage a look all its own, setting itself next to Timesplitters 2 or The Wind Waker in steadfast refusal to be measured on any terms except its own.
And when it does look good, XIII looks very good. Washed-out, glowing dream sequences; comic-book panels slamming across the screen to alert the player to pertinent events or reward for a stylish action. The visual and sonic flair evident in the game propel this highly story-driven piece well, keeping the player hooked from moment to moment, unfolding like the graphic novel from which the game takes its basis.
And like a good pulp comic book, the action is immediate, flashy, taking pains to always have a task in front of the player: a gunfight, a row of guards to sneak behind, a sequence of hooks to swing between (in an admirably-realized manner that takes a cue from Metroid Prime while managing to not do that game any disservice). There is little free-range challenge-finding in this game. A game that openly states its intention to propel you via its narrative, XIII is prescripted to the nth degree, but most of the time, here it's done right. You know you're walking along a path someone else has laid out for you, but in this case, it's too much fun for you to mind.
The fact that the first-person is a perspective that, by definition, must run in constant real-time and without the luxury of editing or camera placement to enhance visual or experiential flair, means that when it's done well, such as here, it's an impressive and note-worthy exercise in any media.

The Bad
The question that must be asked of XIII, that rears up early and recurs often, threatening to justify or damn its every gambit both narratological and ludological, is this: If this looked like Half-Life, would I be playing it? Do the welcome excesses in stylistic adventure justify yet another game where I walk around a warehouse shooting guards, another maze where I must use - yawn - Stealth to dispatch my opponents with a well-placed - deeper yawn - headshot, subsequently - groan - hiding their bodies so the enemy won't - anguished howl - sound the alarm and end my mission before I've really done anything?
And the answer is: maybe. If XIII didn't sound like a cosmopolitan spy thriller and look like a gorgeous violent cartoon, it would be the bastard child of Metal Gear Solid and Deus Ex, stealing so many ideas from them, adding nothing and providing little thrill in the process.
I play XIII because if I see one more first-person shmup with realistically-textured bricks and fetishistically-realised real-world weapons, my back teeth will be swimming; but I like a good story, and I like a fun videogame, and XIII is both those things. But that doesn't mean I can't admit that if the game is a tricky exercise in influential alchemy: take this element from here, present it as seen in that movie there, and then add the life, the magic, that gels it all together.
And that magic doesn't work on everyone. And if it doesn't work on you, you'll find yourself playing a game that boasts originality, but not in spades; and pastiches elements of countless other games, but not in a manner that thoroughly overshadows the source material.
A game where enemies can take three shots to the face at close-range before dying; a game where you sneak past five soldiers, remembering the several dozen other times you've done the same thing here and elsewhere, only to be spotted and greeted with an unceremonious "failure" message and made to do it all again; a game where an old man's importance in the story can augment him with quadruple the health of a soldier who should, by rights, be a much tougher opponent, but isn't, because hey, this is a videogame, and you need boss battles, right? A game with crates, and switches, and - for the love of God - escort missions.
This, then, is several things that haven't been done before, a lot of things that have, but are in fine form here; and a handful of things that have been done far, far too often.

The Bottom Line
As a good story well-told in a medium that often overlooks both qualities, it's a standout and a joy. As a first-person shooter, it's high-quality MOR. As a showcase of things that videogames really should get over already, at times, it's sadly comprehensive.