XIII

aka: Shashou Shisan, Thirteen, XIII: Classic, XIII: le jeu vidéo
Moby ID: 11251
Windows Specs
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Description official descriptions

XIII is a cel-shaded first-person shooter based on the popular Belgian cult comic created by Jean Van Hamme and illustrated by William Vance. The game is loosely based on the first five comics. The main theme of the game is based on Robert Ludlum's book The Bourne Identity, and features a man who is suffering from amnesia and quite possibly involved in the recent assassination of the President of the United States. The hero knows almost nothing except that he must be important, since everyone is trying to kill him. Gradually uncovering the mystery, the hero, learns more about his secret agent past and his curious name: XIII.

The player unravels clues, trying to solve a conspiracy set in an environment that breathes a comic book ambiance. Footsteps and shots are visualized in text and actions: for example, head shots are shown in a series of still images. Aside from that, the game has all the typical FPS elements: both stealth and action, more than fifteen weapons (shotguns, crossbows, rifles, ...), interaction with environmental objects and plenty of enemies in levels spread all over the world. During the game, the player can learn a number of skills such as silent walking, lockpicking and dual weapons handling.

Spellings

  • 杀手十三 - Simplified Chinese spelling

Groups +

Screenshots

Promos

Credits (Windows version)

380 People (324 developers, 56 thanks) · View all

Producer
Co-Producer
Data Managers
Associate Producer
Game Marketing Manager
Junior Game Marketing Manager
Localization Manager
Project Closer
Online Moderator
Lead Artist
Artistic Director
Lead Character
Lead 2D Artist
Character Textures
3D Artists and Special Effects
Pop-up Windows
[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 78% (based on 66 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.5 out of 5 (based on 120 ratings with 6 reviews)

It looked great and played terribly.

The Good
XIII's graphic novel look is brilliant. It looks beautiful (though a generation or two behind other shooters released around the same time) and the game play's smooth as one could ask for. The first 15 minutes met the high expectations I had set for the game...

The Bad
...but soon after I found that my hopes were MUCH too high. When the developer's of XIII announced that it would play like a comic book, nerds across the nation began salivating over what looked to be the ultimate "Hybrid of Nerdities." But soon after it's release fan's realized that by "comic book structure," the developers meant a linear bore of a traditional shooter, stuffed with panel intro's and outro's, and the irritating sound effect text's (a la batman) to give it a comic books feel. The gameplay is average, offering nothing extraordinary. I would like to know how a developer can make a FPS that has more in common Blake Stone than modern shooters of the time, and expect it to blow the mind's of gamers around the world. The story begins with a cool introduction to the world of Agent XIII, who seems to have forgotten everything about his previous life. Had the game kept the intriguing story as it's foremost concentration, I would have enjoyed it much more; but alas, it seems that shooting soldier after soldier with an M-16 is the proper way to regain one's identity. Pshh. The game doesn't even include region sensitive damage on an enemy besides the head. Pass this one up; the occasional flash back might have been cool if XIII delivered a story that pulled you in through the game play, but an intelligent game like Farcry or Doom III is a better way to spend your money.

The Bottom Line
Shoot, shoot, bang, kill, flashback, story information, shoot shoot shoot, bang, kill, blood, text, panels, end game.

Windows · by Ricky Pugh (6) · 2004

Superb graphics, good gameplay

The Good
Firstly, the cell-shaded graphics are excellent, and are what will undoubtedly draw most people to the game. Rather than being cartoony (like The Wind Waker), XIII - read 'thirteen' - actually looks and feels like a real graphic novel. It's a 3D comic and it works brilliantly. Hitting an enemy with a head-shot spawns a box-out window showing some white-bordered stills of the bullet finding its target which, although getting repetitive after a while, are hugely satisfying. Ubi Soft have tried hard to make the graphics mean more to the game than just eye-candy, though; explosions and enemy footsteps are displayed as a Batman-style 'Boom!' or 'tap-tap-tap...', meaning that the player can visually follow enemies that are obscured by buildings, etc, which is a useful feature.

The story takes amnesiac Steve Rowland across the US in an attempt to unravel a conspiracy surrounding an assassinated president. Locations are always interesting and varied (of particular note is the clifftop mansion towards the end of the game with beautiful ocean view) and the mix of stealthy, weaponless and blast 'em missions is good.

For GameCube owners coming to XIII after a spell away from the FPS genre, an improvement in enemy AI is immediately noticeable. Soldiers hide around corners, wait in ambush behind crates and inside doorways and actually notice (most of the time) that their partners have been taken out right in front of them. No more will the TimeSplitters2 strategy of popping your head round the corner and then waiting for baddies to stumble blindly into your line of fire bring you success.

Special mention must also be made of the game's ending of which, of course, I can say little here, other than than certain graphical effects are very cool indeed. Oh, and that it's playable!

The Bad
On the negative side, some may find that XIII's story is a little too complicated. The plot is unveiled in spurts and starts with cut scenes at the end of some levels, leaving those without a good memory for character's names in the dark. There's no way to replay these cut scenes, even after finishing the game, which is a shame as they are certainly worth a repeat viewing. It is possible to watch a 2D comic style presentation of the story, but in contrast to the cut-scenes this serves to shed very little light on the conspiracy and the identity of Steve Rowland.

What's worse is that it isn't possible to replay your favourite levels without resorting to saving a new game after each. This is particularly frustrating given that there are hidden 'secret documents' to collect throughout the game - if you miss one, there's no opportunity to go back for it. Ubi Soft should have looked back to Goldeneye 007 for a lesson in how to manage this properly.

Also - and when will developers learn - why are the controls so odd? For some reason, 'B' is secondary fire, 'A' is action and 'R' and 'Z' are primary fire and crouch respectively. This will catch players out even after several hours of play. Surely primary and secondary fire should be 'R' and 'Z'! And why not give us the option to change it? Streetfighter II, back in the 16-bit era, gave us this freedom!

Ultimately, though, what lets this game down is just how unextraordinary it is. Sure, the graphics are superb, but once you see through them you'll realise how little it brings to the FPS table, borrowing heavily from Deus Ex and the other games by Rare and Free Radical Design that I mention above.

The Bottom Line
The bottom line is that XIII is a supremely enjoyable game with superb graphics, excellent sound effects and acting (including an underused David Duchovny, a nice choice for a conspiracy game). Just don't expect it to add anything new to your collection. FPS starved GameCube owners should definitely look into it.

GameCube · by Paul Jones (274) · 2004

Old shed, new paint... but such sexy paint!

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.

PlayStation 2 · by Bill Clay (33) · 2003

[ View all 6 player reviews ]

Discussion

Subject By Date
Game with MSI! Fred VT (25953) Feb 19, 2014
Cine14.bik Daniel Saner (3503) Aug 12, 2007

Trivia

Characters

Not all the enemies in the game are pure fantasy. The look of at least two of them is based on real persons. One of them is Niels Bogdan, German PR-guy from Ubi Soft, the other one is more interesting: In cooperation with the German games-show NBC GIGA GAMES, the designers gave the viewers of the show the chance to get themselves into the game. They just had to send pictures - and the other viewers decided, which was the meanest looking villain, you could imagine.

Well, in the end, they didn't choose some mean looking guy - but a very, very mean, in a strange way, looking, young, ultra-nerdish guy. So, if you come across some really questionable villain who looks a bit like Bill Gates, you know why...

References

In the Canyon level, you can find three deserted graves. Unlike the tomb in the garden of the mansion, later on in the game, the names written on them do not refer to in-game characters, but to members of the development team: Olivier Dupin (2D), Marc Chevalier (3D Artists and Special Effects) and Nath Moschetti (Artistic Director).

Soundtrack

The groovy seventies music is composed by artists associated with the San Francisco's Future Primitive Sound art collective. The soundtrack has been made available exclusively in a XIII game bundle that could be ordered from the Ubisoft site. There are no song titles, just 13 unidentified tracks that flow one into the other in one continuous mix.

Awards

  • 4Players
    • 2003 – Best PC Story of the Year
    • 2003 – Best PC Innovation of the Year
  • Computer Gaming World
    • March 2004 (Issue #236) – Special Achievement in Art Direction

Information also contributed by Felix Knoke

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Related Sites +

  • Official Webpage (Mac)
    The official product page for the Mac version of XIII on the publisher's website, which provides trailers, an overview of characters and weapons within the game itself, desktop wallpapers, a demo, and purchasing information, among other such particulars.
  • Treize
    Official comic book site
  • UBI Soft XIII site
    UBI Soft website for XIII
  • XIII - le site non-officiel
    Unofficial XIII comic book site

Identifiers +

  • MobyGames ID: 11251
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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Sciere.

Xbox, PlayStation 2, GameCube added by Corn Popper. Macintosh added by Kabushi.

Additional contributors: Unicorn Lynx, jean-louis, Stillman, Zeppin, Patrick Bregger, Plok, 64er.

Game added December 8, 2003. Last modified March 7, 2024.