XIII is the story of a man who has lost his memory. He wakes up on the beach not able to remember anything whatsoever. No items are on your person and the only thing that remotely identifies you is a mysterious tattoo of the Roman numeral XIII on your neck. You are helped by a beach lifeguard who takes you back to her HQ and radio's for help. But before she can help you, she is killed and you are next on the agenda. So starts your trip into the game XIII. The game itself prides itself on a great story and visuals. First off is the gameplay. XIII does present you with a great story. You are implicated in the assasination of the President of the United States. You have been captured on video committing the crime. But you have no memory of it. You are then paced through 15 or so missions that have several mini levels built into each one. They slowly tell you the story of how you came to be who you are and what your place is in the conspiricy. The game is based on the French comic book of the same name, but I have never read the comic, so I cannot atest to how well it translates from the paper to the video world. The levels are very well designed and have a nice size to them. They are fairly linear in nature, but they are full of details and interactive items. In fact level design is one of the strong points of the game next to its story. They are set in different locations and they all have a great logical design. Graphics are the big hook of the game next to the story. The game uses a heavily modified Unreal engine, but puts a layer of cell shading on the entire process. The world is beautiful, and you feel like you are in a comic book. The character models look fantastic and everything has an uber cool look to it. Cell shading definitely gave this game a great unique feel from any other FPS that I have played recently. The small visua cues are great showing footsteps with visual "taps" on the screen. And the picture in picture shots of people dying like a comic book were great. Graphics are really well done in this game. Sound is an up and down in this game. The weapons sound good and full, When you fire off an AR-15, it sounds loud and strong. Same with most of the other weapons in the game. And the blast range of the grenades are well done, with the effect crater going outward based on physics. Unfortunately, the main character has a voice over by a barely awake David Ducovny of X-Files fame. He sounds so bored with his role in the game. It definitely takes the game down a notch. But the biggest crime that this game has done and I have penalized it significantly is the save system. You seem to be able to save anywhere. But what you don't realize is that it just moves you back to a save checkpoint, immediately undoing any work you may have completed after that fact. This is absolutely unacceptable. With a computer, I have a massive hard drive and should be able to save anywhere. Just because this is a console port does not excuse that. It is a crime to save before a boss in the game, get killed, and then realize that the save game only restores you to about ten minutes before the boss on the other side of the level. This really interfered with my gameplay and added on a couple extra hours of gaming that I should not of had to repeat. Overall XIII gives you a great story and fantasic visuals, but with an unispired acting performace and a devistating save system, move this title from greatness to mediocre.
Though it won’t be remembered as a career highlight for either David Duchovny (The X-Files) or Adam West (TV’s Batman), the spy-versus-spy whodunit XIII is the best first-person shooter ever based on a Roman numeral or a... Read Full Review
I'm VERY surprised at the Gamespot review of XIII. While its not best of the best, this is a damn fine game. The look is fresh and very well done. The story interesting and compelling if a bit overly-complex. The gam... Read Full Review
