Fun. Very fun. Excellent area design. Is it just me or is Adam West pure humor wrapped in a person suit?
Lows: There are enough that there will indeed be plenty of people who wont like it. XIII’s save system, though not unpleasant will grate against people who feel that they should be able to save anywhere.
First Person Shooter Fans: This game is for you. This represents the cream of the crop, one of the best of the year. Pick it up now, and if you don’t feel like paying 40 absolutely do not miss it when it’s in the bargain bin.
Stealth Fans: Plenty can be found here to make this game worth 40, but this may not be your favorite cup of tea. It wont be the worst action game you ever played, don’t necessarily wait for the bargain bin, but give it a good hard look before making up your mind.
Everyone Else: Don’t sweat this. Maybe give it a try if you find it in the bargain bin for 5 dollars sometime in the future, but don’t sweat it. You wont miss anything here.
Who doesn’t want to step into the shoes of their favorite comic book character? Step up and clean up the riff raff of the world. Take out the dark conspirators by leaving such a trail of blood that the world has never seen before. A fantasy come true, in a way Thirteen is to guys what a prince charming is to chicks. And by and large it is an unparalleled success.
The look of the game is extremely unique and very well done. The feel of a comic book permeates every aspect of the game in a cohesive fashion and it feels very good. It also feels very pixilated. Even on the highest resolutions available your eyes will be assailed by that blocky plague of the desktop screen. On the other hand it must be admired that XIII runs well on an Athalon 900 and an Elsa Gladiac GeForce2 with 32 Megs of RAM. Talk about scarily low specs. Microsoft Word barely runs on that hunk of junk. It felt like a little breath of fresh air to not have to worry about system specs at all.
The game play is so well blended together that there are very few moments that are hard to pick apart from the rest of the game play. There are some moments where you suddenly find yourself in a situation lacking any tension but without any weapons, which is an awkward way to start off without any weapons. Something just doesn’t quite feel right about some of the stealth levels; however some of them go well above and beyond the standard fare for similar games. Often one of the largest distractions in game play can be a spawning enemy within an immersive environment and it felt so good to not see that used in XIII. In fact it keeps the stealth missions fun.
One of the harshest decisions the developers made were the inclusion of save points rather than save anywhere. It seems kind of funny to have a quick save that doesn’t do anything but save the game at the last checkpoint you passed. This game shines as an example of making a decision like that a design decision and not a crutch to make the game harder. The game and level design are so well done, and the saves so well placed that there are few points in the game that will have you just praying to be able to save anywhere. The worst in particular for me was the final fight in the game. The save is so far away from the boss that there is quite a lot of walking to get there and then an un-skipable cut-scene before you can actually begin the rather difficult fight. Though very, very few, moments like this made me wish that I could save after all the wasted time and then reload and hop right into the fight.
The voice acting was bad. It was bad in the way that you might describe Hannibal Lector as a bad man. How could it be bad? Where did they go wrong? They had David “trust no one” “X-Files” “I’m a real actor” Duchovny cast as the main character. Ubisoft had “I only need one name” Eve! Adam West was funny. That really doesn’t say much because Adam West is always funny. I hear in real life he got kind of funny in the head after playing Batman. A lot of people say he was never quite right in the head. But the people who love him don’t care because he’s funny. He just sounds funny, like someone who you really want to know. Everyone else sounded like maybe they were phoned in or something. I mean you PLAY David’s character and you barely hear his voice, and when you do it feels flat and unconcerned. “Oh. Look. It is the conspirators. “ Eve wasn’t bad, but her character had fewer appearances that most of the others.
That really sums up the majority of what there is to say about this game. Aside from the rather stunning use of cell shading and in game frames that really pull you inside of the comic book XIII falls short of making any real changes to the genre. Everything about it is too good to fall flat but way too normal to be an eternal classic. Of course that never stopped a game from being action game of the year and this is easily one of the 2 or 3 competitors this year.