XIII – GC – Review

Ubisoft was the publisher to
be in 2003.  They had everything going for them – great games for the fall,
great games planned for the following year, and a ton of promotion from the
thousands of people who wrote about those games over the past six months.  You
could have tried to avoid Ubisoft but would have failed.  No game magazine or
Web site in the country went a month without at least mentioning their
upcoming games.

Alongside Beyond Good & Evil and Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, Ubisoft
showed the world a game that would be the first fully cel-shaded first-person
shooter.  That game was XIII (as in "Thirteen," not Ex Triple I).  The cel-shaded
effects alone were attention-grabbers, both at E3 and at the various public
venues that the game appeared at.  A game can’t get past a five-day rental if
the gameplay can’t come close to matching (or better yet, surpassing) the
visuals.  Would XIII have what it takes to blow us all away?

Conceptually, XIII lives
up to the hype.  The preliminary work that the developers did practically
flies off the game and dives right into your room.  There’s a lot of
brilliance to be found within this title, primarily in its story
presentation.  Trying hard to be like a comic book, XIII will remind you how
much fun it is to play a game that’s actually cool.

Computer-generated movie
sequences develop the story in between missions.  In a unique, comic book
fashion the game breaks up various camera angles with several square and
rectangle-shaped boxes.  At times you may also see multiple events that are
taking place simultaneously, bringing to mind the intense demonstration of
real-time storytelling in 24.  With a presidential assassination, the lead
character apparently framed, and numerous convoluted plot points, players will
be scratching their heads, curious to know more.  However, it’s not as much
the story that got my attention as it is the way the story is presented.
We’ve all seen movies where the star is framed.  We’ve played games like that,
too.  XIII has a really unique way of presenting each aspect, making the same
old story seem new and interesting.

During play, gamers will
find out that they are, in fact, stuck inside of a comic book.  This part has
nothing to do with the story.  When you make a stupid mistake, like standing
too close to a time bomb, the camera will zoom out a little.  When zoomed out,
a white, comic book-style boarder is revealed.  The boarder shakes vigorously,
giving the illusion that you are within a comic book.  It sounds simple and
maybe even boring in text, but when you see it occur in the game all
complaints will be silenced.

There are a lot of subtle
things like that.  You can watch enemies converse, kill each other, and do
other daily chores via a pop-up window (comic book box) that appears at
specific times.  You have to be in a specific spot for the action to be seen,
but the game is well balanced in this aspect, making it impossible to miss a
sequence (unless you leave the area while it’s playing).

Great kills will
sometimes be rewarded with pop-up windows that show the shot from three
different angles.  This doesn’t occur during the hefty gunfights, and thank
goodness!  If it did, you’d be spending too much time watching the graphics to
be able to retaliate. 

Before I get further into
the gameplay I want to talk about the graphics.  Cel-shaded and gorgeous, XIII
is graphical masterpiece.  If looks could kill, this game would have your head
hanging on its wall.  The characters, the weapons, the environments –
everything has a realistic cel-shaded touch.  It’s not realistic in the sense
that the characters look human (they look like they came from a graphic
novel).  But if a graphic novel could come alive it would probably look
something like this.  The special effects – blood, gunfire, explosions, etc.,
are all very cool.  If nothing else, XIII is one of the top games to "see"
this year.

If nothing else made this
game worth praising, you’d probably be concerned with its quality.  If nothing
else, you’d probably not want to spend $50 on it.

XIII is an almost game.
It almost achieved true greatness.  It’s almost worthy of standing next to
Ubisoft’s big winners for 2003 (Prince of Persia and Beyond Good & Evil).  But
this first-person shooter isn’t always a shooter, and when it is, it doesn’t
always shoot well.

XIII involves a lot of
sneaking, a lot of escaping.  When sneaking, you can’t use guns because
they’re just too loud.  When escaping, you can’t use guns because they’re too
loud and could harm an innocent bystander.  Police officers aren’t exactly
innocent when they’re shooting at a man who’s unarmed, but they too are
labeled innocent.  If you kill one, even on accident, be prepared to start the
mission over again.  Check points make this start and re-start gameplay less
tedious, but it’s still a pretty big annoyance.  In an intense gunfight it’s
not always easy to tell the difference between cops and robbers.  The cops
aren’t always in uniform either, which makes it even more difficult.

That was frustrating, but
acceptable.  I ended up liking the diverse gameplay, something that could turn
out to be an acquired taste for most gamers.  You don’t spend as much time
shooting as the advertisements may have you believe.  In fact, all three of
the pictures on the back of the box show the lead character holding a gun.
That’s the equivalent of a slow drama film that uses its brief car chase
sequence as promotional tool for the trailer.

At times the game will,
without warning, switch from chair combat (in which you are attacking enemies
with a chair) to gun combat.  You could be shot and killed before you even
have a chance to pull out the gun!  Lucky for you, the enemies suck at
aiming.  Sadly, you will too.  The controls are acceptable, but the game is
not good at detecting where an enemy is standing.  Worse yet, the game is
terrible at determining when an enemy should be dead, or at the very least
lying on the ground, covered in blood.  Shoot an enemy in the chest and see
what happens.  Nothing!  He just stands there, no flinching, no dropping to
the floor, nothing.  Where’s the reaction?  The game is easy where it
shouldn’t be and frustrating where it should never be.

Not nearly as perfect
gamers hoped it’d be, XIII will go down in history for its revolutionary
graphics and unique story presentation.  An abundance of clones are destined
to follow, and maybe, just maybe one of them will have some rewarding gameplay
that makes it worth buying.  XIII is great game to look at, and it is fun to
play if you can appreciate an FPS that isn’t all about shooting (or deep
puzzles).  But its gameplay belongs to other titles.  You’ve had experiences
like this before, albeit less graphically impressive ones.  But if the
gameplay is your main reason for buying a game, this isn’t what you’re looking
for.

Reviewer’s Scoring Details

Gameplay: 7
If not for the
graphics to carry the game through, XIII would have been a boring game.
Gunfights are the best part of the gameplay.  It also happens to the most
unbalanced part.  Aiming is not always accurate, not for you and not for your
opponents.  "Oh, that’s great, my enemies can’t shoot well!"  Sure, that
sounds appealing.  But do you really want to play a game where your enemies
are dumb, or just technologically challenged?  I want to have full control
over my gun and where its bullets are shot, and I want my enemies to have the
same privilege.  XIII gave me neither of my desires.  There are better
shooters out there.  Not all of them are on the ‘Cube, but that doesn’t make
XIII worthy of any additional praise.

Graphics: 9.5
Cel-shaded
goodness for all to see, XIII comes equipped with the second-best cartoon
graphic effects.  (The best cartoon graphics can be seen in The Legend of
Zelda: The Wind Waker.)  Super-fluid animation, great death sequences, awesome
explosions, terrific backgrounds, etc.  Ubisoft went to great lengths to make
this game look as stunning as possible.

Sound: 7.9
Moderately deep
and powerfully intense, XIII’s sound is worth listening to.  It does, however,
sound a little too much like the music from Metal Gear Solid 2

Difficulty: Medium

Concept: 8.5
An FPS for people
with a general love of games, not diehard shooter fans.  The deathmatch
battles almost seem like an unnecessary extra since the game is not really
about shooting.  You have guns (sometimes), but you don’t have a license to
kill, which takes away the right to kill a cop or any other innocent person.
That adds to the realism, but in a heavy gunfight accidents happen.  To
eliminate cops and ensure no one is permanently hurt, XIII offers chairs and
other non-lethal objects as weapons.

This game would have
gotten a 9.5 and possibly a 10 if the gameplay had lived up to its story
presentation.  The graphic novel aspects are awesome.  You’re gonna love to
watch this game.  Though I’m not sure you’ll always love playing
it.

Multiplayer: 6.5
I can shoot, I
can run, but do I care?  Shooting barely existed where it would have really
counted – in the single-player story mode.  The thing is, even if it had been
a bigger part of the game, it needs more polish.  The controls are good but
never felt right.  The aiming was off, which I believe is a technical issue
that has more to do with the programming of the game itself than the
programming of the controls.

Overall: 7.9
XIII deserves a
13 (out of 10) for effort, but its gameplay falls short of achieving a perfect
10.  The story presentation couldn’t have been more brilliant, and while the
music is a rip-off of Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, I still thoroughly
enjoyed it.

It’s a shooter, but it’s
not.  It’s a spy game, but it’s not.  It looks beautiful, but most gamers will
not be able to figure out what the gameplay is.  You could play it for five
minutes and pick out a genre, but as a whole the game doesn’t really fit into
any particular category.  More often than not such a concept does not work,
and that is unfortunately the case here.