XIII (13) unlucky for some, but will it be lucky for UbiSoft?

XIII is based on a French comic of the same name. You play as a mysterious man with no memory who awakens on a beach; the only clues as to your identity are a tattoo of the number XIII and a key to a safety deposit box. Soon after, you find yourself coming under attack and you start getting flashbacks. When the story starts to unfold more you realize that you're part of a conspiracy in the assassination of the President, and when you meet more characters they also become involved in the conspiracy…

   

The game plays well enough, good controls and pacing add to an enjoyable plot-driven story mode. The controls are real easy to get the hang of and to make it nice and easy to select the 15 weapons and assorted of gadgets you get to play with. They've made it so if you need to quickly get out your grappling hook or lock pick you can simply press the D-pad instead of cycling through the whole list of weapons. The weapons themselves are pretty samey, just your normal assortment of machine guns and pistols. One of the things I like is the way you can pick up a lot of everyday items such as chairs and bottles and use them as weapons to take out any unsuspecting guards. Another cool feature is the comic book styling of the whole game - when something important is happening you get new comic windows popping up with pictures of what's going on. The missions are pretty similar; infiltrate this, escape that sorta stuff. The tame AI makes the game seem even more repetitive with the enemies always just standing still or running at you shooting.

The multiplayer modes consist of your usual deathmatches and capture the flag type games and are playable with 4 players and bots offline. Online XIII is a real disappointment, and if you can find a game then it tends to consist entirely of running right up to people and blasting until one of you dies, the levels are small and enclosed, and unsurprisingly there seem to be very few people actually playing the game.

   

This is the first cel-shaded FPS and it looks really decent, with good-looking character models, tidy levels and nice comic book speech effects like "ARRRGGGGGG" above a character you've just killed. But what lets XIII down in my view are the animations, the enemies don't move as fluidly as you'd like, mostly just standing around, slowly patrolling or running straight towards you. The weapons look cool enough - the cel-shaded look means not a lot of detail or texturing of any kind - but the game stays smooth throughout. Another of the comic book effects is the screen shake, when the screen gets rattled by an explosion you can see the comic-style borders as well as the BoooooooooM!!! popping up -it's all rather stylish. XIII features some really good sound and the music is appropriate - sort of jazzy/conspiracy themed, and fits right in. Voice acting is also good with a depressed sounding David Duchovny (X-Files fame), Adam West (TV Batman) and Eve (rapper) lending their talents to the game. Weapons sounds are also nice with chunky machine guns and good rumbling bangs for rockets.

Overall XIII is just not different enough from the rest of the crowd, the poor AI and samey objectives didn't give me the urge to play continuously. Decent looks and sounds keep it alive for a while and the comic styling is nice - but there are better FPSs to spend your money on.