XIII

liked it when it first came out, glad i could replay it. i can recommend, fast gameplay, sometimes over the top but self aware story, levels are very short, game itself is not the longest. and too bad it ends with a cliffhanger. 4/5.

Intro: It's not uncommon to come across a hidden gem that was overshadowed by much more popular games of the time. XIII however, is not one of those games. Although it tried to make something feeling unique, it ultimately window dresses the shoddy gameplay and story. Positives: - The game, whether it's cutscenes or gameplay, feels like a comic book brought to life. Negatives: - Weapons feel inaccurate at anything further than medium range. Perhaps if every single gun had ADS, it would've mitigated this. - Strafing doesn't seem to do anything when trying to dodge bullets. - The story had the right idea of you having lost your memory and having characters explain everything to you. However, that idea gets thrown out the window because at random points in the story, you'll get these flashbacks that unnecessarily convolute your past. As a result of that, on top of the story moving at too fast of a pace, I lost interest quickly. - Although the comic book feel does give this game a unique look, the actual texture quality and polygon count is lower than Call of Duty 1 and Day of Defeat, both of which came out in the same year as XIII. - Was it so much to ask for a quick save function? Which was long established by the time 2003 came around!

The game is basically a playable James Bond movie, in cartoon style. If that sounds good to you. definetly buy this game! I personally am not a huge fan of linear shooters, so that game isn't particulary one of my favourites. Still its a soild shooter with good staging. I also think the game didn't age too well, not so much on the graphic side, but in regards of gameplay. Its very straight forward. Not much to explore, no stats, abilites, side quest or something like that. But if you like the purity of this design you will have a lot of fun with it. I bought the game because I knew it from my teenage years, but I am honestly a bit dissappointed. It was pretty great at the time it got released, but nowadays it just feels mediocre.

XIII is one of my favorites. Great story, unique art style, solid gameplay, terrific voice acting, etc. And yes, so sad there was no sequel. Love it, love it!

The art style for this game is top-notch, plain and simple. The fact that this game still looks good 17 years after release is mind boggling. This is, to me, the best example of cell shading in a game. Everything looks like it's right out of a comic book. The age of the game is hidden completely because of how well the cell shading was done. Though, the graphics were really the only thing I enjoyed about this game. The game play is lacking. Levels are a mixed bag of forced stealth, "you should maybe do stealth here," and guns blazing corridor shooter levels. The stealth systems that take up a large portion of many levels are underdeveloped and feel slapped on last minute just because a comic book Bond-type thriller needs stealth. If they were going to make a stealth game, they should have made a stealth game, but this is the worst of corridor shooters and stealth put together. Couple that with some really bad AI, damage so unbalanced that you almost can't die, and XIII becomes a real slog to play. I remember playing this when I was younger, and I really wanted to like it, but the poor gameplay led me to drop it roughly 75% of the way through.