Posted on: April 25, 2011

beliar

Games: 383 Reviews: 11

A game that is CRYING for a sequel...

When XIII came out back in the day, the critics gave lackluster reviews, but I didn't pay much attention to that, because to me the game was awesome. What XIII, a game based on a Belgian comic book provided, it provided in spades. It tells a great and engaging espionage and conspiracy story about an amnesiac man accused of killing the President of ya old US of A. The game is an unrelenting action fest taking you from NY to Appalachian Mountains, to a desert, to a submarine many feet below the surface. But what I liked about this game is, that it's a living, breathing comic. The graphics are done in a cell-shaded way and the game itself provides special effects like "TAP, TAP" for walking and "BLAM" for explosions to create that special feel. If that wasn't enough, the story is told through the cutscenes that look exactly like comic book panels. Unlike many shoot'em ups, the story of the game engages you just like the action itself does and until the very end you'll be guessing the identity of No. I (well, maybe not really.... Maybe you'll guess it much faster, but it doesn't matter). In the end, all the components of XIII mix together to create one awesome blend. If I have any problems with this game, it is an obvious one - the game ends on a very abrupt and annoying cliffhanger. It was supposed to have a sequel, but due to poor sales it has been canceled and we are left with a nerve grating "To be continued...". However that doesn't mar my enjoyment of the game and you can always read the comics to learn what happened next (you can get them in English at www.cinebook.co.uk).

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Posted on: March 5, 2020

Venus_in_Libra

Verified owner

Games: 835 Reviews: 74

XIII - Style over substance

A first person shooter with a loud and stealth approach. It works fine. Gameplaywise nothing will surprise you, but thats not its main focus. One of the games strong points is its comic book style appearance, which works really well. There are several different instances which you go through, so there will be variation. There is not a lot of detail, though, so you will not be enjoying the sights for long. The main point of the game, the story, fell kinda flat for me. The game is somewhat based on a comic book, XIII. I dont know anything about the comic, so I cant judge how close it is to the source material. The story begins action packed, with you not knowing who you are and trying to piece things together. Things develop rather quickly and you soon know who are your allies and who are your enemies, but the main gripe here is, nothing is explored deeply. Youre briefly introduced to good guys and bad guys and are told go. Your enemy is an organization called - the XX (the twenty). You even fight a few individual members of the XX as bosses in certain missions. But none of them are deeply explored, you know little to nothing about them, so their effect is very weak in terms of storytelling. You start out eleminating them one by one, but later on in the game you simply have most of them behind bars because the plot development demands so. And that shallowness persists throughout the entire game. Whats also quite disspapointing is a cliffhanger ending. It amazes me that the game devs created such a surface level storyline and had such weak character development, but still had the balls to end the game on a "to be continued...". Not like you will be too invested to be dissapointed that much. Despite all of its shortcomings, it was still entertaining, just be aware of what yorue getting into. For its price, its worth it.

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Posted on: June 16, 2020

Mezu5

Verified owner

Games: 70 Reviews: 4

Worst PC port I've ever witnessed

This game looks amazing and would be kinda cool, but this version is unplayable. There is mouse filtering you can't get rid of - you're not going to hit any moving target. There is no proper gamepad support if you want to go that route either. You have to dig through .ini files to change the sensitivity to something reasonable, disable vsync, change the field of view, basically anything - and then create a new profile, wiping your saves, for half of the changes to apply. NOTHING has been done to make this a good experience. I honestly, no joke wish they just sent you a ROM for you to emulate instead, because I could at least get a gamepad to work properly. Such a shame.

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Posted on: August 30, 2022

brad_headley

Verified owner

Games: 104 Reviews: 4

I enjoyed it

This game has lots of bad reviews on here. I may just be easy to please, but I enjoyed it. I remember playing this game for Gamecube back in the day. I enjoyed it more on the PC (as I do with most FPS). As one reviewer noted, if it weren't for the cartoon-like graphics, this probably would have been pretty bad. The cool graphics + great music made this an enjoyable experience. I saw a lot of complaints about the save system... Honestly, that's just how games were made back in the day. Each level has anywhere from 1 to 3 checkpoints. Once you've already gone through a portion of a level, it never takes more than 2-3 minutes to get back to where you were before if you die. Lots of games at that time made you start the level over again! "Kids these days" wouldn't stand for that ha

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Posted on: March 31, 2021

lazarhead

Verified owner

Games: 427 Reviews: 56

Classic Bond like action

What a great surprise from GOG to get this free. Very well presented and paced action shooter/stealth game. Better than the remaster that came out recently for sure.

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