XIII clearly takes inspiration from the James Bond games, Golden Eye chief among them. There are a wide variety of guns, gadgets and espionage. The stealth is shallow, but for the most part at least never makes a great nuissance of itself. There will be an occaisional level or section that requires the player not trigger alarms, and to this end the player is typically given a kinf of silenced weapon. The stealth sections are rarely long, and that is absolutley for the best. When you're not sneaking about, you're shooting things. The shooting is..interesting. I don't think it can be called objectively good gunplay in this day and age, but it IS more often than not, pretty fast, fierce and fun and rarely frustating. My advise would be to shoot like someone in an action movie, not like someone in a tactical firefight. Most of the weapons aren't very effective from more than ten feet away so "run and gun" and "spray and pray" have tended to be my more favored tactics. The enemies are enthusiastic, if not especially bright, and are far from expert marksman, so when they see you running at them, they'll obliging hold their position out in the open and shoot gleefully from the hip. The game is pretty generous with health kits and body armor which thus far has been enough to subsidize my action movie methods. I'm not the best person to ask about presentation. I personally find some charm in the Cell Shaded Cartoon/Comic book motif. I think it fits the over "the top adventure" tone of the game reasonably well. For story I don't feel like it'd be fair to comment. The plot seems complex, but I have a hard time following it since I haven't been playing the game regularly. An hour or so every other week. Maybe less. It at least feels committed to what it's trying, and that does count for something. That's probably the way to look at the game overall; it's committed to what it's trying to be; an action packed spy thriller FPS. You could do worse, but don't overpay.
