N-Philes

XIII

Posted by Archived.

I've been psyched for XIII (pronounced "Thirteen") ever since it was announced. I mean, who wouldn't? It was to be the world's first cel-shaded first person shooter, include the ability to break chairs on enemies' heads, and have one of the most plot-twist heavy storylines to hit a videogame in ages. On top of that, it would also feature the vocal talents of David Duchovny and Adam West. The game would surely own us all, or so we hoped. Now that it's out, does XIII live up to the hype? Is it just another in a long line of generic shooters, or does manage to revolutionize the FPS genre in the way that Goldeneye and Half Life did?

Story

The original trailer for XIII began with the simple words from our unnamed hero (played by David Duchovny of X-Files fame) saying, "Conventional wisdom says I killed the president, and for all I know, I did." The game begins as you wake up on a beach, remembering nothing and with no identification save a XIII tattoo on your chest. You soon discover that you are the suspected assassin of the president and also an agent in a top-secret organization headed by General Carrington (played by Adam West). Through your adventure, you soon uncover the conspiracy and that even those closest to you may, in fact, be your worst enemies.

Gameplay

The missions, I will admit, are a blast to play. Sometimes there are stipulations where you can't kill any bank guards, so you end up running around punching people that have guns. Luckily you have fists of fury. And you can take hostages and nobody will ever shoot at you. If you aren't sure if you can take someone hostage, aim at them and a little symbol will pop up and tell you if you can. That little square comes in handy if you're ever lost; just aim around a room and something might trigger it, giving you a hint as to what to do. Some could argue that that makes the game too easy, and well, they're right, but I personally don't like hunting around a huge level just because I accidentally didn't see a little keycard on my first go around. Some missions are just run and gun. Those are probably the most exciting to play, because, well, I die a lot and memorized enemy placement where I can take out an entire group of enemies with five blasts of my shotgun. There's something sickly satisfying about that. However, it seems that XIII seems to like the stealth missions a little too much. The "hiding behind crates, taking advantage of the AI's shortcomings" game gets old after a while. And if you do happen to seen by the guards, they will ring the alarm and you'll be forced to restart the mission. I wish that even after the alarm sounded, the game would just say "Mission Failed" and allow you keep on playing, specifically so I could run around and get a layout of the map for my next attempt, just like I could in Goldeneye. There is something to be said, however, for playing a level over and over again and getting more and more nervous the closer you get to actually beating it. I wouldn't say that any of the missions are terribly imaginative, they've all been seen or done before, but they're still loads of fun to play.

XIII plays like your modern first-person shooter, complete with dual-analog controls. Now, I grew up on Goldeneye and Metroid Prime, so the whole concept of the C-stick being used completely for aiming and the main stick for sidestepping and moving forward is still a bit foreign to me. On some parts, you have jump from building to building, and let's just say that I'm against the entire idea of jumping in an FPS. If I can't see my feet, then how the hell am I supposed to know where I'm going to land?

As for weapons, though they don't have their real names, they are at least modeled on realistic weapons. I've never been a fan of using futuristic things like lasers (I think once Perfect Dark started employing alien weaponry, the game went completely downhill), and to see these in this game makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. You can use a throwing knife, which is really cool, but you can't pick them back up after they've been used. Your standard 9MM pistol comes equipped with 13 bullets (how convenient), but you'll still have to do two shots to the head to down an enemy. Rapidly firing any of your semi-automatic weapons can provide some difficulties, because you have to fully click the R button, not half-click like most people (and by most people, I mean me) are used to. For sniping purposes, there is both the sniper rifle and crossbow, but on most missions you're only given the crossbow. I get a sick pleasure of shooting an arrow into someone's head from half a level away. But once you get the Assault Rifle, a powerful automatic weapon that features the secondary function of being a grenade launcher, you'll rarely need another weapon, except on the stealth missions. The only time I'd use my shotgun was when I was trying to conserve rifle ammo. One of the biggest things that was hyped for XIII was the ability to use items in your environment like broken glass and bottles as weapons. The truth of the matter is that this is very limited. You can't just break a window and expect to pick up glass shards, it's not gonna happen. There's only pre-dispatched glass in certain areas that you can use. You can also pick up chairs and bottles to use, and half the time I'll just pick those up to kill enemies instead of my Assault Rifle for no other reason than it's cool. The major problem is that once you pick up the item, you have to use it, either by hitting an enemy or swinging it in the air, where it then breaks. You can't just put it down. The plus side is that it always kills an enemy in one hit.

If you've managed to catch any XIII commercials, you'd notice that they actually advertise the four-player split screen multiplayer death matches, because, you know, nobody's ever seen that before. It's not that it's bad, it just features your standard Capture the Flag, Deathmatch games, and of course, bots. The levels are basically modifications of their in-game counterparts and work well for their purposes. However, we've really gotten to the point where you need something totally mind-blowing to make people love multiplayer like Goldeneye and Halo did. Perfect Dark, Timesplitters 2, and many other successors may have had more decked out features, but at the end of the day, I'm still playing Goldeneye because that's what I learned first and that's what I know best. So, regardless of how worthy an effort it was, XIII simply was never going to achieve classic status on the basis of its multiplayer.

There are also a host of items that can be used by cycling through with the D-pad. Your best friend, the Medpack, comes in two different forms, normal and full (although that's somewhat of a misnomer, because "full" doesn't completely replenish your health. You can, however, use the Medpack even in the heat of battle just by pressing up on the D-pad. I have a sort of love/hate relationship with the grapnel. On one hand, Batman had a grappling hook and nobody's cooler than Batman. On the other, making sure you are actually going to land somewhere is a bit of an inexact science. If I lowered myself onto a ledge, I'd try and move just a little bit to make sure I was on solid ground, but half the time it's still mostly releasing the hook and hoping for the best.

Strangely, XIII does not have an Auto-Save function. Now, most games do it automatically, so you kind of take this feature for granted. I played through the first three levels in one fell swoop, and feeling good about my conquest, shut off my system to go rustle up a snack. When I returned, my file was gone. I learned pretty quick that you have to go in there and save at the beginning of every level (you can't save mid-level). The only justification for this that I can come up with is that sometimes your health carries over from level to level (I've observed that this only happens when you end a level with body armor on).

Visuals

I decided that cel-shading is taking over the world. Between Wind Waker, Viewtiful Joe, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, it is definitely is showing itself off to be a force to be reckoned with. Right now, it hasn't gotten to the point where it's abused, but XIII may be slightly starting to push the envelope. There are so many bloody FPS's today, and I would argue that it may be touting itself as the world's first cel-shaded FPS to separate itself from the pack. Now, I know that XIII is based upon a popular graphic novel of the same name, but the graphics are mostly a gimmick.

That's not to say that they aren't amazing, because, don't get me wrong, they're beautiful. There's something grotesquely glamorous about shooting somebody your crossbow (conveniently equipped with a scope) and watching the three panel stop animation, designed in perfect comic book style, where the first panel freezes right before the arrow hits, the second is impact, and the third is the head whipping back with blood splattering everywhere. And parents, though the game is rated Mature, you can activate a parental lock to protect your loved ones from pixilated blood. The always-cool "Ahhhh" will always emit from a slain enemy, and if you can conveniently get them to fall off of ledges when you kill them, the "Ahhhh" will follow them along their entire descent.

The levels are also works of art. Some of seedier locations are my personal favorites, like when you travel to run-down buildings and alleyways. The snow levels are amazing, but my personal favorite has to the "FBI" Building. In it, the FBI supposedly catches you and imprisons you inside their headquarters, but most doors you open just have a brick wall behind them (kind of Matrix-esque). It started me questioning the very validity of everything of my entire mission. The biggest crime that XIII commits falls with loading times. If you ever happen to die, the level must be entirely reloaded for you to retry the mission (you still start from the last checkpoint). When the grapnel was introduced, I will admit I had some difficulty and kept on dying right at the beginning the level. To simply retry, I had to wait through a full minute of loading just to die again. I would think that the level would already be in the system's cache and restarting would be no problem; every other game I've played is that way.

Perhaps the most bizarre and most awesome parts are the flashback sequences. Instead of just watching them, you actually interact. The scene turns black and white with a diffusion filter to look like an old time movie, and you can actually run around and talk to characters. In one, I was on a boat, running from somebody, and I tried to escape but they totally wasted me. This flashback was wholly unnecessary, but it actually ended up being one of my favorite parts of the game just because it was so completely different.

Audio

XIII relies mainly on the talents of David Duchovny, Eve, and Adam West to supply the bulk of the vocal acting. Duchovny, though he plays the main character, actually has the least amount of lines and comes out the weakest of the three. I originally thought that Eve was going to bring the entire ship down, and when trying to hype up this game, I only mentioned West and Duchovny, but Eve does a surprisingly good job. However, no one compares to Adam West. Fans of Family Guy would no doubt agree that he's one of the best parts of the show. Here he's in top melodramatic form, and it's a perfect fit. With enemies, sometimes you don't actually hear them, but you are made to be aware that they're behind doors by seeing the words "Tap tap tap" coming through the walls. Sure, you could rely on the game's Dolby Pro Logic II support, but why would you do that? Also, the soldiers are known to shout a few choice words if they're caught off guard (and I love it when bad guys cuss).

It's hard to describe exactly what XIII features in the musical department, and I even own the bloody soundtrack. It's sort of a cross between funk, hip-hop, and film noir music. The only thing that really matters is that it's great music. Certain stealthy missions will completely cut out the music, which is just deathly chilling. Perhaps the coolest is when you accidentally blow up something too close to you and all sound (music, footsteps, gunshots) completely goes out. It takes just a few seconds for you to get re-oriented with the environment and ensures that you will not be so dumb in the future.

This game gets an N-Philes score of B+.

Every console first person shooter will inevitably be compared to the Goldeneye. It's a fact of life. After all, it set the standard for all games to come after it, but it still is a little unfair. XIII is the type of game that knows what it wants to be (a Goldeneye clone) and doesn't really stray from that formula. In the end, it still comes out with a really good game that's fun to play. And the storyline is second to none. It's just a shame that it really doesn't try to set itself apart, other than the gimmicky cel-shaded graphics.

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