The comic book feel is an extremely interesting concept. Although there is this sense of style, it is just mediocre.
XIII is a first person shooter in the style of a French comic with the same name. In the game there is evidence of the game’s comic book form wherein there are comic book panels and cel-shaded characters. However, although this sounds quite promising, XIII doesn’t combine the elements of great shooters in the same way.
At the start of the game you control a character named 13, of which the game is named after. The story is quite clichéd with the likes of Max Payne and other shooters. Here, 13 washes up on a beach after waking up with a gunshot wound unable to remember anything at all. When proceeding through the game you start to piece together and remember bits of your past, while you also have the same face of a man accused of assassinating the president with a sniper rifle. Although this seems interesting the gameplay really lets down the storytelling and delivers a bland unsatisfying shooter.
Although there is this sense of style in 13, the graphics don’t really look all that wonderful. The weapons are basic, the objectives are far too easy and the sound doesn’t really complement any elements. The AI in this game is horrible. They are either too easy or too hard. Sometimes they can randomly shoot you when not looking directly at you which would cause a stupid amount of damage. They can also act really illogically. Guards will sometimes look at a dead soldier instead of shooting at you immediately.
The level design in the game is way to basic and not much detail is really put into it. However, you won’t really be noticing it as the game is not that hard and really relies on getting from A to B. The average first person shooter player will take about 8-10 hours to default the game on tis default difficulty setting. There is also some replay value with the multiplayer menu. This contains death match, team death match, capture the flag, and power up. The multiplayer although fun for a while, becomes to monotonous and unoriginal due to the repetitive environments. This further dullness is also seen with the use of the weapons, which are just not great to use and don’t provide you with any feeling of power.
Overall, XIII has a unique and interesting concept but many will find there are many other shooters out there with better models, graphical elements and overall gameplay. In the FPS genre it is just another imitation that has faltered.