It's so bad it makes me want to annihilate every seal on earth with a battle axe. XIII does nearly everything wrong.
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Yes, it's so bad it makes me want to annihilate every seal on earth with a battle axe. If you're not interested in reading a full review about why I think the game sucks, I'll try and sum it all up in one phrase: XIII is a horrible stealth game. If that's good enough for you, stop there. If not, please continue:
Anyways, I was playing XIII just moments ago and have decided that I am not going to play the game anymore. I have had my fill.
You're probably asking yourself, "What, so you're not even going to finish it!?" and you know, I thought of that too – but then I came to the realization that you can not beat this game by playing through it. Some things can not beaten by continuing to do them. Like smoking crack or being the winner in a contest to see who can kill themselves faster by choking on their own fist. To win the game is to lose.
If I were to keep playing XIII I would probably kill myself. it feels like this game does absolutely everything wrong. Well, almost everything. XIII actually has a somewhat interesting storyline, some cool spy-action music and a stylish cell-shaded art style…but beyond that the game is broken.
The controls are slow and the inventory system is cumbersome. Yeah, there is a noticeable 1 to 2 second delay between selecting something from the inventory and the time that it actually shows up on screen. Forget quickly switching weapons during a gunfight. When you go to select a weapon a small menu appears in the lower right corner of the screen allowing you to see what weapon you're picking before it selects it. Which actually reminds me of the horrible weapon menu in Half-Life 2…the menu that you can disabled by enabling Fast-Weapon Switching…because why on earth would anyone want Slow Weapon Switching?
The game has a some odd glitches, poor game design and bad AI. The game also has some poorly done NPC paths as enemies will slide on the ground rather than run and other stuff like that. The lack of a proper quicksave feature is also bothersome and really shows both the age of the game.
Oh and here's a good one: The babysitting mission with General Carrington. Carrington is an absolute bullet-sponge with zero intelligence. He runs extremely slow and loves to stand around while he's being shot. The Icing on the cake though is when he says, "I have a present for you" and he hands you a sniper rifle at the end of the level...WTF, why isn't he using that himself!?
Honestly, if I had known it were this broken before purchasing it I wouldn't have dished out the 75 cents that I paid for XIII and bought a Snickers bar instead. I have no problem with "bad" games. I will play a game deemed derivative and mediocre by both critics and the swarm…just as long as it's not completely broken. Sadly, XIII falls in to the latter category and after playing 25 of 32 missions, I've had enough.
To read my review in it's original form visit:
http://www.hamst3r.com/article/52/thoughts-on-xiii-aka-number-thirteen
- Hamst3r