Exception to the FPS rule
XIII is based on a Belgian comic book that began in the mid-1980s, and Ubisoft took that "comic book" feel and translated it onto the screen in a unique way. The game is cell-shaded and tries to look like a comic-book in motion, with pop-up windows, enemy conversations in speech bubbles and visible sound effects ranging from "Kaboom!" to an enemy's footsteps as "tap tap tap". Despite the real-world locations and enemies, there is always a level of slight ridiculousness to the entire thing even as enemies are shooting you from every which direction and your health is plummeting and you're forced to stop staring at the scenery and pop caps in everyone around you.
Speaking of which, the PS2 controls are exquisitely mapped, almost to the point of being the FPS control scheme by which all others should be measured: left thumbstick to move, right to rotate camera, Square and Circle to cycle through your weapons, left and right to cycle through your non-weapon items (medkit, lockpick, etc.), X to perform actions such as opening doors and grabbing NPCs as well as reloading weapons, L1 to jump, L2 to duck, R1 to fire weapons and R2 to use a weapon's alt. fire mode (such as firing grenades or zooming in with a sniper rifle or cross bow). After five minutes these controls felt like second nature, minus to occasional annoyance when I would cycle through my weapons too quickly and get killed by a sniper before getting my own sniper rifle out.
The story represents something we see often in movies and books but very little these days in games: a good old political conspiracy and the only person who can crack it is an amnesiac. The original comic was heavily influenced by The Bourne Identity novel and the game doesn't really try to distance itself from that idea. The game begins with a man being woken up on a beach by a lifeguard and the man can hardly walk straight, never mind remember who he is or why he has the Roman numeral XIII tattooed on his torso. But within minutes dozens of armed men storm the lifeguard's hut, and even without a name XIII can take them down, all of which serves as the game's tutorial stages.
As it turns out, U.S. President William Sheridan has recently been assassinated and the man wanted for his murder is Steve Rowland. The problem is that YOU are told you are Steve Rowland, only the memories don't fit. After being arrested by the FBI but before being allowed to make any sense of what is happening, XIII gets rescued by Jones, a tough solider who knows XIII is innocent because she knew him before the amnesia and has been working with him to expose the conspiracy behind Sheridan's murder with the aid of one General Carrington. With Jones' help, XIII sets off to piece together his past as well as exposing the network known as The XX. The story is solid and flows very well, but be warned: as was the tendency of many games, movies and TV shows in the early 2000s, XIII doesn't actually end and the discovery you make right before the badly-placed "to be continued" is a huge kick in the privates and will likely leave you steaming, more so because no sequel has ever come out and likely never will come out.
The game is broken down into 30+ levels spread over 13 missions, and covers such expected but not unwelcome areas such as apartment buildings, a snowy military base, a mental hospital and a nuclear missile silo. Given the constant need to restart at previous checkpoints rather often (of which there are plenty, happily enough) I'd say it took me maybe nine or ten hours to get through XIII on the lowest difficulty setting. The actual music evokes mystery and tension masterfully, but if there's anything negative about this game, it's the voice acting. David Duchovny, Eve and Adam West all do fine jobs as XIII, Jones and General Carrington, respectively, but why get known actors at all? Studio voices would have done just fine, even more in this case because Duchovny and West just can't disassociate their voices with Mulder and Batman. Perhaps Ubisoft should have used the money hiring them to polish their AI instead, because even as tight as enemies' smarts can be, every so often there will be a soldier or two who will run past you to check on a fallen comrade as you fire a shotgun into his gut, or the patrolling sentry who doesn't notice that his partner twelve feet to his left just got hit in the head with a crossbow bolt and will continue not noticing because the body isn't on his very strict path.
Overall XIII is a rather superb game. It falls down in a few places, but it is so easy to and so worth the while to help itself pick itself up that if you ever get the chance, give XIII a whirl. If you don't enjoy good controls, a suspenseful story and an oozing style, then you just hate good, well-built video games.