XIII is a first-person shooter based on a long-running Belgian comic book. The game is stylised to fit its comic book roots, with cel-shaded graphics and comic panels that pop up while you're playing. This can either be to warn you of danger, or to enhance the action. For example, if you shoot someone and they fall from the ledge or give someone a head-shot, you are shown a three panel close-up or a panel showing them falling off in real time.
U.S. President William Sheridan is assassinated and the suspect is the game's protagonist, who is initially identified as Steve Rowland; agent XIII. He begins his journey washed up on a beach, suffering from amnesia, and only has a tattoo of the number XIII to identify himself. As you progress through the game, you see a series of flashbacks as your character begins to remember who he really is. XIII gains allies such as Jones, a tough female solider who is trying to uncover the conspiracy behind the President's murder along with General Carrington. They made the game with a sequel in mind though, so it ends on a cliff-hanger, but sadly, the sequel never materialised.
The game plays like a standard first-person shooter, so it's about navigating through the linear environments without much room for exploration. There are some more open areas, but your objective is still to get to the same point. There's plenty of stealthy sections too, sometimes having fail-conditions such as not killing certain people, or not being detected at all. At other points, stealth is optional. There's no radar, but instead you see “Tap, Tap, Tap” of the guard's footsteps displayed on screen when you are crouched. This is useful to warn you of danger and to determine the guard's patrol route before you go in to attack.
There's the usual FPS guns like a pistol, shotgun, assault rifle, sniper, bazooka and projectiles like grenades. There's a couple of stealth-based weapons such as throwing knives and Crossbow, allowing you to take out enemies from afar without attracting attention. There's a delay when you switch weapons which helps encourage you to be stealthy, or to make you choose your weapon in advance before you rush in to attack.
In addition to the usual guns, you can also pick up make-shift weapons such as brooms, ash-trays, bricks and chairs, which are useful for knocking out guards during the stealth sections. There's even a few moments where you can take hostages, which means the guards will follow you but not shoot as long as you use the hostage as a shield.
The AI can be quite dumb in terms of the stealth elements. They don't have a wide or far field of vision, allowing you to easily sneak past them. They may be in the vicinity of a dead guard but won't react to it. If they do see him, sometimes they are too busy crouching over him to react to you shooting at them. However, when they are engaged in a fire-fight, their bullets have a good accuracy so can take your health down quickly if you aren't careful.
Some of the missions are short which often means you have to complete it from start to finish without dying. The longer missions may have 2 or 3 check-points. Saving your game doesn't save in the exact position so will send you back to the last check-point, which I didn't think was a problem due to how well placed they were.
X-Files' David Duchovny voices the game's protagonist. You would have thought this would be a natural fit but his execution is flat, unenthusiastic and unconvincing. Thankfully, the other voice talents are much better and you will hear other voices more frequently than Duchovny's.
The lounge-jazz soundtrack is really cool and fits the game really well. The variety in the environments is also impressive, from indoor banks and prisons, to outdoor canyons, beaches and winter lakes. I love cel-shaded graphics and it works really well here. It also means that the game has aged well. The only problem being the black lines look aliased but everything else still looks good.
XIII is an enjoyable game. The gameplay is nothing remarkable or revolutionary, but it's the game's presentation and use of its source material which is what makes it memorable.