XIII | DJcube

they say you shot the president…

NA release: 25th November 2003
EU release: 28th November 2003
JP release: N/A
Developer: Ubisoft Paris
Publisher: Ubisoft
NGC Magazine Score: 86%
Mods Used: Widescreen Code

A first person shooter that isn’t just based on a comic book, but one that embodies it visually with a striking graphic design that’s straight out of the pages. It looks stunning and comes alongside some neat touches: picture in picture boxes pop up to show important things happening near you and are a fun reward for getting headshots, while enemy screams and footsteps will show up as comic book style text. It’s all rather lovely.

The game itself is also quite fun. While it doesn’t do all that much unique in terms of gameplay, the style of it all makes up for it. You’ll shoot your way through a bunch of levels with a decent amount of variety for locations and objectives. Even if they aren’t much more than finding switches and keys, it often feels like you’re doing something new.

Stealth is also an important part of XIII – it is a spy thriller, of course. In this it can be…. Very mixed. Some “stealth” levels can blast your way through as long as you wipe out enemies before they reach an alarm, while others are very much trial and error and you’ll be continually restarting to work out the very specific way you need to do things. Hiding bodies also doesn’t really matter until the final stealth level, where enemies will spawn and find the bodies if you don’t put them in side rooms. It feels a bit artificial.

The story is interesting, but also ends on a downer. It has a cliffhanger ending. And, even worse, it’s the revelation of a twist which you’ve probably worked out a fair amount earlier. I did look into the comics and it seems that this is also the big final resolution of the comics, but then the comic chugs in for more time after everything is revealed, so they could have definitely condensed things to finish everything in one game – sequel bait for an experimental title is never a good idea.

It’s still an enjoyable experience and definitely worth checking out. There are plenty of fun moments and the style itself makes it interesting.

Fun

When it works well, XIII evokes the spirit of GoldenEye, another game that tried to balance spy-based conspiracy, vast levels, big guns and a healthy dose of stealth.
Marcus Hawkins, NGC Magazine #88

Remake or remaster?

XIII got an infamously bad remake. It ditched the graphical style – the game’s key selling point – and was riddled with bugs and glitches. It has since been patched by a different developer, which adds black outlines to everything. It’s an improvement, but the graphical style was far more than that, the character models and levels were stylised like a comic and that is still lost. Definitely stick with the original. There’s a good reason why the original game sold more copies than the remake the week the remake was released.

Official Ways to get the game

XIII is available on Steam under the name “XIII – Classic”.