The spy-fiction sub-genre of thriller entertainment was just too good to be left alone after its popularity has been kindled (though not for the first time) by Bourne's Identity. There were various "inspired" franchises, such as XIII, which has its origins in French-Belgian graphic novels of the same name. It was not long before game-makers decided to have a piece of the popularity pie too.
XIII, a shooter title, is the result of one such endeavor. In addition to loud mentions of its association with its source material, there were also further attempts to whip up hype for this game, such as having David Duchovny (of X-Files fame) voicing the lead character in the English dubbing of the game. There were also signs of inflated expectations on the reception of this game, namely accommodation for later sequels (i.e. a cliffhanger ending).
In addition to David Duchovny's involvement, XIII's officially touted points of attraction include its cel-shaded graphics and use of additional on-screen panels to emulate a graphic novel. This is immediately evident from the start of the story mode, where the protagonist wakes up to a view of a beach that could have been taken from a stylized graphic novel. Some extra panels pop up to give a bigger picture of what has happened to protagonist, namely that he has been washed ashore.
Not unlike a certain, aforementioned spy-fiction thriller, XIII has the protagonist suffering from amnesia, and thus his quest to find out who he was and what he was supposed to do becomes his main goal (and that of the player's) in this game. This objective of the story mode does not have much influence on the gameplay (as expected of a typical shooter), though being a spy-fiction thriller, the protagonist's past typically involved making a lot of enemies, unwittingly or willingly, and this is used as the excuse to have the game throwing armed enemies at the player.
Of course, the previous statement is just a very simplified nutshell of the game. As a reward for clearing parts of linearly designed levels of enemies, retrieving this-and-that piece of intelligence or completing some other heavily scripted objectives, players are given in-game cutscenes (or panels of comics) that involve the protagonists' past, with sudden recollection of otherwise lost memories being the most used plot technique.
Fans of the graphic novel would already know the main gists of the plot, though some adaptation of the source material has been made, namely to eliminate or simply skip past the more mundane moments of the story and the introduction of more gunfights, as is typical of an adaptation for a shooter game.
Not all of the game comprises of one gunfight after another. There are quieter moments – usually the parts of the original story where the atmosphere of intrigue is too thick for the developers to shave off without the consequence of being seen as disrespectful of the source material – where some detective work has to be done. However, this is little more than hopping from one end of a room to another looking and removing things from the level, following the clues given by each to hunt down the next piece of plot-centric clue to advance in the game. Of course, it can be said that most games with detective work segments are little more different, but the ones in this game suffer from terrible presentation – namely David Duchovny's voice-overs (more on this later).
Some other non-combat segments force the lack of any firearms onto the player character, or a requirement that no alarms are to be raised among enemies. These are, of course, stealth segments. Fortunately, the protagonist (simply called "XIII") had training in stealth in addition to combat, so sneaking around for him is as simple as crouch-walking. He also has experience in picking locks (which is done automatically), though not all doors can be unlocked, thus giving the impression that locked doors that can be picked are just in the game as a nuisance.
The game appears to place some conveniences like false walls, tunnels and maintenance shafts for him to crawl through, stopping once in a while to listen to conversations between enemies. If there isn't any of these such conveniences , then shadowing enemies is still good enough, thanks to AI scripts that rarely have enemies looking over their shoulder while they patrol hallways and corridors.
To aid the player in these segments, on-screen panels resembling panels from a comic or graphic novel will show the locations of patrolling. There are also onomatopoeic words such as the taps for footsteps appearing on-screen, at where enemies are. The game uses the excuse of XIII having a particularly strong sense of instinct as the justification for having these visual aids. However, the overall effect of the panels would seem more like the player having access to hidden cameras than panels from a graphic novel, mainly because these panels are not static images like they should be. The onomatopoeic words are much more difficult to fault though, and they can be as entertaining as they are helpful.
As has been stressed on earlier, this game is at heart a shooter, regardless of its source material. In this regard, a discerning player will notice that there is not much that would set XIII apart from other shooters with modern settings.
There are the usual fallback close-combat options when the player runs out of ammunition, namely good ol' fists and a knife, but these are typically inefficient to use. As for fire-arms, they include the usual assortment of pistols, revolvers, assault rifles, machineguns, shotguns, sniper rifles and grenades; there would be nothing that a player familiar with the modern military shooter has not seen before. There are more exotic weapons like crossbows, but again, a veteran of shooters would not find these impressive.
There may be some entertainment to be had from the secondary attack options of these weapons, though the player should not be expecting anything outrageous, considering the worldly themes of the game. For example, the secondary attack option for frag grenades is to drop a grenade at the player's feet; the AI is barely capable of noticing such a grenade (as compared to a thrown one), and this can lead to some laughs. Another example is the melee attack option for the bazooka, where the player character uses a rocket as a club (it won't explode though). Secondary attack options also include dual-wielding certain one-handed weapons.
Gunfire and explosions are accompanied by on-screen onomatopoeic words, e.g. "Rat-tat-tat!" for machinegun fire. While this can be appreciated as part of the game's attempts at emulating a comic or graphic novel, the words can distract from the action or at worst, obscure it. On the other hand, they also help in spotting enemies, as the words also appear (albeit in smaller font) close to them if they are discharging their firearms on-screen.
There are other ways to get rid of enemies than just shooting them up, of course, such as using environmental hazards like the well-worn convenience of explosive barrels that enemies do not seem to recognize as terrible pieces of cover. However, this is more of the exception than the rule, because such handy environmental objects are few.
Just as few are pieces of furniture and other miscellaneous items that the protagonist can pick up and use like clubs or thrown like improvised projectiles; such attacks usually immediately take out enemies, as a reward to resorting to such unconventional weapons. This can be fun, especially when the game produces the appropriate onomatopoeic words to go together with enemies' demise. Yet, opportunities to resort to these methods are few outside of stealth segments, as grabbing some nearby doodads to be chucked at armed and alert enemies is just not practical.
The impression that the developers had not invested much effort in making XIII significantly different from so many other shooters may be reinforced by how the game records the player's progress; there is not much optimization of the game-saving mechanic for the desktop version of this game. It resorts to the typical checkpoint system that bumps the player back to a previous pre-defined location in the level (which is thankfully a tranquil one) after the player has the protagonist carelessly slain.
There is an option to save the game, but the game simply calls up the last checkpoint-save and makes this a permanent game file. XIII is not the first game to use a half-hearted game-saving feature of course, but it does not feel any less slap-dash.
As the story mode progresses, the game expectedly gets more difficult as the opposition, in their desperation to prevent their plans from being unraveled, sends more numerous and more elite hitmen after the player character. To somewhat balance the odds, the game makes use of the protagonist's returning memories to introduce new "skills", or more precisely, bonuses that enhance the protagonist's chances at survival. For instance, when the protagonist recalls memories of the prospect of watery doom, he remembers his swimming training and thus extends his ability to hold his breath underwater.
In the single-player story mode, the player character can collect and store medical kits for later use. This is handy, as some segments of the game do not have medical kits lying around for plausible reasons. There are also armour vests and helmets that contribute towards an old-school armor counter.
It should dawn on the discerning player already that the gameplay of XIII is nothing remarkable, or at best has not done anything particularly revolutionary gameplay-wise, and that its presentation and its use of its source material are the true attractions. The developers appear to somewhat realize this too, and has added a feature for the player to re-examine what has been uncovered in the plot so far, such as pieces of intelligence, the identities of the characters involved in the conspiracy that is the overarching story in XIII and such.
Of course, once the player has completed the story mode, one final examination of these would exhaust all the fun to be had from the story mode.
The story mode has the player character going through an assortment of locations, after the prologue that quickly has him acquainted with a counter-espionage taskforce that hands him missions whether he likes it or not. There is some variety in the places that he will go to, from locales with themes of nature such as the aforementioned beach, a lake-side region and the Rocky Mountains to urban establishments like a bank and the FBI Headquarters.
However, military installations appear to be a recurring level design, so there may be some disappointment in seeing level after level filled with military hardware and paraphernalia. Fortunately, the tedium is mitigated by aesthetically different props and terrain models used for these levels (i.e. there is little recycling) and these levels are in between other levels with other kinds of locales.
One of the much hyped-up attractions of this game is David Duchovny's voice-acting for the main protagonist, with one of the reasons given for this choice is that he would be a "natural" at voicing characters who are caught in conspiracy theories, considering Duchovny's portfolio in X-Files. Unfortunately, the execution does not meet the expectations; David Duchovny utters his lines in flat tones and often sounds unenthusiastic; players who remember the video game adaptations of X-Files may not be too surprised by this.
Considering that the player takes control of XIII throughout the entire game, having David Duchovny's lackluster voice-overs accompanying him/her damages the experience. Thankfully, the other voice talents are definitely more convincing voice "talents" than David Duchovny, and they are the ones that would be doing most of the plot exposition, while XIII merely listens.
The sound effects in this game won't be much of anything new to players who are used to the gunfire and explosions of modern military shooters, though there are some neat sound effects that accompany the visual attempts at creating an impression of a graphic novel, such as the flourish that accompanies the appearance of the panels.
Being cel-shaded and stylized, XIII's graphics do not require hefty hardware and software requirements to run. However, the stylization may seem awkward in certain locales, such as the Rocky Mountains level, where snow looks too glossy and have sharp straight shadows that do not give a convincing impression of snowy terrain. The best results of their implementation are best seen in the portrayal of the characters in the game, who look sharp and crisp and would not be out-of-place in panels within graphic novels or comics.
In an animated medium such as the in-game cutscenes, however, they happen to look rather cartoonish and stilted; facial animations that do not go beyond just satisfactory lip-synching and limited bodily animations do not help dispel this notion.
XIII has a multiplayer segment, which is not a surprise given that this game is designed to be a shooter. There are the usual standard fare of deathmatch, team deathmatch and capture the flag. The more remarkable game modes are The Hunt, Sabotage and Power-Up.
The Hunt's premise can be rather outrageous, if it is to be compared with the source material for the game. However, even the most jaded veterans of shooters would be a bit amused by the objective of this mode, which is to chase down and shoot away at an undying NPC that mills about the level randomly, instantly killing anyone who is stupid enough to get too close. Points are earned by shooting away at this NPC, though players may attempt to stymie each other's progress.
Sabotage would be familiar to those who had played objective-based multiplayer game modes, such as those popularized by Return to Castle Wolfenstein's multiplayer. One team must accomplish a sequence of objectives while the other team must prevent the other from achieving it, with each team member having skills and equipment that are different from the rest so as to enforce teamwork.
"Power-Up" is actually a deliberate misnomer: in this game mode, pick-ups are replaced with models of boxes of indeterminate content. The content may be beneficial, with the magnitude of the benefits being small (e.g. a bit of ammo) to a lot (e.g. full health and armor refill), or it may inflict harm such as instant death or depletion of ammunition and armor. Some players may be amused or frustrated by such luck-dependent mechanics, but otherwise, the gameplay is not much different from deathmatch.
Perhaps the game could have done away with the multiplayer segment and divert the resources into a full adaptation of the source material; as it stands, XIII only reaches slightly more than halfway through the source material, which can be a bummer to fans of the source material who may be wishing for a longer experience – if they are not outright disgusted by the game's treatment of the source material and its shooter-centric gameplay.
In conclusion, XIII may be an adaptation of the graphic novels of the same name, but if one is looking for a spy-fiction thriller story, he/she is best off looking for the graphic novels as this game's shooter treatment of the source material may not do it much justice. Otherwise, XIII is a decent shooter – one among so, so many.