XIII

One may be the loneliest number, but John Gillooly knows XIII is the finest.

We have been waiting years for a game like this. After Half-Life raised the bar for single player shooters we expected a flood of strong, innovative games. Instead we have had sparse gems and a cubic arseload of mindless blast ‘em ups. XIII combines the bravest use of Cel shading so far with a storyline that actually matters, reviving our faith in the first person shooter.

It was developed in France, but don’t hold that against it. XIII is a tale of conspiracy and intrigue in the United States, based on a French graphic novel. You begin the game waking up on a beach, disoriented and injured. With no idea of who you are or why you are there, you’re instantly assailed by gun-toting hoods. Thus begins a journey of discovery, as you track down your past. And then you discover that you’re wanted for assassinating the US President.

XIII’s story is told through clever use of comic book style cut-scenes and in-game events. In fact, one of the great achievements is that the developers have managed to capture the look and feel of a graphic novel without making the game cartoonish. It is easy to suspend disbelief thanks to the real world storyline and after a short while you barely notice that your world is flat-shaded.

A lot of this is thanks to the Unreal Warfare engine, around which XIII is built. As simple as the graphics seem, it does take some serious background maths to get the shading right.

And it runs like an absolute dream on various levels of graphics hardware, thanks to the simplicity of the final image.

Like all great games, XIII is full of discreet touches, leveraging the graphic novel style to add to the gameplay. One way that the story’s told is through a series of panels overlaid on your view that show what is happening up ahead. This may involve showing the patrol path of a guard, or the display of a chunk of narrative that is just out of sight. When you overhear people talking, a speech box pops up on the screen, but one nice little touch is that the little arrow on the box moves, staying above the speaker. As these conversations usually happen just out of sight, it helps you get the drop on the baddies by knowing exactly where they are. And these are only some of a multitude of subtleties that lift XIII above the average.

Normally first person shooters are fun, until you reach the first ‘sneak-to-point-A-without-being-seen-by-the-guards-or-security-cameras’ sequence. Well, XIII has the proud honour of having some of the most playable stealth sequences seen in this sort of game. As long as the bodies stay out of sight and guards die before hitting an alarm, you have a lot of leeway to wipe out baddies, rather than just wait for the right nanosecond in the patrol path to sneak past. These sequences have a much different pace to the rest of the game, but they are enjoyable experiences rather than levels to be suffered through.

XIII sucks you in with looks, then blows you away with gameplay. It’s still very much a first person shooter, but it tells a tale that you actually want to follow through to the end. It’s such a rare thrill for a game to come through with the goods like XIII does, maybe the French aren’t that bad after all.