XIII

Rating:
Summary: This could have been a classic, but...
Review: This game has a lot going for it. The graphics are great and unique. Of course, the whole cell-shading aspect only carries the game so far. After a few levels, you won't even notice it anymore.

The game has a lot of good content presentation going though. The way it shows important scenes in "picture in picture" boxes makes sense to me even beyond the comic-book look and feel. Some of the gameplay however is pretty unique due to the comic-style presentation. For instance, you can see that guards are about to walk around a corner, because you can see little "tap tap tap" indicators on the screen. This adds a nice spin.

So why only 3 stars? Because of the damn save game mechanism. I mean: Why even allow to save anywhere, if you can only start over at the beginning ov levels?!? This completely ruins the game for me. And I mean, c'mon! Every game magazine criticises this! At every Game Developer Conference, everyone keeps repeating "the user must be able to save anywhere!", yet people still keep messing this up! And in this game this is particularily annoying, because the parts that have to be re-played are relatively lengthy, and (worst of all), one has to watch the same cut-scenes again and again, and there is no way to skip them.

Rating:
Summary: Could have been great, but not enough effort.
Review: This game has a perfect plot: You wake up, on the beach, not remembering who you are, or where you are, or anything. Amnesia. You are hunted down by the military for assasinating the President, and, because of the amnesia, you don't know if you did or not. You then meet up with people that you used to know, and they all show you a bit about your past, and give you missions to furthering your history, and getting to the bottom of this conspiracy of assasinating the president.
Great story, eh? I thought so too, but there were quite a few problems:
*Saving: you can't save anywhere, you have to travel through "Checkpoints" which are often few and far apart.
*Difficulty: Adding to the problem is that at times the game is terribly hard, or takes a few tries before you get what you are doing, which is all the more frustrating because the last checkpoint may have been a while back. Other times the game was far too easy, which made it boring and frustrating. With more effort the developers could have smoothed this out.
*Graphical Differences: The characters, weapons, and anything else not immobile are all cell-shaded (graphic-novel style), and brilliantly done, but the rest of the landscapes, buildings, floors, walls, cielings, etc. are all not cell-shaded, whcih gives just contrasts to make the whole thing disappointingly unreal.
*Time: The game seems moderately short
*There are four discs! You have to use each one to install, and each one to play! This can become very annoying. I have played games with four CDs before, but then there were three install CDs, and one play CD, which makes life easier. Plus, you have to alternate discs back and forth, then back again, blah, blah, blah.
*At the end, in what seems to be like a fun new level it ends with "To be continued..." What? Yea right. All this is for is to yank make you pay double, since you have to buy two games to finish one!

Alas, I am defeated, I will buy the next one when it comes out, because I want to finish the story. The story, it's only good point.

Rating:
Summary: Could have been great, but not enough effort.
Review: This game has a perfect plot: You wake up, on the beach, not remembering who you are, or where you are, or anything. Amnesia. You are hunted down by the military for assasinating the President, and, because of the amnesia, you don't know if you did or not. You then meet up with people that you used to know, and they all show you a bit about your past, and give you missions to furthering your history, and getting to the bottom of this conspiracy of assasinating the president.
Great story, eh? I thought so too, but there were quite a few problems:
*Saving: you can't save anywhere, you have to travel through "Checkpoints" which are often few and far apart.
*Difficulty: Adding to the problem is that at times the game is terribly hard, or takes a few tries before you get what you are doing, which is all the more frustrating because the last checkpoint may have been a while back. Other times the game was far too easy, which made it boring and frustrating. With more effort the developers could have smoothed this out.
*Graphical Differences: The characters, weapons, and anything else not immobile are all cell-shaded (graphic-novel style), and brilliantly done, but the rest of the landscapes, buildings, floors, walls, cielings, etc. are all not cell-shaded, whcih gives just contrasts to make the whole thing disappointingly unreal.
*Time: The game seems moderately short
*There are four discs! You have to use each one to install, and each one to play! This can become very annoying. I have played games with four CDs before, but then there were three install CDs, and one play CD, which makes life easier. Plus, you have to alternate discs back and forth, then back again, blah, blah, blah.
*At the end, in what seems to be like a fun new level it ends with "To be continued..." What? Yea right. All this is for is to yank make you pay double, since you have to buy two games to finish one!

Alas, I am defeated, I will buy the next one when it comes out, because I want to finish the story. The story, it's only good point.

Rating:
Summary: Keeps crashing
Review: This game was crashing about once every 30 minutes. Sometimes the sound and video would freeze up and I would have to completely reboot, sometimes the game just stops responding to input, and I could restart it. Previously, I could get past wherever the game froze, but I've now reached a point I can't get past--it freezes in the exact same place every time. Looks like that's the end of the game for me. I'm running a pretty standard Windows XP box. I don't have problems running games like Unreal 2.

Maybe it's just all the crashes, the game wasn't very exciting. The story was dull, the game play poorly implemented, the levels are __completely__ one-dimensional. If it worked well, it might be worth $30 to me. If it worked poorly, it might be worth $15. It doesn't work at all. How much would you pay for that?

Rating:
Summary: Very Cool. I want more.
Review: This is a very cool looking and playing game. I really liked it. There have been a lot of complaints about the 'save' feature. Why I admit its not great, as long as you commit to playing one level at a time, you get cehckpoint along the way, so you DO NOT have to play the whole level over. But yes, if you save, it does take you back to the beginning of that level. So what I do is finish a level, start the next one, save it, and then quit until next time.

I hope there is a sequel!

Rating:
Summary: Good Story, Unique, Nice looks
Review: This is an enjoyable game that looks real nice. Its got a good story, and is easy to get into. However, I agree, the save system is useless. They put in the quick save at the last minute, but it doesn't work, so what was the point?

Rating:
Summary: really good game.
Review: This is one of the best First Person Shooters I've played in awhile. I've heard a lot of people complaining that the story is "weak" Personally though, I like it. It's not completly original, but it's told well. The voice acting is high quality. And the flash back's your character has when he reaches certian points, really add to the whole ora of the game. Level design is nothing mind blowing, but varried enough to keep one interested. The graphics, as you all have probably heard definatly stick out. I am a big fan of Cell Shading. As cartoon as this title might be, it still has very detailed enemies and locations. And a plus side, it runs very well, without you having to have a top of the line system. My setup is an AMD Athlon XP 1800+, 512 Megabytes of DDR333 & a GF4 MX440. This may not be entry level. But for a "gaming" setup, especially in 2003, it's not even close to a beast. Those not too up on computer technology. The video card is real important for games. XIII runs on mine with everything maxed out, and I get no stuttering. The sound is also top notch, the voice acting as I said is wonderful, and the music, which is Jazzy blends well. I have played most big FPS games since the original Wolfenstien. XIII isn't a classic shooter by any means. But, it's a well above average shooter that deserves a play from anyone into FPS's, who wants something just a little different.

Rating:
Summary: Terrible copy protection and game
Review: Ubisoft incorporated the copy protection software knows as Tages into XIII. This is singlehandedly the worst copy protection known to man. It's so bad that if you have a CD-RW or DVD-RW drive in your computer, the installation of the game will most likely purposely defect itself towhere the game won't run. If you have CD or DVD burning software, or anything even related, or any virtual drives, the same will most likely happen; defective installation. The game's "Minimum Requirements" are a lie since they're so low, and you need brand-new, up-to-date drivers for all your hardware. Not only all that, but the game straight out doesn't like some CD/DVD-ROM drives and thus won't install properly, or even at all. Ubisoft support does nothing.

After all this, you'd think they were protecting a really nice game. But, no. The game is riddled with bugs and crashes. Major bugs are commonplace, and the official forum is thriving with hundreds of user requests for bug/crash help. The game also spans 4 CDs (for no apparent reason - the game is very short) that seemingly randomly need to be changed (more copy protection). This leads to scratched discs you can't duplicate, thus you must buy the entire game again.

The game is beautiful and mildly entertaining, albeit short, buggy, and contains terrible voice acting and a horrid saving scheme. That's if you can even get it to install! What a waste of money.

Beware!

Rating:
Summary: Nice graphics and poor gameplay
Review: XIII has some really nice cel-shaded graphics. That is the best thing I can say about this game.

Gameplay is lacking. The game has a very linear storyline and that tends to get boring. There is a certain way to progress through each level and there is no room for improvisation. You have to follow a certain path, kill all the bad guys and so on. After playing games like GTA why would anyone want to be locked into one path in a game? A bad example of this is the submarine base level. You go through the level until you get to a gate which is closing. If you try to duck under you get crushed. So I figured I'd try to run through the level, not worrying about killing anyone and head for that door. No matter how fast I get through, the door always beats me.

There are also several "boss battles" which are ridiculous. In one you fight an old mad scientist. For some reason you can drop a 20 year old a soldier with one shotgun blast, but this 70 year old scientist can take 5-6 blasts before he is stopped. C'mon!

One thing I really disliked was the game required that you change CDs as you get farther through the game. This is a poor attempt at preventing copying. Considering how lame the game is, I doubt there is going to be too much pirating.

I give this 2 stars only because I like the graphics.

Rating:
Summary: Great graphics and fun game - autosave feature kills it
Review: XIII is a fun game, but the lack of an autosave feature just kills the it for me. XIII's graphics are excellent, and there are nicely done cut scenes that involve you in the story. In addition, the game plays very smoothly on my Geforce ti4200. XIII is somewhat original in that you've got to play it methodically. Running in with guns blazing will only get you killed. The game is definitely fun to play.

But - and this is a big BUT - you can only save at the beginning of a level. It is extremely frustrating to play through an entire level only to be killed at the end and have to play through again. This bug makes the game unplayable. The developer currently does not plan to patch this problem. For this reason, I cannot recommend XIII. I'll hold on to my copy for a little while in hopes that UBISoft releases a patch. If no patch is released, I'll sell the game.