XIII Hands-On

Ah, behold the wonderful world of Comic Books. Combining top-notch writing with pretty pictures, stories take a whole new dimension, and raunchy sex and killing suddenly become a whole lot more fleshed out in the mind's eye. Yes, comic books are pretty damn great even if they are usually read by kids or giant dorks with too much time and money (Ahem).

My Crossbow is deadly and silent...

What did I tell you about my crossbow?

Computer/Video games are also pretty cool, combing movies with interaction to give you "intermovieaction," or just video games as most people call them. These games are also played by kids or dorks with too much time and money, but they're damn good and more fun than actually working. (You don't say! - 2Lions)

Now, what if you could combine the awesome writing and art of a comic book with the amazing interactivity of a computer game? Would you get some sort of über-dork game that costs ungodly amounts of money and chases women away like no other? Actually, you'd get XIII (pronounced like "thirteen"). XIII is an attempt at this hybrid, and boy howdy, it looks damn good, and the play isn't bad either.

This game is based off of a Belgian Comic book by the same name (I haven't been able to find it in the states, but I haven't looked very hard) about a neat government conspiracy involving a man with a tattoo and a head wound. You see, the president was just shot (That's President John F. Kennedy. - 2Lions), and this poor man just woke up on a beach with a head wound, a bank deposit key and a nasty head wound. (The Bourne Identity? - 2Lions) He can't remember a damn thing, but at least he has some sort of sound based wall hack to go with the amnesia as well as having the sexy voice of David Duchovny.

Well, naturally, government assassins show up to kill you and the lifeguard that found you. (You all know that scene from the recently released single-player demo. - 2Lions) Amazingly enough, you kick their asses to the curb with the usual gaming technique of filling them with bullets. You then proceed to uncover a government conspiracy and kill a lot more people in lots of neat ways.

The game combines a lot of clever ideas from other games along with the catchy comic book elements that appeared in the recent Hulk film. If you get a head shot it shows a neat three panel shot of just before, during and right after the kill. If you walk into a room and there's an important object in there, a white box will zoom around it and tell you that you probably need to check it out. If something important happens, an enemy enters the room, a door opens/closes, there's a naked chick within 50 yards, et cetera, a panel will show this on the side of screen to tell you to watch the f--k out, there's baddies/boobies present. The neat thing about all of this added information is despite there being a lot of it, it never gets in the way, and it helps you more often than not.

The game also has an all-star cast of voices like David Duchovny, as I already mentioned. Adam West of Batman, Family Guy and Johnny Bravo fame also adds his talents to the mix; unfortunately the beta that I played didn't feature either of them yet.

As for what you can expect for gameplay, I'd suggest you take a look back at the original NOLF. Every level seems like it came out of the classic Cate Archer adventure, except with updated graphics. Not that this is a bad thing, if XIII is able to add its own "falling out of a plane" level, it will stand as a classic. (And it's entirely possible that they might beat that, some of the levels I played were pretty damn cool.)

There's nothing stealthy about this scene.

This is my rather loud rocket launcher. Watch me make some noise!

Of course, damn-near every spy game in recent memory has had its own shooting from a tramcar level, and XIII adds a new twist and flavor to it I think you're going to like, as well as having a grapple hook to swing from, vital to many puzzles.

Speaking of puzzles, this game is full of them - certain ones may call you to collect the part needed to make a tram station operational (while killing Vin Diesel look-alikes out the wazoo), or they make require you to swing overhead using the handy grapple hook to avoid the attention of your enemies.

The gameplay is built up around excellently scripted events like doors sealing shut, funny bad guy conversations and lots and lots of over-the-top explosions that shake the screen and add nice flavor touches to said explosions with the very cool comic art style. (An underwater explosion seen from above makes a huge "WHOOSH!!" sound and sprays the near-by area with a fine mist.)

The AI during the firefights showed some strange behavior such as strafing completely around me when I had a shotgun, as well as rushing me in a group when I have a rocket launcher, but it does detect sound, movement, and dead bodies as well as jumping down crates to get with a friend that has a bigger gun, so it's not bad by any means. Of course, I did play a beta build, and not a full retail version, so there's still sufficient time for the development team to work out these AI glitches.

The weapons are varied - most are fairly tame and almost all have secondary fire methods such as scopes, a faster fire rate, a grenade launcher or using two pistols akimbo-style. (This still needs to be worked on, however, as only one gun would reload unless the other was completely out of ammo.) The game employs a slight auto-aim, showing you where bad guys are hiding behind crates as long as you're looking at or near the crate as well as nudging the crosshair towards them. (This would eliminate those annoying campers in multiplayer if it becomes implemented.)

While the beta I was playing wasn't complete by any means (only a few levels, no back buttons in the options menus and single player only), I was impressed with the way things were looking. The game is fine as a game, but where it seems to excel is in story telling - bad guys have conversations that give a lot of subtext, while the cut-scenes give lots of information. In addition, the game is ripe with plot twists, and the individual actions of other characters affect how things play out.

If you haven't played the demo, I would check it out; this is one to look out for. Hopefully they'll make more game adaptations of comics (the excellent Global Frequency would be a great example of an online team-based game with random mission generation), if XIII starts a trend of good games with great comic art and stories, and I for one certainly hope it does.