Developed by: Southend | Published By: UbiSoft | Played: 4/19/04

+

Very well tuned controls. The controls feel natural and easy to learn. The movement and looking around speed is just right.

Very polished production. It has its own distinct feel and style, with the comic book cutscenes and environments (created with cell shading, onomatopoeia sounds, and comic book frames occationally) and the music, sound effects and voice acting. This style is also what makes this game a unique experience. It was put together very well.

The fading in and out to different scenes is an interesting technique. When you have the flashbacks from your amnesia.

The story is in a unique format: recovering from your amnesia and finding out who you are, who else was involved in the conspiracy to assassinate the president, and what it all means. As you keep going, it gets more and more intriguing.

Great professional soundtrack.

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The main attraction in the story is the aura of mystery that is supposed to surround you, and when you're shooting tons of bad guys with rocket launchers and machine guns, that feeling does not come across. The FPS genre does not go together with the intention of the story very well. Being able to whoop ass is just one small side of XIII, but in this game it is the main thing that he's about.

Although this is an excellent game, it's just up against some stiff competition. In the FPS genre, you've already got Halo, Doom 3, Half-Life 2, Counterstrike, Rainbow Six 3, Far Cry, Deus Ex 2, and a bunch of others, and this one does not look much better than those overall. I do not think there is much interest in a cell-shaded first person shooter out there.

This game is M for mature, and the 17+ audience is not very interseted in comic books, so they will not be interested in this game.

The end of the game is a cliffhanger, which is annoying. The second installment hasn't even been announced yet.