XIII

"I give it a 10...out of 13"

Long story long

Gameplay: Despite not looking like any first-person shooter you've seen before, Thirteen certainly plays like at least a few dozen others. There's really nothing new at all as far as the gameplay is concerned, but not sporting completely revolutionary gameplay has never been a crime. The controls are very solid and the button layout is just about perfect, preventing you from having to stop and think about which button does what when a situation in the game gets hairy. Thankfully, the developers have designated a button to do a "quick heal", solving the problem of having to scour through your inventory for a medkit to heal yourself in the heat of battle.

The environments are varied, as is the selection of weaponry, so as not to seem too dull a playing experience. Aside from a curious lack of an autosave feature or even a save prompt (all saving and loading must be done manually), the menus and other navigation all work well. Thirteen is a reasonably long game and it's very doubtful you'll blow through it in a few sittings, but then again, I'm not really a first-person shooter vet so the master fraggers may wind up doing just that.

Unfortunately, the game is quite often a chore to play due to the godlike enemy intelligence and some control issues. A good example of this frustration is an early level in which you're required to use stealth to prevent detection from the guards; if even one alarm goes off, the level ends. The intended plan is to sneak around and snipe enemies with headshots from afar with the sniper scope-equipped crossbow. However, even if you're a ridiculous length away from an enemy and can't see him without the sniper scope, he can somehow spot you with unaided eyes even at such a distance if you're standing out in the open.

So, the solution is to not stand out in the open, to hide behind a wall, lean to the left or right to peek out, and quickly take your shot, right? Unfortunately, Thirteen's memory is apparently so badly damaged that he's forgotten how to perform a simple lean, forcing you out into the open if you want to fire on enemies. It's honestly easier to just run through this level with a shotgun or assault rifle instead of the silent crossbow, running after guards and gunning them down before they can open their mouths or reach an alarm. As you can probably surmise, though, it's pretty tricky this way.

Graphics: I'm just as sick of the cel-shading craze in video games as much as the next gamer, but it was used very appropriately in Thirteen in order to mimic its comic book origins. It succeeded for the most part, seeming as much like a playable comic book as The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker seems like a playable cartoon. The visual sound effects, such as a "tap, tap, tap" to indicate footsteps, are actually useful instead of just being there to create a comic book appearance. The backgrounds, for the most part, aren't cel-shaded and it looks a little weird having cel-shaded characters on backgrounds that are textured the same way they are in most other games, but it's not really distracting.

Sound/Music: Much like the Grand Theft Auto games, Thirteen employs reasonably well-known actors to voice its characters. Also like Grand Theft Auto, the publisher didn't advertise their involvement when marketing the game, meaning the actors were actually chosen based on how appropriate they were for their roles. If your only exposure to Adam West has been the campy 1966 Batman TV show and you've never seen him in a serious acting role, it may surprise you that he gives the best performance in Thirteen. What isn't surprising is that David Duchovny gives the worst. It's bad enough he can't act to begin with, but it's clear his only interest in this game was the paycheck, and he gives even less effort than usual. He's got the delivery of a tree stump and always speaks in complete monotone. Female rapper Eve gives a better-than-expected performance, but it feels as if she wasn't allowed a second take whenever she didn't do a line very well. The voice acting for the secondary characters in the game ranges from great to bad, but it's mostly good and it's nice to know that even the actors who only had a couple of lines made a good effort and took it seriously. The sound effects are all great; the weaponry hammers out of the speakers appropriately and little details such as different-sounding footsteps on different-sounding terrain are noticeable.

Long story short

It's difficult to recommend Thirteen when you've got TimeSplitters 2 sitting on store shelves, but if you've become bored with splitting time and you're left wanting more, it's not a bad investment.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 05/31/05