XIII – The Fridge Reviews

Developer: Ubisoft Paris
Publisher: Ubisoft
Rrp: £9.99 (on average but can be found much cheaper)
Released: 19th November 2003
Available on Amazon and ebay

The president of the United States has been shot and a man awakens on a beach suffering from memory loss, you are that man, as you might be able to guess the president being shot has got something to do with you. The FBI want to arrest you and another shadowy group just want you plain old dead.
One interesting fact to note is that Adam West, David Duchovny and Eve (who is apparently a famous rapper… I’ve never heard her though) feature as voice actors.

I really love the aesthetic of this game, everything from its menu system right down do the in game graphics is done in a comic book style of cel shaded. The reason I specify the ‘comic book’ cel shading rather than simply just cel shading is because when playing firing a gun actually shows a the onomatopoeic word “blam” on screen like it would in a comic. Actions like performing head shots cause little comic strip style boxes to appear showing the action in full. Aside from that another fun little addition is that when characters speak they produce a speech bubble with the written text as well as have audio dialog, so there’s no need for subtitles.
The soundtrack is really good too being a mix of fusion jazz which reacts to the events occurring and suits the general feel of the game.

This was one hell of an ambitious title, the developers tried to do so much and for the most part they succeed, this game really does look like a living comic book and they managed to cram so many mechanics that actually function well!
Like in most FPS’s of it time most of the weapons have two modes of fire, standard and alternative (alternative fire is performed by pressing the right mouse button).
You can knockout unsuspecting enemies and take hostages to act as human shields, and once you’ve knocked out (or killed) an enemy the bodies can be picked up and moved to prevent them being discovered, which means that stealth is a little more meaningful.
Lacking a weapon or need to knock out an opponent silently? Well objects such as ashtrays, bottles and chairs can be used as impromptu weapons, that will take an opponent out in one hit.
If, on the main screen, you select ‘continue’ you will be given a screen where you can not only choose to play on from your last save but also view how much of the conspiracy you have uncovered, the documents pertaining to it and what skills you’ve unlocked. There’s also a final option to view how far into the story you’ve come with each major event shown as a comic panel.
And finally, you have gadgets…. Admittedly only two gadgets, those being a grappling hooks and a automatic lockpick. But very little in this world makes you feel so badass using the grappling hook to swing across a gorge while under fire only to land and take out your assailant in a single hit.

Extra skills become unlocked when you pick up ‘important documents’, some of these documents are hidden but a few will be collected just by playing through he game. The first of these skills to become unlocked is your sixth sense. This skills allows you to see the footsteps of your enemies, or rather see the tap, tap, tapping of their footsteps.

The levels tend to be quite short there are a lot of them to contend with (a little over fifty by my count), they are quite varied and they are very well designed feeling very fluid and organic. They also tend to be very focused on you completing one or two objectives.

Unlike many first person shooters reloading a save in this game saving doesn’t just drop you where you left off, instead it loads you to the last checkpoint you reached.
The annoying thing about this system is that the checkpoints can sometimes be far between and with large parts of unskippable dialog. This can make for some very frustrating missions, especially in the ‘don’t get spotted’ missions.
Another thing to note about this is that there is no auto saving feature, if you quit out of the game before saving manually you will lose all the progress you’ve made up to that point.

The sad thing is that XIII is unavailable for purchase anywhere online other than a physical copy through Amazon or ebay, if you’re extremely fortunate you might find a copy on a shelf in some obscure shop or another. The only reason I can play it is because I still own a game disk from when it originally was released.
Another major issue is that despite very positive reviews it didn’t sell well, so it’s unlikely a sequel will be made anytime soon. Since the game ends on a cliffhanger this somewhat sours the whole experience. There is a point and click game that was created of this title but as I haven’t played it I know very little about it.

If you can find this game I highly recommend giving it a chance. No other game has managed to pull of this comic book style to such great effect… Also the story is pretty good. Honestly give it a go, I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.

If this interests you perhaps look at;