Never go into a game that you haven’t played for a long time with nostalgia goggles on; it shall leave you heartbroken and disappointed with your past self. When I first played XIII in 2003, I was eleven years old, and my younger self led my present self to believe that this game was amazing, and worth another go. I’ve trusted my younger selves before when it’s come to older games. My seven year old variant, for example, turned out to be a trustworthy fellow when he urged me to play Dungeon Keeper 2, after insisting that it was an ageless classic. Apparently though, something changed over the course of four years because eleven year old me is a lying little shit.

Let me set the scene for you; the game is based on a Belgian comic series of the same name, specifically the first eight volumes or so with some changes in chronology and actual events and the story is centred around an amnesiac man with the titular Roman numeral tattooed on his shoulder. After an opening cinematic in which he seemingly assassinates the President of the United States, our hero is washed up on a beach after being shot off a boat and before you can say, “I know where this is going!”, he’s being shot at some more and is on the run, with no idea why people want him dead. I have to admit, XIII’s confusion is synced really well with the player’s because, as with any good mystery, information is fed to you very carefully. Here you experience a bunch of flashbacks that raise even more questions and discover some revelations that, for a while at least, keep you wondering how everything will fall into place.

Unfortunately, after rescuing a former buddy of yours, pretty much everything is explained to you. Well, okay, okay, I’m being unkind – it’s not that bad at first. Since XIII remains amnesiac throughout the game, the identities of the conspirators behind the assassination are still unknown. Still, the game does send you, after a few of these well-paced levels, to a villa where, without wanting to give away too much, everything seems to come together in a rushed up way. Unsurprisingly, because of that, it all ends abruptly with a cliffhanger that isn’t at all surprising if you’d been paying attention until that point. By sudden, though, I mean there are cliffhangers and then there are the mother of cliffhangers, and XIII is the latter. It’s one of those cliffhangers – I even hate saying the word – that ends with “To be continued…”, only this never did. Well, there’s an iOS point ‘n’ click game released a year or two ago, but that would appear to be re-imagining of this, so who knows what actually happens next.

Anyway, it’s not a bad adaption of the comics, which Ubisoft certainly deserves some credit for, even if it’s not the greatest of spy mysteries. The greatest triumph about their attempt to adapt the comic into a videogame, however, has to be the art. Do I even need to point out how cool this game looks? Believe it or not, underneath all that cell shading is Unreal Engine 2 and, whilst there are some minor lighting inconsistencies you could moan about, it honestly still looks great. You might argue that many of the game’s areas, especially the outdoor ones, appear very bland, but the important thing to keep in mind is that they’re trying to capture this comic book look, so that means simple backdrops and contrasting, thick-lined enemy silhouettes to create this amazing visual look.

Here’s what’s really cool, though – at a glance you might think that it’s just a cel shaded game, and that’s as far as its relation to a series of comics goes, but you’d be wrong! Kill your first enemy at the beach, and panels of close ups on your victim will appear, complete with the “AAARGH!” as he dies. Shoot an enemy off a tall building and the storyboard panels will similarly focus on his descent but this time his death cry will fade with him as he disappears to the street below. Start sneaking around and you can keep track on enemy patrols through the “TAP TAP TAP” of their feet, which will increase with size the closer they are in proximity to you. Shoot a rocket and it will not only be accompanied by a lovely explosion that rattles the frame of the comic panel, but a massive “BOOOOM” too. You can’t even disable the subtitled dialogue because that’s actually part of the aesthetic, with the dialogue being presented in the form of speech bubbles – that’s how far the game goes to reinforce the notion that you’re “playing” a comic book, which is really cool and unique.

It’s the gameplay that’s disappointing. In fact, I’d go as far as to call it pretty boring, and I feel absurdly terrible for saying so because it has some pretty neat ideas in place. It’s a first person shooter at heart but, as a secret agent, you have some tools of the trade at your disposal, most frequently a grappling hook. It’s never implemented in a way that lets you go off the beaten path through which is the same with the other tools in your repertoire as well, most of which are only used for specific missions. Although they mix up the otherwise boring gameplay, wouldn’t it have been nice if levels were a little more open for you to, say, grapple up to a higher vantage point where you could use your nifty crossbow before entering the objective area?

This is, incidentally, one of my biggest grievances against the game – it’s very linear. That isn’t usually something I’d complain about but it really felt that there was an opportunity here for some really interesting level design, especially since they’re so varied in appearance. You start off on a beach yet by the end of the game you’ll have made your way across rooftops, through a snowy forest, sneaked onto a submarine and infiltrated a jungle military base. There’s so much variety here and so many opportunities missed.

About halfway through there’s a desert, of all places, and I thought that sounded great when it started. But as I made my way through this level I got the strangest sense of deja vu from the snowy forest level and realised how similar both were as, well, corridors. Pretty to look at corridors, sure, but neither were fun at all. What I at least expect from a forest is a more open environment yet all it really is, is a valley with enemy spawn points one after the other.

The stealth is actually worth mentioning to make my next point clear. So, there are a lot of instances throughout the game where you can use stealth to your advantage, and several occasions where you’re forced to, appropriately based on the context. It’s not completely bad stealth either. You can use various items throughout a level to knock guards unconscious, or you can use your throwing knives and crossbow to dispatch them permanently from a distance. The problem is, if you’re discovered, you can’t hide and set the enemies onto a more cautious patrol pattern like in other games, it’s Game Over instead, in the sense that they’ll all somehow know your position if they find a body you’ve hidden and converge on you, turning it into another gunfight.

The game is very scripted. Bloody hell, is it scripted; Enemies are triggered at very specific points, and it really shows when they literally pop out of nowhere, or wait to be killed by you a little further down the linear path. It’s honestly kind of awkward. One hilarious example I could use is from the desert stage. You pick up a rocket launcher shortly before the end and straight after you do so – I shit you not – a group of enemies will charge at you from round the corner of this pick-up just so the player can blow them away. There’s even a small ramp jutting out from the side of a rock for you position yourself on. But it isn’t really fun – it feels sort of fake and set up, which is the exact opposite of what I want from a shooter. There’s even some instances where the observant player, who moves from the spot the developers apparently wanted you rooted to, can discover enemy spawn points several feet away, which is usually them popping into thin air like Houdini. Like I said – awkward. They’re not even fun to shoot at either because, unless they’re scripted to perform a more specific action for a change, they either just dance in the open from side to side as they fight you, or take cover.

At this point I wish I could say there was a saving grace in the gunplay itself at least – after all this is a shooter at heart – but there’s not. The gunplay is, for lack of a better description, very weird and also horribly unbalanced. Weird because many of the guns don’t feel right for an FPS, recoiling in an erratic fashion that works against the comic book and secret agent feel of the game, and simply aren’t very satisfying a la Half Life. They’re unbalanced because there’s a serious problems in the way Ubisoft tried to realistically portray the different weapons. For instance the M60 machine gun is very heavy and sprays bullets everywhere. Unfortunately, it slows you down obnoxiously and is hardly accurate at all, to such a point that I deemed it completely useless outside of boss battles when you can use an M16 assault rifle instead – a gun that is accurate, plentiful in ammo, and even has a grenade launcher.

Well, since I briefly mentioned boss battles, I might as well use that as the dirt to be buried on the rest of the gameplay. They’re really bad. All of them. One or two have a special attack, but it doesn’t change the fact that all you basically do is make circles around them and, if the M16’s at hand, fire a bunch of grenades at them to make it go quicker. In fact, use that latter method and most will be over in seconds. There’s even a fight against a helicopter that you wouldn’t imagine them screwing up, but oh they do. It has a pattern that you’ll begin to predict in seconds, meaning you might as well sit behind some crates by the entrance of the area.

Before I conclude things, special mention must be made of David Duchovny’s voice acting. He does an extraordinarily shit job. Yes, to be fair, XIII doesn’t have that much dialogue, but despite everything that’s going on around him, Duchovny has quite a peculiarly passive, emotionless attitude that’s jarring to listen to and works against the story. However, aside from Duchovny’s dubious dialogue, the rest of the voice acting isn’t bad – particularly Adam West’s contributions – and neither is the music, which is so jazzy that you’ll be shaking your jazz hands when the game’s boredom overwhelms you.

So, on that note, conclusions, conclusions; XII left me in tears of despair, but that may just be the nostalgia and my evil eleven year old self, the traitorous bastard, or at least that could be part of it. You see, I don’t think there’s really any beating around the bush when I say that the games a by-the-numbers shooter but maybe I’m being too harsh when I completely condemn the gameplay as if it’s the worst in the world. It’s one of those games that’s perhaps worth playing for what does make it special, despite almost everything else feeling uninspired in comparison. Of course, I’m talking about the art style. Honestly, I don’t know if visuals like that are even possible of aging – it’s an utterly kickass style, and I wish more games would try it. It won’t be a game I’ll bother to play again, nor do I expect it be remembered as one of the greatest shooters ever, but it has that something that doesn’t make it completely worthless and I think that’s good enough.