Your Lucky Number

What isn’t new with Ubi Soft’s upcoming title XIII? That may be an easier question to answer. XIII breaks quite a bit of new ground and even throws some new turns over the old ground as well. With the release slated for this year and the buzz picking up on this title, we are beginning to see more and more cool tricks and twists in every preview. Personally, I’d settle for XII if it meant I could get my hands on the game a few weeks sooner.

Cel shading with an edge.

XIII just seems to go out of its way to deliver the unusual. Even in the opening cut-scene, as you wake up with a Baywatch-styled lifeguard standing over you, you’re thinking, “Hey! This has possibilities.”

Until she gets gets gunned down with an automatic.

This is only the first of many surprises—some of them obvious, some subtle. One of the most glaring features of the game is its reliance on cel shading. A cel-shading first-person shooter? Well, it makes sense (sort of) when you understand that the story ofXIII is based on a popular French graphic novel. So, if you’re thinking Dragon’s Lair or something of that nature, don’t. Some excellent use of environmental textures saves this game from a cartoon look (fine in its place, but inappropriate here). Instead, it really does keep that graphic novel feel. You can almost feel the paper between your fingers as you flip the page to the next chapter.

The look of a French graphic novel.

Still, Ubi Soft apparently wasn’t content to deliver this story in anything approaching same-old same-old. Besides the interesting use of cel shading in this game, the graphic novel element is ratcheted up one more notch with flashback graphics, sound cues, and pop-up windows, for a kind of picture-in-picture slice of action. It leads to a fairly unique visual style. You grab a throwing knife, while hiding behind a bookcase (because some thug is trying to drill you with his pistol). You step around the corner, throw … and across the top of the screen, three windows pop up, showing close-ups of the knife frozen in mid-air, right in front of his face, another as it enters the eye, and a final shot as the bad guy expires. And, as he yells “Nooooo …” there the word is, written in good comic book fashion across the edge of the screen.

There’s no real lag time for this, as on the main screen, the guy is dying and falling back, but it’s going that extra step in matters like this that makes all the difference.

Going the extra step seems to be the trademark of XIII, in fact. Another of the wonderful features of this game is the attention they placed on regular old objects. Quite simply, if you can pick it up, you can pretty much use it as a weapon. Bottles, shovels, ashtrays, shard of broken glass, a chair. A chair! Classic. Much more than a simple gameplay trick, though, in several places you simply have to use irregular items just to make it through. Sorry, the police don’t let you keep your gun after they throw you in jail.

Even glass shards can be used as weapons.

Psyched? Well, just in case you thought Ubi Soft forgot about us Xbox Live fans, don’t worry because they appear to be throwing us some extras along that path as well. Giving us four-person support locally wasn’t enough. Innovative multiplayer modes, such as Barfight (another classic!), also wasn’t enough.XIII will be fully Xbox Live-enabled, with up to 16 players able to go at it at once. Unique online levels and downloadable content will be served up as appetizers. For desert, how about another unique mode of play (Sabotage) that will be unavailable even to the regular PC gamers?

All in all, XIII is going to appeal to people on a variety of levels, for a variety of reasons, all of them good. Innovation is always welcome, and when it comes to parading through the door like this, just count your lucky stars (all 13 of them), and fire up the console.

And, stockpile some chips, because you aren’t turning it off anytime soon.

By Luke Judge