Although busy with a bevy of other activities, not to mention other games - I had some time to play around with the XIII demo. XIII is the latest offering from UbiSoft, which is essentially a Cell-Shaded First-Person-Shooter, based on a French Graphic Novel. It has a very unique look, as you can see from the screen capture below. XIII was created by modifying the extremely forgiving UT Engine, so I had NO trouble running it at HIGH resolution. Then again, cell-shading eliminates the need for intense and detailed graphical elements. I'm not complaining, the game still looks really, REALLY cool.
The demo features two multiplayer maps and a bot-match mode. I've never been a HUGE fan of online play, so I spent all of my time with the bots. Though the levels were relatively small, that is to be expected from a demo release. I can't say that there is a whole lot of NEW elements to FPS gameplay here. The selling point seems to be the radical look of the cell shading, though I do enjoy the comic book elements the game incorporates, such as the bubble letter 'NOOOooo's that appear when you kill another player, the motion lines you see when throwing a grenade, and the 'white-star' impact points that occur when a bullet strikes a wall or other non-player objects. I'm sure the final release will see some enhancements since I know that Adam West and David Duchovny are lending their voices to some of the game's main characters.
Try it out yourself, and let me know what you think.
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