When I originally decided to review XIII, I really had no idea what I was getting myself into. Oh sure, I'd seen the screenshots, I'd played the demo, no rank initiate, I. Lured in by the cel-shaded gimmick, the comic book visual stylings, and the highly questionable voice acting of the only oak cabinet to ever successfully masquerade as a human being, David Duchovny, I was ready to delve into conspiracies and shoot people in the ear with crossbow bolts from here till tomorrow. Well, I got my crossbow bolts, but not much else.

The premise of XIII is fairly simplistic, a tried and true approach: the player is a mysterious ne'er do well with an affinity for firearms, a solid case of amnesia, and a rugged jaw you could trowel cement with. There's been a high-profile assassination, you're the number one suspect, and it seems like the whole world's after you! Turning the page from Script Writing 101, we get into the real meat of the situation, a choppy, clumsy storyline, forced, screaming and kicking, into 1/3rd the amount of game it needed to be successfully communicated to the viewing audience. The XIII franchise is based on the comic work of the same name by Jean Van Hamme, whose nomme de plume can also be found on such low-budget comic-to-videogame translations as Largo Winch and several Thorgal iterations. While XIII may be a perfectly enjoyable comic book series, for the purposes of the game, it has been modestly butchered, roughly shuffled, and clumsily splayed out on the table for all to partake and savor in video game format. Points for generosity of portions, but docked for presentation.

Presented in a mostly pleasing comic styling, the graphics are likely to be the only aspect of this game worth noting, allowing for a slick visual presentation, low-poly level and model counts, and some quirky visual aids that further streamline your career in snapping peoples' necks. Occasionally the level artwork tends to become tedious and repetitive, barren and sterile even, as the art team seemed determined to ride out this cel-shaded fad for all it was worth. Adversely, the model work, while liberally re-applied without much of any creative differences between Goon A and Goon A Wearing a Jaunty Chapeau, is quite striking and carried off rather well. Moreover, the usage of "windows" popping up when the player achieves a headshot, hears an opponent patrolling the hallway beyond the next door, or moves the mouse reticle over a closed-circuit TV monitor, are not only useful and informative, but also applied in a painless, suave fashion.

The plot, as previously mentioned, contains a hodgepodge of grab-bag conspiracy theory snippets, double-agents, double-crosses, and hammy, caricatured actors. Most of whom the player may have a hard time remembering the names of, much less the role they play in the conspiracy, given the amount of screen time allotted to anyone other than the player's character can be measured on a stop watch at the best of times. The actual progress of levels is so disjointed and jarring that most have to end with the player being whisked away on a helicopter or harrier jet to some far-off, unrelated location with a far-off, unrelated plot tidbit. After all, this conspiracy has twenty (or XX) key members, and the majority of them would like to have a hollow point Q&A period with your character, so there really isn't time to flesh any of them out, much less mention their names more than twice. To aid the player in understanding this train wreck of verbiage, they must collect important documents and photographs over the course of the game, so as to be able to piece together the storyline between sessions of killing everyone on the planet. But mostly, killing ensues.

And really, isn't that what we all want? To mow down thousands of nameless drones in a messy yet subtly pleasing fine red mist? Sadly, this otherwise admirable trait is interrupted by the bane of first person shooters, stealth missions. Repeatedly and painfully. Further interruptions can be experienced with somewhat questionable boss battles, where the player faces members of the XX, each of whom possesses the eerie ability to take repeated bazooka rounds to the face while sturdily armored in a natty pinstripe suit. Top all this off with an array of weaponry that feels slightly bland and even underpowered at times, notable only for the aforementioned head-skewering crossbow and throwing knives.

While rare moments of XIII's game play allow the promise and potential of erstwhile "could've been" to shine through, the overall experience is a disappointing one, and leaves that player to wonder where those four discs worth of game went. The cel-shaded gimmick quickly proves unable to support an otherwise unremarkable title, falling to the roadside next to ragdoll physics and destructible terrain. However, experiencing the clandestine voice acting of b-list actor Adam West, rapper Eve, and lifelike automaton David Duchovny may be the worth the price of admission once this title ends up in the bargain bin.