XIII is a game that was first released back in 2003, being notable for its inclusion of cel-shaded graphics and voice work from the likes of David Duchovny (X-Files) and the late Adam West (Batman, Family Guy), but as is fairly common these days, a remake was never too far off. Does this new remake provide enough reason to dive back into the conspiracy, or are you better off pretending like you have amnesia and avoiding it entirely?

When first released, XIII received generally favourable reviews and has gone on to become a cult classic. The comic-inspired cutscenes combined with onomatopoeia, and the conspiracy ridden story proved to be an engaging experience, despite a few minor flaws. So the remake should be pretty smooth sailing for fans of the title… right?

Well, this remake of the 2003 cult classic is sadly an example of how not to remake a videogame, in almost every way possible. Comparing this to the recent and fantastic remake of Mafia is like night and day. XIII remake removes almost all aspects of the charm that the original had, even down to changing the iconic and unique (for the time) cel-shaded graphics of the original (which still hold up relatively well today) to a generic style reminiscent of Fortnite. Take that as you will.

The story is beat for beat the same, as is the voice overwork, and for what it is, it’s a fairly intriguing and campy little journey down a rabbit hole of conspiracies, and the voicework by David Duchovny just adds to that campy charm. Likewise, most of the core elements remain the same from the enemy and item placements, and the weapons you can wield. This is more or less a 2003 game running on an updated engine with laughable optimisation.

Watching an enemy get shot in the head then fall to the floor in sub-30 FPS was a constant issue and one that really tarnishes the overall experience. This is not the end of the visual issues either as I constantly encountered moments of framerate drops in scenes that really didn’t justify it, along with near-constant screen tearing.

The stealth mechanics don’t fare much better either, as it mostly boils down to whacking enemies with chairs you can pick up in the environment, which itself is quite broken. I often just found myself picking up a chair and charging towards an enemy to give them a very unsatisfying wallop with the chair, then proceeding to watch them slump over comically, which I don’t think is meant to be intentional.

As the fundamentals of the game suffer from the aforementioned screen tearing and FPS drops being quite common, it really impacts the overall enjoyment one can experience. At first, I thought it was my console or monitor playing up, as I have never encountered a title with this many issues. However, upon booting up a different game on the same console with the same monitor I, unfortunately, confirmed the worst – that it was indeed XIII that was poorly optimised. In 2020 it is really jarring to see a title have so many technical issues.

This by far has to be one of the worst games I have played this year, and we have been treated to quite a few stinkers like Fast and Furious: Crossroads, yet even then, XIII had decent foundations on which to build itself, but somewhere along the way the magic was lost resulting in an almost unplayable title. 

The issues with the game are so bad that developer PlayMagic and publisher Microids have issued an apology to fans, saying, “expectations have not been met by the launch version and we hear loud and clear the legitimate criticism and disappointment”. Further adding that “In its present state, XIII does not meet our quality standards and we fully understand players’ frustrations.” Says it all, really.