After a rough launch when the remake was first released in 2020, XIII has now come out with an update for the Series S|X and PS5, fixing the buggy mess it once was into now a playable title for fans of the cult classic to enjoy once again.

Developed by PlayMagic, XIII is a remake of the cult classic first-person shooter made by Ubisoft Paris Studio which was released back in 2003. You play as XIII, an agent suspected of assassinating the President of the United States of America, and you’re being hunted down by the FBI, the CIA, and a gang of murderous killers. Your one mission is to prove your innocence. Unfortunately, you have been struck with amnesia. You remember nothing. You’re on your own, there is no one you can trust, and all you have is a safe deposit key, a mysterious tattoo, and a gun. Clear your name, solve the mystery, and find the true assassin before they strike again.

Starting off by choosing your difficulty to suit your playstyle, whether you want to take it easy and consume as much of the story as possible, with less lethal enemies and more equipment on Sleep Walk (easy), or go all out and challenge yourself, with ruthless enemies and less equipment around the world on XIII (Extreme). Or you can find yourself a nice middle ground with Field Agent (Medium) or Super Agent (High).

After choosing your difficulty, you find yourself waking up on a beach and being rescued by a lifeguard. Wait, is this Baywatch? No, it’s not, unfortunately. Not long after having a quick memory of how you got there you wake up in a building being stormed by enemies and are introduced to a quick tutorial to show you the controls.

Play your way, whether it’s stealth or all-out guns blazing. This is always a nice option to have in games like this, and as I usually fail at stealth, being able to go loud as the last resort is so helpful. Although there are a couple of parts where you can’t be detected, these, luckily for me, weren’t too difficult allowing me to progress.

For those who do like to go loud, there is a nice array of weapons to find throughout the world to fit your playstyle, and for those who prefer the stealthy option, you’ll have some quieter weapons. Or you could just karate chop everyone into submission, but to my disappointment, it seems weapons you find don’t carry over into the next mission. Instead, you start with a preset set of weapons for each mission.

The controls or for the most part pretty standard for shooters. RT to shoot, LT to aim, LB to navigate through your weapons, and so on, although using Y as my interaction button was a little strange. I’m so used to it primarily being X for most games. Gunplay seemed a little clunky and unresponsive for my tastes, and there seems to be a bit of delay between aiming down sites and getting your shot off quickly. I’m usually a quick person when it comes to shooters, and this really threw me off, leading me to get shot more often.

Arcadey and comic book style use of cel-shading is always a load of fun and refreshing compared to other shooters, and the way it has little snippets on the screen of the things going on around you, like conversations or cool shots, deaths you got on enemies, and the funky text when you break stuff or shoot enemies adds more life to the title. I never played the original, but from what I have seen, I believe they kept close to the design and made it better to match today’s standards.

Music is like what you would expect from an agent-style game, being quite calm through stealth and going a bit harder for the moments where bullets are flying everywhere. Speaking of bullets flying everywhere, the guns each have their own unique sounds; each is what you expect, nothing special, nothing bad. The voice acting is good with some cringy lines here and there, but these I guess are just for comedic value, which is always appreciated in my opinion.

XIII, after having such a rough launch, has sprung back with a functioning game for the fans of the classic or new players looking for a new game, but as I said, I never played the original, and from what I have seen, it’s a decent remake. For me, the controls are a little too clunky, slow, and feel a bit unresponsive at times.

Written by: MrVibeAU