Contemplating the XIII remake’s authentic launch was a catastrophe, it is admirable that writer Microids tried to sort things. Following the launch from developer PlayMagic, a brand new crew, Tower 5, has been introduced in to attempt to rework the discharge into one thing extra interesting. The outcomes are combined, but it surely’s positively higher.
XIII’s legacy revolves largely round artwork path. You play an amnesiac spy with all of the persona of a chunk of bread making an attempt to uncover a authorities conspiracy, as you sink again into the world of espionage. Hyper-stylised with a cel-shaded look to resemble its supply comics, the unique model of the remake stripped a lot of that persona away. The brand new replace restores it to a level, however now it simply appears to be like like several cel-shaded sport, fairly than one thing distinctive. The title has a extra constant imaginative and prescient, but it surely’s not one to create a permanent or memorable legacy.
The efficiency is noticeably improved. The unique was affected by bugs, crashes, and body charge issues. The brand new model hits a secure 60 frames-per-second on PS5, and crashes appear to be a factor of the previous. There are occasional bugs, however they’re relegated to texture issues or different innocent oddities which are straightforward to disregard.
With the sport working properly for the primary time in two years, the gameplay will get an opportunity to shine, and that is the place issues falter. The gameplay simply is not very attention-grabbing. There’s a powerful number of weapons — and improvising with stray chairs or ashtrays is neat — however the shine wears off as you’re employed by way of the eight-hour marketing campaign. The extent design does not assist, because it’s largely bland. You go to a pleasant array of locales, however the missions aren’t thrilling. This contains many sequences of compelled stealth and arbitrary fail-states, additional hampered by poor, inconsistent AI. There’s by no means a necessity for technique, as enemies run at you in a single file line.
On-line multiplayer is a pleasant addition, however given how few individuals got here out to see the unique launch of this title, we will not think about this may draw many again.
So is that this an enchancment over the unique model of the remake? Completely. Tower 5 appears to have accomplished its greatest to re-work the expertise with out utterly beginning over, but it surely might solely take it up to now. That is one remake we actually do not want.
