It’s hard to not like anything that stars Adam West. It could be a horrid pornographic film set in outer space featuring Cloris Leachman in a thong and Howard Stern riding around on a unicycle calling himself Darth Boner (let that mental picture sink in)... It still has Adam West, so it’s still badass. The man was Batman for christsakes! Thus, by my own logic, ‘XIII’ for the PS2 could be a flaming turd jammed up my nose and I’d still love it. And boy does this game have flaming turd moments.
First and foremost, David Duchovny is possibly the worst voice actor ever. The man must’ve pounded a bottle of Valium before reading his lines. Thankfully, as Mulder voices the mostly silent protagonist of the game, I was rarely forced to sit through more than ten words at a time uttered by Captain X-Files. Good thing, too. Any more than that would’ve slipped me into a coma. Combine this with the ever-terrible Eve voicing your loud-mouthed not-so-helpful sidekick, and a glut of performances ripped from 1930’s radio shows, and ‘XIII’ becomes a game begging to be muzzled or muted. The only thing that stopped me from putting my foot through the the televisions speaker’s was the actually all sorts of awesome soundtrack the game sports (well that and Adam West’s soothing speech patterns). The soundtrack has all the feel of a cheesy 1970’s spy thriller and helps set the mood for a vibrant romp through political espionage.
Unfortunately, ‘vibrant’ meant poorly designed sneak levels that steal a page out of Die Hard’s ventilation shafts. Yes, 75% of this game involves you trying your best to impersonate John McClain while avoiding notice by killing dudes quietly and hiding their bodies, a cool concept that never EVER gets done properly in first person shooters. In this case, the programmers opted to make your enemies incredibly blind to blood stains on the floor and deaf to the noises made by 100 rounds of M60 lead. However, these same enemies were given telescopic vision capable of spotting the glint of sweat rolling off the crack of XIII’s ass hairs as he climbed up a ladder 2 miles away. Go figure. These same enemies also feature the amazing ability to schitzophrenically oscillate between competent AI and painfully retarded Duck Hunt targets.
Lastly, there’s the incredibly flawed control scheme that says to hell with industry conventional button layouts and opts instead for a scheme had to have been decided during a drunken game of darts: “Alright, alright, alright…shhhhh…here’s wha-*hiccup*-what we’re gonna do. If I hits the 20, Ben goes streaking with a controller dangling from his ass, and whatever button breaks off first…we make ‘jump’! HURRAY BEER!” By the time I finally adapted to this wildly erratic control layout, I was one level from the end of the game.
In spite of all this, when it’s clicking on all cylinders ‘XIII’ is actually a damn solid game. The story – though living deep within the realm of espionage cliche’ – moves along with a self-righteous gusto, and the levels that allow you free reign to murder madness are fun and well designed. However, the game is constantly tripping over it’s plethora of bad executions of great ideas. If I were a reviewer with a conscience I’d suggest caution before buying this game. Then I remember that Adam West is in it and caution gets thrown out the window.