Given that the XIII Remake’s first release was a disaster, publisher Microids’ attempt to fix the problem is commendable. Following the launch from developer PlayMagic, a new team, Tower Five, is looking to rework the release to make it more engaging. Results are mixed, but definitely better.
XIII’s legacy largely revolves around art direction. As an amnesiac spy, you are pulled back into the world of espionage as you try to uncover a government conspiracy with all the personality of a loaf of bread. Much of its personality was stripped away in the original version of the remake, which was very stylized in his shaded look to resemble the original comic. The new update restores that to some extent, but now it looks more like a cel-shaded game rather than something unique. It is not intended to
Noticeable performance improvement. The original was littered with bugs, crashes and frame rate issues. The new version hits a solid 60 frames per second on the PS5, and crashes seem to be a thing of the past.
With the game running well for the first time in two years, it gave the gameplay a chance to shine. Gameplay is not very interesting. There’s an amazing variety of weapons, and improvising on chairs and ashtrays is great, but the luster fades as you progress through the eight-hour campaign. You go to different locations, but the missions are not exciting. It includes many sequences of forced stealth and arbitrary failure states, further hampered by poor and inconsistent AI. No strategy is required as enemies will come at you in single file.
Online multiplayer is a nice addition, but given how few people came to see the original release of this title, I can’t imagine it’s going to draw many people back.
Is this an improvement over the original remake? Absolutely. Tower Five seems to have done its best to recreate the experience without completely starting over, but it could only get so far. This is his one remake we don’t really need.
