XIII first impressions

The first thing you will notice about XIII is the art style. It look's like a graphic novel,complete with little pop up windows and BLAM BLAM sound effects when guns are fired. They look a bit too rendered to really blow you away,but they are pretty nice. So XIII is an fps where your character plays an amnesiac assasin like ex-military thing. I'm not really far enough into the game to know what exactly he do's, be he seems to be ex-military. The basic gameplay is fine, even adding innovations into the mix. Your character can pick up chairs,broken glass, and bottles and use them to knock out enemies. It also adds a certain rpg-like stlye of play to the mix, with your character picking locks and healing himself through a somewhat easy to use menu.

One of the other things I noticed was just how real the gunfights felt. Some of them will really feel real, and you will end up playing exactly like you would in real life. One of the best examples of this is when your character get's in a room that cna't be forced open, and some enemies try to kill him. In a cutscene, they come and open fire on the glass windows to the room, but they are bulletproof. The cutscene ens, and they run off. I expect them to open the door and get a chair to use as a weapon, but no one comes. I equip my machine gun and run outside of the room. Immediatly I was cought in crossfire, and was taknig hit's from everywhere. I kill one of the gaurds with the gun, and run around and flank the other gaurd. In mot games, I would have just shot them both. But XIII has hit a sweet spot in the health. You will have to take cover, but not exxeecsively. If a gaurd manages to unload a clip on you, a qaurter or more of your health is gone.

And while I play XII, I realize that it only cost 4 bucks. And this is the bargain of the century.