Monday 22-Sep-2003 6:33 PM Teenage kicks as we take Ubisoft's much vaunted cel shaded FPS for a blast - exclusive media inside Say what you like, but with a few notable exceptions the FPS market has been pretty unremarkable in recent years. Though Halo was undisputably ace, and TimeSplitters 2 had its charms, there was precious little else that made us sit up and pay attention, whilst the PC market seemed very staid indeed.
That's all set to change with the imminent (or not so imminent?) release of Half-Life 2, but Gordon Freeman's masterful sequel aside, what else is really pushing the genre?
Well, there's XIII. Okay, so we're talking mainly about a purely stylistic decision; Ubisoft's adaptation of a distinctly non Tin Tin-esque comic book is presented in a cel-shaded style.
But in a genre where ever more realistic visuals are seemingly the desire of gamer and developer alike, where everyone's crying out for photo-realism, it's an oddly brave move on Ubi's part to come up with such an aesthetic aberration.
Not that it's likely to be a problem, however. The cartoon look here is pop art, camp Batman-style kapows allied with a darker edge of nastiness - shoot a bad guy and they'll bleed. Videogame fashionistas may feel the cel-shaded look is already a tiresome, dated trend, but XIII should dissuade them.
Outside of the dynamic look however, what else is there? The game starts with your character waking up on a beach with no recollection of who you are or how you got there - we've all been there! Pause for laugh.
Okay, so it's not the most original plot device but at least it adds a neat shot of mystery to your adventure. You find yourself in a beach hut being attended to by a considerate beach babe whom pays for her act of kindness by being riddled with bullets in the opening reel.
From here you can dispatch your machine gun wielding aggressors - it's you they're after, y'see - with a well placed throwing knife to the head, before making out of the hut, not forgetting to pick up that 9mm pistol lying so conveniently on the table (there's also a row of soup cans on the shelf - a nod to pop art legend Andy Warhol perhaps. Or maybe they're just soup cans.
Make it out of the hut and a distant figure on mountain attempts to bring your travails to an abrupt close shoot the cheecky blighter from afar, and savour the sight as your tormentor plunges to a splendid death.
Cut to a later level and we find ourselves apparently on a Solid Snake-style mission of sabotage, infiltrating an enemy base via the submarine entrance, grabbing harpoon guns and AK 47s and gunning down a series of unamused guards who let out a comic book "Nooo" as they bite the dust.
Climb ladders, dodge between makeshift shields, put paid to the plans of evil - it's all been seen before, but surely it can't just be the visual style that makes this seem so fresh? A limited play, but initial evidence suggest XIII's developer has created a shooter of real substance.
XIII is set to hit PC and Xbox from October 31 and PS2 and GC on November 14, and this is one toony title that isn't in the slightest bit Mickey Mouse. We don't want to be free men; we want to be a number...
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