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Because of its rather simplistic textures and cel-shading, XIII looks practically identical across all the platforms it is launching on. The differences between the console versions come down to the amount of aliasing artifacts and framerate. Of course, if your PC is up to the task, nothing beats playing XIII with anti-aliasing cranked up.

Aside from its ability to banish jaggies, the PC is likely to be the platform of choice for XIII simply because of the keyboard and mouse. As a first-person shooter, there’s no better way to play XIII.

Arrrrrrrrr

Every FPS must have crates

Get to tha choppa!

Holy voice actors, Batman!

Several big name voice actors are tied to this title: David Duchovny as XIII, Eve as Major Jones, and Adam West as General Carrington. Eve fits right in as Major Jones, but early on we found it a little difficult to separate our mental images of XIII from Agent Mulder and General Carrington from Batman. During late summer, Ubisoft announced its partnership with San Francisco-based label Future Primitive Sound to record exclusive tracks to enhance the 70s vibe of XIII.

Mine's bigger and automatic

That's what you get for Clippy

Very cool intro screen

We’re only part way through XIII, and we’ve been told that playing time is expected to run about 12-17 hours, depending on difficulty. From our time spent with XIII so far, we can say that it is delivering a truly intriguing story with very stylish visuals. It’s amazing what Ubisoft is able to do with the Unreal engine – first Splinter Cell’s lighting effects, and now XIII’s playable comic book.

Very nice looking bank

No, YOU get back in line!

Are you the Keymaster?

PlayStation 2 and PC versions will be shipping to stores on November 18, with the GameCube and Xbox versions shipping on November 24. We’ll have more on XIII soon, but until then, feast your eyes on the screenshots in the galleries ahead – many of which never-before-seen! (If you flip through them fast enough, you can almost make sense of what’s going on.)