{"id":79052,"date":"2022-09-26T23:48:11","date_gmt":"2022-09-26T23:48:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/xiii-review-ps5-push-square\/"},"modified":"2022-09-26T23:48:11","modified_gmt":"2022-09-26T23:48:11","slug":"xiii-review-ps5-push-square","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/xiii-review-ps5-push-square\/","title":{"rendered":"XIII Review (PS5) |  Push Square"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"\">\n<aside class=\"picture embed pictures\" id=\"screenshots\"><\/aside>\n<p>Considering the XIII remake&#8217;s original launch was a disaster, it&#8217;s admirable that publisher Microids tried to fix things.  Following the launch from developer PlayMagic, a new team, Tower Five, has been brought in to try and rework the release into something more appealing.  The results are mixed, but it&#8217;s definitely better.<\/p>\n<p>XIII&#8217;s legacy revolves largely around art direction.  You play an amnesiac spy with all the personality of a piece of bread trying to uncover a government conspiracy, as you sink back into the world of espionage.  Hyper-stylised with a cel-shaded look to resemble its source comics, the original version of the remake stripped much of that personality away.  The new update restores it to a degree, but now it just looks like any cel-shaded game, rather than something unique.  The title has a more consistent vision, but it&#8217;s not one to create an enduring or memorable legacy.<\/p>\n<p>The performance is noticeably improved.  The original was littered with bugs, crashes, and frame rate problems.  The new version hits a stable 60 frames-per-second on PS5, and crashes seem to be a thing of the past.  There are occasional bugs, but they&#8217;re relegated to texture problems or other harmless oddities that are easy to ignore.<\/p>\n<p>With the game running well for the first time in two years, the gameplay gets a chance to shine, and this is where things falter.  The gameplay just isn&#8217;t very interesting.  There&#8217;s an impressive variety of weapons \u2014 and improvising with stray chairs or ashtrays is neat \u2014 but the shine wears off as you work through the eight-hour campaign.  The level design doesn&#8217;t help, as it&#8217;s mostly bland.  You go to a nice array of locales, but the missions aren&#8217;t exciting.  This includes many sequences of forced stealth and arbitrary fail-states, further hampered by poor, inconsistent AI.  There&#8217;s never a need for strategy, as enemies run at you in a single file line.<\/p>\n<p>Online multiplayer is a nice addition, but given how few people came out to see the original release of this title, we can&#8217;t imagine this will draw many back.<\/p>\n<p>So is this an improvement over the original version of the remake?  Absolutely.  Tower Five seems to have done its best to re-work the experience without completely starting over, but it could only take it so far.  This is one remake we really don&#8217;t need.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><script type=\"abefa346325bd5c4e4c2d852-text\/javascript\">dgpConsent.can('targeting',function () { !function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s) {if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function(){n.callMethod?n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)};if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version='2.0';n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0;t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0];s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window, document,'script','https:\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_US\/fbevents.js');fbq('init', '687986255298009'); fbq('track', 'PageView'); });<\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Considering the XIII remake&#8217;s original launch was a disaster, it&#8217;s admirable that publisher Microids tried to fix things. Following the launch from developer PlayMagic, a new team, Tower Five, has been brought in to try and rework the release into something more appealing. The results are mixed, but it&#8217;s definitely better. XIII&#8217;s legacy revolves largely &hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more\"> <a class=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/xiii-review-ps5-push-square\/\"> <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">XIII Review (PS5) |  Push Square<\/span> Read More &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":63,"url":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/were-terribly-sorry-the-heavily-criticised-xiii-remake-is-getting-a-remake\/","url_meta":{"origin":79052,"position":0},"title":"&#8216;We&#8217;re terribly sorry&#8217;: The heavily criticised XIII remake is getting a remake","date":"June 30, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"The heavily criticised remake of 2003 first-person shooter XIII will receive a major update later this year, alongside the release of a new Switch version, publisher Microids has said.Originally developed by PlayMagic, the PS4, Xbox One and PC remake shipped in 2020 with numerous bugs and changes to the game's\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Technology&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":159,"url":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/a-whole-new-developer-is-remaking-the-xiii-remake\/","url_meta":{"origin":79052,"position":1},"title":"A Whole New Developer Is Remaking the XIII Remake","date":"June 30, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"The much-maligned remake of XIII is now being, well, remade by a completely different developer after it was released to scathing reviews in 2020.Announced on the game's Steam page, publisher Microids revealed that XIII's remake will essentially be released again thanks to a major update that arrives on September 13.The\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Technology&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1522,"url":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/xiii-remake-is-getting-another-remake-with-a-september-release-date\/","url_meta":{"origin":79052,"position":2},"title":"XIII Remake is getting another remake with a September release date","date":"July 1, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"cult classic XIII received an HD remake in 2020 from developer PlayMagic. The project attempted to update the game for modern platforms, but it fell more than a little short. Which is why, just two years later, publisher Microids has announced that it has handed the game over to a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Technology&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/images.pushsquare.com\/082f3b535865a\/1280x720.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79052"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79052"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79052\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}