XIII Remake

Product Information

Update [Thu 10th Aug, 2023 17:15 BST]: Physical versions for The King of Fighters XIII Global Match have been revealed by Pix'n Love. We are fully aware and terribly sorry that the initial launch of XIII Remake on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC did not reach players’ expected quality standards,” Microids CEO Stéphane Longeard said in a statement. “A bit more than a year ago we took the decision to hire the studio Tower Five to finish the development of the game. Tower Five worked with us in the past, notably on the great port of Agatha Christie: The ABC Murders on Nintendo Switch. We really wanted to take the time to fix the game and offer owners of XIII Remake a free update paying the best possible tribute to the original game we all love.” It said French studio Tower Five (Lornsword: Winter Chronicle) has been working on a significant free title update for over a year.

This remake shouldn’t come as a complete surprise, given XIII Remake’s extremely poor reception. Critics weren’t positive about the changes — it has a 33% average rating on Metacritic — and fans weren’t pleased either, giving it an “Overwhelmingly Negative” average review rating on Steam. On top of that, the remake was originally supposed to come out on Nintendo Switch. 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 new studio to give XIII Remake a remake of its own. The development studio reworked the entire game from the art direction to the AI and added numerous technical improvements,” Microids said.Originally developed by PlayMagic, the PS4, Xbox One and PC remake shipped in 2020 with numerous bugs and changes to the game’s iconic cel-shaded art style which fans weren’t happy with. And as I was pointing out, the forms in which these remasters take can drastically differ. From dumping the game with minimum effort, to complete overhauls of the graphics and sounds, game play tweaks and even much larger scales. The latter obviously taking up far more effort, money, and time to complete. In a world where cheaply and haphazardly dumping three games on to a disc and calling it a day can be called the same as a total overhaul of a game, then why should devs even bother trying? They might as well poorly re-release all titles, because you'll have fanboys defend the low effort, and any potential bugs and issues because "yeah but the original releases were great titles, so I'd pay an arm and a leg for any version". XIII is a remake of the cult first-person action game that was initially released in 2003. You play as “XIII”, a man without an identity, in a solo campaign with numerous twists and turns. Inspired by the eponymous graphic novel, the game features a completely reinvented and unique cel-shading design. In XIII, players can also take part in fierce multi-player fights. On that date, owners of the PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC versions will receive a free update and enjoy the game as intended. The development studio reworked the entire game from the Art Direction to the AI and added numerous technical improvements. Finally, Tower Five implemented the highly awaited online multiplayer mode for up to 13 players.

I never played the original but surely it has to be better than this. The game is terribly optimised and suffers greatly from performance issues. It also stutters and chugs along somewhere between 10fps or below whenever there is more than one character on screen and the amount of screen tearing in this game is absolutely staggering. Character Models/A.I will often be contorted and doing something that they're not meant to be doing. For example, there were many a-time where I'd be in a gunfight with a few enemies for them to only to disperse and run off into a corner and just stand there. Level Design is quite awful as there were a few occasions where I'd wonder around a small area for about 10 minutes with no idea where to go, only for a YouTube gameplay being able to assist me as the Game's Navigator decides whenever it wants shows up. There is very little care or effort put into this title which is quite apparent especially when there is so much clipping issues that often requires a few restarts before key objects correctly appear and there's even grammatical errors in the trophy description. I would also remap some controls (nothing fancy, just changing buttons inputs from "hold" to "press") however, despite these settings getting saved, the game would just decide when it was going to obey them. This week, Microids said it has hired a different studio to overhaul XIII so that players can “enjoy the game as [originally] intended”. Watching the trailer above, the remake does look better than it did before, although I'm still surprised that so much effort has been put into revising a remake to a game that was just-okay when it was released nearly twenty years ago.Microids also listed some of the upgrades that new developer Tower Five is delivering, saying that the studio has “reworked the entire game”:

At the end of 2022, Square Enix announced that Final Fantasy PIxel Remaster, a collection composed of revamped versions of Final Fantasy I through VI, would finally be making its way to Nintendo Switch, putting to rest many months of speculation from eager fans. It’s big news, as its release means that FF-loving Switch owners will soon be able to enjoy every mainline Final Fantasy game from the very beginning of the series all the way to the 12th entry, minus MMOPRG Final Fantasy XI.

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Due to the popularity of the dream match idea and to be able to make the AoF cast meet the FF cast without changing age, the non-canon KOF series was created. While almost all the characters in KOF are from Fatal Fury, Art of Fighting, Metal Slug, Ikari Warriors, Samurai Shodown, Savage Reign, and Psycho Soldier, the game itself also introduced many original characters to the mix such as Kyo Kusanagi, Iori Yagami, K', Goro Daimon, Benimaru Daikado, Ash Crimson, Kula Diamond, and the Sports Team to name a few. When will tech companies understand that innovation is great, but they also have to support the average joe. And the Switch, ironically, is the biggest Average Joe in the market, hell it made an Average Joe look beter than the PS4 could with Alien Isolation. But that was a rare example of a company investing in Switch as a platform, rather than as an easy 'almost mobile' cash grab. 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. ElRoberico my PSP playthrough is still ongoing but it's been a damn fun ride with a lot to dig into. The missions may feel more concise, but this IS an originally handheld game and was helmed by Hajime Tabata just like Crisis Core, so the design approach is unsurprisingly similar in some regards. You can watch how this reveal unfolded on the official EVO Twitch channel. It takes place around the 09:15:20 mark.