Ubi Soft has got a possible underdog hit on their hands, with XIII (Roman numeral "13", not "x-i-i-i".) Based on a long-running French comic series of the same name, XIII inherits enough story, flair, and style for any three games. Of course, story isn't everything, especially in first-person shooters; can XIII compete with the competition?

If the quality of this early version is any indicator, it can. Two single-player levels are playable, one straight-combat introduction to the story and one stage reminiscent of Goldeneye, built to allow both stealth and straight run-and-gun approaches. A single multiplayer stage is working, too, albeit with some minor issues.

XIII starts stylized and stays that way, hitting both master spy and comic book chords. From the start, the soundtrack could easily have been taking from Mission Impossible or a James Bond movie, all loopy funk tracks. The trailers, too, give a sort of 70's spy movie feeling, even down to the conspiracy: the protagonist is the lead suspect in a plot to assassinate the president, intentionally aping Kennedy's assassination. Even little things strike chords; the villains' warnings of "You can't escape, number XIII!" evoke memories of the cult TV show, The Prisoner.

As for the comic-book stylings, the cel-shaded graphics are drawn in bold, saturated colors, and comic-book quirks, like onomatopoeia (for example, red TAKTAKTAKs when a gun is fired) or little multi-panel insets illustrating a headshot or other one-hit kill. Even speech pops up in a little speech bubble, complete with trail back to the speaker.

What matters is the gameplay, though, and it's robust, at least as far as the single-player goes. While only a little of the gameplay was in the early version, it seemed to tend toward the run-and-gun style of recent console shooters, as opposed to the all-twitch style of deathmatch PC outings or the heavy stealth emphasis of several recent titles. There's enough here to be a solid foundation for a hit, and hopefully the rest of the game will live up to this potential.

The multiplayer is a bit spottier. While the basics are there (no options screen; hopefully this won't be an omission in the final title), there's as of yet little polish. Handling is a little sluggish and falling damage is obviously broken, but those are minor issues. The big problem is the ase of spawn-camping; players will spawn, get blown away immediately, and spawn into the same spot, getting blown away yet again.

XIII will hopefully live up to its stylized potential, and it certainly can't fail against the dearth of GameCube competition. There's no shortage of competition on the Xbox and PlayStation 2, however, so it remains to be seen how well it will succeed.