Publisher Microids and developer Playmagic released their remake of cult-hit shooter XIII last week, and the response has been largely negative. In the wake of this backlash, the two companies have released a statement pledging to improve the game–and admit that it isn’t where they wanted it to be, either.
In a post on the Microids website, the team said it heard criticism “loud and clear” and apologized for the game’s technical issues.
“In its present state, XIII does not meet our quality standards and we fully understand players’ frustrations. The pandemic has impacted the game’s production on many levels,” the post said. “Pivoting to home working for the teams has added unexpected delays in the development schedule and the QA process. We hoped we would be able to provide a day one patch fixing all the issues but the development of this update is taking more time than expected.”
Several patches are expected to arrive in the near future, and the first one is fixing issues such as frame rate problems, collisions, rendering, and sound, while there will be additional free content updates to add things like new weapons and levels later down the line.
Aside from the technical issues, however, one of the main criticisms of XIII so far is its art style. Rather than the cel-shaded comic book style of the original game–which was itself based on a comic–the remake looks more detailed and realistic. It didn’t completely drop the original’s art, but it’s arguably less memorable. Steam reviews of the game are almost universally negative thus far.
XIII is available now on PS4, Xbox One, and PC, with a Nintendo Switch version arriving in 2021.
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