It is the story of a person who might once have been bad, who, in order to find out just how bad he was, is forced to do bad things to bad people for a good twenty-one missions. It's a stealth-based FPS with a wide variety of weapons and a hearty number of ways to make people die screaming.

But it's a comic book.

I'll explain.

Cel-shading has traditionally been used to make games that look like cartoons; it's probably a misuse of the adjective to call a three-year-old technology "traditional," but what the hell, it's video games, work with me here. With cel-shading, you get titles like Jet Grind Radio or Auto Modellista, which acquire the look and feel of hand-drawn animation rifling by at sixty or more frames per second. It provides clear lines and flat planes, sacrificing a certain degree of fluidity for a sort of throwback style.

The title character wakes up on the beach one day, with no memory, the Roman numeral XIII tattooed on his chest, a key in his pocket to the Winslow Bank in New York City, and, most irritatingly, a group of heavily armed mooks with air support who call him "Agent Thirteen" and want to punch many holes in his vital organs. Clearly a conspiracy is afoot, and XIII is at the center of it.

XIII, as shooter heroes go, is not much for the shoot and loot. This is essentially a game that is packed with the delicious smoky flavor of espionage, which is a synonym for killing people quietly. Many missions are set up to encourage you to sneak into enemy territory, breaking necks and hiding bodies with ninja-like facility. It's usually possible to go in with guns blazing, but then you will frequently die in a hail of cel-shaded, dramatic bullets; XIII laughs off such minor concerns as 9mm bullets, but four guys shooting M-16s at you simultaneously will leave unattractive scars.

When the guards have seen you, you'll be fighting back with a solid assortment of modern weaponry. In this build, along with those guns mentioned above, XIII has twin 9mm pistols, throwing knives, a harpoon gun (useful for the game's seemingly frequent water missions, as it's the only firearm that'll work when submerged), a sniper rifle, hand grenades and an M-16 with attached grenade launcher. Each of these weapons features a secondary fire mode, ranging from the unfortunately mundane--full-auto as opposed to single or three-round bursts--to the visually appealing--XIII fanning the hammer on his .44 to fire two shots in rapid succession, or switching his grip on his throwing knife so he can stab with it--to, well, a grenade launcher.