This has never been the place to come for gaming news [or anything else – FFG reader] but amongst the avalanche of announcements and new releases, I noticed a couple of things relevant to our interests here:

Firstly, the cel-shaded shooter XIII is back on GOG, having previously been de-listed for some reason or other, presumably tedious rights issues. It’s been some time since I played it, but I have reasonably fond memories: I enjoyed the setup, the visual style, and the fact that being ‘stealth’ meant creeping up behind people and hitting them over the head with a chair.

Presumably related to the original’s sudden reappearance, a remake has also been announced. It was initially supposed to have been released around about now, but has now been pushed into next year. Details are relatively thin on the ground, although a handful of screens have been released and it (obviously) looks a lot smarter, and I’m glad to see that the chair-to-head smashing feature apparently remains intact.

(Image from GOG.com)

It looks like this is just going to be a new game also called XIII rather than the original game touched up a little bit for modern gamers. I’m not sure the latter would really work: I increasingly feel that whatever the technical shortcomings of a particular title (in this case, checkpoint saves and quite small levels), they should be considered part of what makes the game what it is and places it at a certain point in time. (Patches that make them work on modern systems, or add a widescreen mode, are of course welcome!)

Under the heading of massively belated sequels, a follow-up to Beneath a Steel Sky has been announced. The original is beloved by many adventurers, and I often wonder whether I was a bit too harsh on it back in the day. As with Revolution’s main franchise, Broken Sword, I did remember it being tonally all over the place at times, mixing dark, dystopian sci-fi themes with broad sitcom humour, with characters cracking wise at inopportune moments (much like our tactless friend George Stobbart). It’s one that I’m tempted to revisit at some point.

Anyway, the sequel, Beyond a Steel Sky, looks to be far removed from its predecessor’s point-and-click origins, which is a bit of a surprise given Revolution’s mixed experiences with 3D in Broken Sword games 3 and 4, and ultimate decision to return to 2D for the fifth game. They also seem at this stage to be distancing it from the first game by claiming it isn’t a sequel and emphasising that you don’t need to have played the first game to enjoy this one. That’s perhaps less surprising, given that the characters in Broken Sword seem to begin each new game with few memories of what transpired previously.

It certainly looks nice enough, based on early footage, though, utilising a visual style not dissimilar to XIII. It’ll be interesting to see how it turns out.