Open Scene:
It’s October 8, 1962. You’re overhearing a top-secret conversation among America’s top military, FBI, and CIA officials who are all anxiously awaiting the arrival of a “case.” Switch to a disgruntled CIA agent with a bottle of booze, listlessly listening to music in a hotel room. Someone comes in, tries to take the case, an explosion ensues, and when you awake, you’re in the middle of an alien war.
This is the opening scene of The Bureau: XCOM Declassified. It holds high promise, I think, tapping into multiple fun narrative lines. You have aliens and the 60s shady government and plenty of intrigue. You’re William Carter, a field agent, who seems to not have clearance for anything that’s happening. The game has a great feel to it: like X-Files in the 60s.. The animation is fine, nothing groundbreaking but solid enough. You’d think I would love this game, right? Me too. That’s why I bought it. But…
The combat in the game is clunky and confusing and overwhelming. I’ve read several other reviews that seem not to be of this opinion, but it’s what I experienced. You don’t get much of a tutorial about how the HUD system (the call it battle mode or something) works, which would be fine if it were self-explanatory. But it’s not. The only practice you get is moving people around a little before being thrown into combat. Then you have to just figure out the shooting tactics and weapon stuff alone. But that’s not the worst part.
For those of you who loved XCOM: Enemy Unknown, you may not like this game at all. The worst part (for me) is that the combat is REAL TIME! And you are playing from one person’s point of view. Now, maybe this can’t really be a negative since it’s just a different game than Enemy Unknown and shouldn’t be punished for that. But I don’t care. When I dropped $60 bucks on this game, rather than the thousands of shooters and real time strategy games I could have bought, I did it with the assumption that I was buying a particular type of game. I wanted turn-based strategy and I wanted equal control over all the squadies. The bird’s eye view of the battlefield was wonderful in the previous version, and it made combat more interesting because you had to think strategically rather than quickly.
I have to admit, I really disliked this game. And that was really shocking for me. Maybe since I’m only doing this review after an hour, I haven’t given it enough of a shot. But the whole idea for these reviews is that you kind of know in an hour if you’re going to love a game or not. That seems to be the case here.
I’ve read other reviews that knock the game for missing cut scenes and terrible framerates, but I can’t speak to that. The biggest fail for me was getting it so right in Enemy Unknown and then falling flat here. Considering how many issues and years this game spent in development, though, it is probably not surprising that it does have some issues.
So if you like third person shooters and real time strategy, you might love the game. Then you can teach me how to handle the hud better. I happen to have a copy for sale or trade 🙂
3 thoughts on “Power Hour Review: The Bureau: XCOM Declassified”
I watched a preview for this game and was immediately and incredibly turned off. Game play looked overwhelming, confusing, and, well, not turn based. In other words, pretty much everything you said in your review. Thanks for confirming that this is not the game for me.
Supposedly, 2K claims The Bureau as some kind of “supplement” to the XCOM series, but to me it feels like 2K is milking the XCOM cow for whatever it is worth. Then again, I am a bit of a cynic.
Hopefully The Bureau will quickly fade into obscurity and the next XCOM game will get back to turn-based sweetness.
Again, thanks for the review.
Oddly, I think that I kind of like this game. And it may be because I didn’t play as much of the last XCOM as you did and so I didn’t have that expectation. It felt like a mixture between L.A. Noire and XCOM to me and I was just fine with it. Controlling the squad members felt a lot like controlling squad members in Mass Effect, but what did irk me a little was the fact that the battle continued to go on while I was making choices from the menu which made me feel a little rushed in the end.
It’s also odd because I thought that the tutorial lasted too long and I found the training films trite to say the least. I just wanted to get to the action. That being said I have only played about 3 hours so far.
While I like the atmosphere of the game itself. Carter’s voice acting makes me want to chew glass. Ok, most of the voice acting. And I was a little chuffed that the first female character that we saw was an alien traitor who was stupid enough to get killed immediately and while I think that the female agent that we meet later could flesh out to be better as the story goes on her role is thus far largely informational and the fact that she gets referred to by Carter and Dasilva as a broad makes me suspect that she is quickly going to become alien fodder. Call me a skeptic.
I would definitely rent this one if I could and save my $60 for all of the great stuff coming up!
When I played it, I was actually thinking that it would be your kind of game. I get why they have combat continue on while you’re choosing, to make it more realistic and such. But it really just did not work for me. Probably, as you mentioned, it’s because I like turn-based games much more, but still. I’ve played plenty of real-time games without feeling so rushed–at least not right in the beginning of the game. Maybe they could do a timer or something before the action slowly started coming back. I remember in Heavy Rain you had to act within the time limit, but it wasn’t as severe I think.