That XCom One - The Bureau XCom Declassified

Alright, alright, fine fine. It's here, I'll write it. I told you I would, and here it is. You can stop sending the hate mail now. You've got what you wanted!

Essentially it's going to be what I think about The Bureau XCom Declassified, and some closing thoughts. Some may call it a review, I like to think of it as one guys opinion. I try to be as unbiased as possible, so love it or hate it, that's up to you, but if you're considering buying it, maybe this will help you decide something...

Premise
The year is 1962, and the US is currently gripped by fear over the Cold War. You play as special agent William Carter, as a far more insidious threat is threatening this great nation. You quickly become caught up in The Bureau, a top-secret organisation whose sole purpose is to investigate and shut down a series of mysterious attacks happening throughout the United States without the general public finding out.

The Bureau: XCom Declassified is a third-person affair, with the good old over-the-shoulder camera that we've come to know and love, and which are pretty much synonymous with cover shooters. The Bureau tends to handle things a little different, in that it introduces some very rudimentary squad-based mechanics, and also indulges the player in a bit of skill tree customisation. Think of it as a simplified Mass Effect, and you're halfway there.

Gameplay
As mentioned above, the gameplay puts you in the shoes of William Carter, a pretty run of the mill hard-boiled special agent from the US in the 1960's. The game takes place in third-person, with a wonderful over the should view of all the action.
To make things a little more interesting, and to lend from the main XCom series, we have a squad to look after, each with their own unique abilities that will enhance your combat abilities when it comes down to fighting against the aliens trying to take over the planet.
I like to compare this to Mass Effect, and I was definitely getting Mass Effect vibes from the game whilst playing it. The ability to pause (or slow down in The Bureau's case) time whilst you make a selection and order your units around can give you minute control over your units that you don't get in another cover shooter like Gear of War for example. There's nothing quite satisfying lifting a key target from behind cover and having your squad annihilate it. Nor is there little satisfying in the game than coordinating your squad to take out one of the larger enemies of the game.

Now, XCom isn't all combat, there's some really light RPG elements to the game that...well, they're not really fleshed out enough to be of any worth to be honest, and they don't really add much to the game. You get the chance in between missions to talk to a variety of characters that all aim to supplement the information you've received so far in the story. This is also the main way the story is advanced, by finding out more information about the people who have been abducted (and recovered) and how to strike back.

The Bureau mission gameplay

Story
I'm not going to talk too much on the story as I'm going to try and keep this as spoiler-free as possible, but I'll give you my verdict anyway. To me, the story felt like a whole lot of nothing happened for a lot of the game, and then towards the final hour or 2, maybe the latest 2 missions, a whole lot of story happened all at once, and it felt like a bit of a cop out. Some plot points that were established at the start of the game (and since forgotten about) resurface towards the end of the game, and it was honestly a little bit jarring, and it felt the end of the game was quite rushed. There were some aspects of it that i quite liked, like the twist in the story was quite good, it would have just been a lot better if it had been talked about more throughout the game.

Combat
Alright, so The Bureau is a pretty standard third-person cover shooter, and if you come into the game expecting anything else, then you may be a little disappointed. As i vaguely mentioned before, there is a squad based system, and your squaddies all have their own powers which are quite nice, however, the one thing I find missing from all the combat is the lack of feedback from everything. The weapons feel a bit boring, and although you get to play with the alien weapons (reverse engineering!) it just feels like they are just laser or energy versions of human weapons, and frankly, the weapons overall just lack a little oomph. Using a shotgun, no matter the game, should feel powerful, it should feel like I've blasted a chunk out of someone (especially the grunts) but in The Bureau the gunplay could use some work.

That's not to say the combat doesn't have it's intricacies and it's fun. I found friendly AI was a bit lacking, but as a result it made me think a lot more tactfully about my decisions, who take on missions and where I would place them. I didn't make use of it personally as I didn't really feel the need to (and there isn't a lot of space to level your squaddies up to max) mess around with the system that allows you to recruit further agents that can have different skills in their skill trees.

Agent Carter Skill Tree

The game allows you a further 4 classes; Commandos, Engineers, Recon and Support. Each class has it's own skill tree, of which, some of it may be shared with another class, however, for the most part, the choices are pretty cut and dry, and I only found one talent per tree as an attractive talent, and in some cases, the talents are shared with another class. Agent Carter on the other hand, has his own skill tree, as he is the "Leader" class, and that has some interesting choices that could be influenced depending on your type of play. For example, you can choose between deploying a healing drone or a combat drone from your drone skill. Unfortunately this doesn't make Carter immune to bad talents as there are plenty of basic "reduced cooldowns by x%" skills in the tree that don't really give you that feedback of levelling up. 

The Wrap Up

So there it is, my opinions on the key parts of The Bureau. I enjoyed my time with the game, however, I feel like it was rushed a little towards the end, as it feels that 90% of the story explodes from there, and you have no choice but to go along for the ride. I was a little disappointed with the combat, but it has enough little intricacies to keep it interesting enough. For example, a mechanic I haven't quite covered is the backpacks that you can pick up that give you different buffs. These can influence play style, but I imagine most people would just go for straight damage increasing backpacks, as some of the others aren't worth it.

The Bureau feels a little rough around the edges, and could definitely have used some extra polish before it came out, the combat could have been something exciting, but after all, this is a third-person take on XCom, much like how Command and Conquer Renegade was meant to be a first-person take on the Command & Conquer series. Fans of the series will find a lot to like in The Bureau, and as a casual fan, I definitely enjoyed the references and being about to be one of the first Xcom soldiers, however, I wouldn't recommend paying more than about £10 for it now. It's age has started to show, and you can see similar systems in better games that came out around the time.

Thanks for reading guys, next up I'll be taking a look at Resident Evil 7, one that is a bit closer to me as I absolutely love the franchise and have played them all.

Hope you enjoyed the XCom write up, and I'll see you next time!

Groovy