Power Hour Review: The Bureau: XCOM Declassified

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…

Screen Shot 2013-08-27 at 9.22.04 AMThe 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.

HUD SystemI 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 🙂

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