The Bureau: XCOM® Declassified™

The game it self is kind of a mess, it was one of those games that was going to be a FPS reboot of the XCOM series but Fraxis got a hold of the series and made a awesome game and this one kind of fell off the face of the earth. Even if you drop the XCOM title it would still be a clunky mess with bad writing and nothing else.

Too bad it's heavily overlooked because as far as the story goes I really did enjoy it and so did I enjoy the gameplay. And no I don't care it's not canon.

This is a solid game that will fit the bill if you want a fun cover shooter. It does its best to make its mechanics connected to XCOM, with a slow upgrade path into alien weaponry and a Mass Effect-like teammate control system. Ultimately, the attempts to tie into the franchise mechanically didn't work very well for me. Part of the problem is that while the game _wants_ you to rely on your AI teammates for that XCOM squaddies feel, the AI's competence varies a good deal. In the worst difficulty spikes - usually boss battles - it can be harder to try to keep your soldiers upright than to just go it alone and focus on staying alive yourself. I came to regard my teammates as walking distractions & power banks rather than associating any real character to them. The story is like most of the other aspects of the game, mostly mediocre, but solid and better than you might expect from what might appear to be a cynical franchise cash-in. Some real effort went into the plot and characters. The (mostly optional) between-mission conversations can feel a little disconnected from the corridor shooter that forms the meat of the game, but in the end I found it did provide a good atmosphere. There are even a few genuine twists that pleasantly surprised me. The writing felt like it did a better job making a connection with XCOM than the mechanics. Ultimately forgettable, but decent fun.

I will state up front that I haven't played this game to completion but what I have played so far has been enjoyable enough to offer a recommendation to any Xcom fan while it's currently on sale. (Don't pay full price for this.) It's a blacksheep in a series that already has a couple black sheep. This game received a good amount of backlash when it was revealed and rightfully so, I had skipped it until now. It's definitely not the way the series should have went, but as a one off novelty game, I appreciate it. They could have just fully went for a third person shooter here but they actually added a level of tactical choice to battles that is interesting and can even be very satisfying at times. You can pause time and issue commands to your group in battle to flank enemies, use special skill and the like. It's an interesting one off take of the formula. What you ultimately get is a kind of mish mash that doesn't really satisfy either itch for a third person shooter or a tactics game, but has hints of a good idea not fully fleshed out. It's not a hidden gem. You might even hate it but it's still an interesting piece of Xcom history. A look at what could have been. A look at the series trying to go for a wider audience and ultimately being shunned. Whether you play it to make fun of it, or find some genuine enjoyment. I think for any Xcom fan, it's worth trying and having in your collection.

Development controversy aside, how does this game ACTUALLY play? It's... decent. There's a workable story in there, but the campaign is just too short - within a handful of missions you're already storming an alien world. The designers should've fully embraced the whole "prequel" thing instead of apparently arguing and finally compromising with the feedback they got. Make a great game and people WILL buy it - who cares about the few diehard haters. Releasing a crap game only proves them right. Unfortunately the game isn't good enough. As mentioned above, it's short. There's barely 3 tiers of equipment, and the majority of upgrades are just backpacks which each give a different passive. There's no research - which MIGHT have worked if there was something else to do, like perhaps expand on the whole Red Threat thing that was simply relegated to lore. There are so few "side missions" I was initially afraid it wasn't possible to level up the rest of the squad, but turns out the level cap is so damn low it doesn't matter, not to mention the squad cap itself is literally just a dozen or so soldiers. You can't save, the game autosaves... which might've worked except for the fact you need to explore the base to unlock stuff. So how do you know this exploration was saved? I had to resort to fully finish exploring then launching the next mission and quitting there, to make sure I didn't lose any progress. No manual saving is idiotic design, not to mention if it bugs out you're completely hosed. There's decisions to make in the final few missions which determines the outcome - and since you can't save, you can't view the other endings unless you REPLAY THE WHOLE GAME despite the choices only relying on the last hour of play. WTF Design issues aside, it's actually decent in action. I found myself wanting more levels despite the shallowness. It feels like a tech demo instead of a full game. This game isn't a total loss, but don't buy it unless STEEPLY discounted.