The Bureau: XCOM Declassified: Catch-all

It will be interesting where this one lands. Andrew Yoon of Shacknews was very positive about the game time he had with it. RPS was clearly less impressed. I would like the game to be good. It seems to have potential, but at this point it is a wait and see title.

Reviews just went live. Consensus seems to be: rather solid to extremely solid combat, bland main character, great period-specific details, story and setting material that seems like it should be very rich but doesn't deliver.

Sounds like BioShock 2, which I really like. Or that's just wishful thinking. I will play some tomorrow and report back.

CptGlanton wrote:

Reviews just went live. Consensus seems to be: rather solid to extremely solid combat, bland main character, great period-specific details, story and setting material that seems like it should be very rich but doesn't deliver.

Sounds like BioShock 2, which I really like. Or that's just wishful thinking. I will play some tomorrow and report back.

I'll be interested to hear what you think. This is a game I'm willing to be good.

Higgledy wrote:
CptGlanton wrote:

Reviews just went live. Consensus seems to be: rather solid to extremely solid combat, bland main character, great period-specific details, story and setting material that seems like it should be very rich but doesn't deliver.

Sounds like BioShock 2, which I really like. Or that's just wishful thinking. I will play some tomorrow and report back.

I'll be interested to hear what you think. This is a game I'm willing to be good.

Add a +1 to that. I'm waiting to pull the trigger until I get feedback and until I have the time.

CptGlanton wrote:

Reviews just went live. Consensus seems to be: rather solid to extremely solid combat, bland main character, great period-specific details, story and setting material that seems like it should be very rich but doesn't deliver.

Sounds like BioShock 2, which I really like. Or that's just wishful thinking. I will play some tomorrow and report back.

That's what it looks like, and honestly I wasn't expecting a stellar story from this. As long as the gameplay's solid, I'm happy. I'll check back in with my thoughts tonight as well.

The other comment I've seen is that the game is gorgeous--if you have the PC to run it.

Saw a review by Gamespot. What you folks have said they agree on. But combat can be very tedious with the constant command wheel in use. And where X-Com made you feel for the characters and wanting to not loose a one if you can, this game makes it not matter. That and they said that no matter which team member and their specialty is, combat still really is the same regardless. I may get this once the price drops. For the period aspect is suppose to be stellar and I could be fun to be 'in'. Otherwise...?(or I starting hearing much better news about it)

The two reviews I saw made the game sound very mediocre, if not worse.

The game has now gone from "on my radar" to "maybe if it drops to $10 during a Steam sale".

I watched a guy play it and he spent 90% of his time on that 'wheel of abilities.' It was pretty ridiculous. Game looked terrible.

After watching those reviews, I wish someone would use the art style of The Bureau with everything else of Silent Storm. Maybe EA will take Frostbite 3 and make me a The Bureau clone. If not, someone should.

Dammit, I gave Destructoid a click.

I've just played the first "real" mission after all the training and talking, and I don't think it's terrible at all. You certainly don't spend 90% of your time in the powers wheel. It isn't EU, it won't be GOTY, and it won't have the special spot in people's hearts that X-Com EU does, but I like it. It really does seem like a repeat of BioShock 2's reception--people are receiving their game based on what it's a sequel to, not what it is itself. Now for the record, I replayed all three BioShock games this summer and 2 is the best, imo, so take that for what it's worth.

I will say that the complaint from the reviews that seems most legit to me is about your squadmates. They get shot A LOT, and your heal ability for them has a 30 second cooldown. I only started unlocking real defensive powers at the end of my last mission, so before that combat could feel like a slog as you tried to keep people upright.

Played a mission on the PC at PAX. No "wheel" of abilities with the PC version. It plays to me like half-XCOM, half-Mass Effect.

Sounds like it could be a nice sale game once they work some of the kinks out. Assuming they put in the effort to patch it up to spec.

CptGlanton wrote:

I've just played the first "real" mission after all the training and talking, and I don't think it's terrible at all. You certainly don't spend 90% of your time in the powers wheel. It isn't EU, it won't be GOTY, and it won't have the special spot in people's hearts that X-Com EU does, but I like it. It really does seem like a repeat of BioShock 2's reception--people are receiving their game based on what it's a sequel to, not what it is itself. Now for the record, I replayed all three BioShock games this summer and 2 is the best, imo, so take that for what it's worth.

I will say that the complaint from the reviews that seems most legit to me is about your squadmates. They get shot A LOT, and your heal ability for them has a 30 second cooldown. I only started unlocking real defensive powers at the end of my last mission, so before that combat could feel like a slog as you tried to keep people upright.

Thanks for the impressions - I had really wanted this game but was turned off by the reviews. This is definitely a wait for a sale game for me, but a buy new.

Quintin_Stone wrote:

Played a mission on the PC at PAX. No "wheel" of abilities with the PC version. It plays to me like half-XCOM, half-Mass Effect.

The PC version most certainly does have a power wheel, a la Mass Effect.

Ah, but they are power bars, not a wheel!

A controller for a shooter on a PC? Now you're just talking crazy.

If you are using a controller, the powers you can use come up with on the screen in the shape of a circle, sometimes referred to as a power wheel.

Maybe a week ago I hit what felt like the end of Act 2, and then it got pushed aside by a combination of Saints Row, Splinter Cell, and work. I do mean to finish it up soon and write up some better thoughts. But in the meantime, I was watching Boardwalk Empire this weekend, and it struck me that that series has a lot in common with this game. More on that later, I guess.

I will say here that any reviewer (and I saw a few) who gave this game a Bad-ish score because it has a weak story should have given X-Com EU a zero for the same reason. The Bureau's story is orders of magnitude better than EU's--which is to say that The Bureau's story exists.

So I finished it last night. I played on Veteran (Hard), for point of reference on the below.

The Terrible: I am going to nitpick here. The game's character attends Indiana University, where he received an Engineering degree. That is not possible. And while he attended IU, he lived in a rented house in Terre Haute. That is also not possible. Do ten minutes of google searching to get your main character's backstory right.

The Bad: Nothing the game does is deep enough. It's supposed to be half shooting, half tactics, but neither is that good. The game has combos (like a BioWare game), but they aren't complicated or rewarding enough. In that way it reminded me of the first Mass Effect game. A game like this, with a 3 man squad, coming out after Mass Effect 3 really does need to match or at least approach the combat ME 3 offers, and this just doesn't. (I have played about 700 hours of the MP in ME3, so take my opinion on that for what it's worth.) The fact that your 2 friends are both dumb and fragile does no favors at all. Add in the fact that on Veteran your powers go on a VERY long cooldown each time you're down (this includes your Heal powers, the only way to get health back for anyone), and the fact that there just is just barely enough ammo to go around for many of the encounters, and combat can turn into a real teeth-gnasher sometimes. I don't think that it helped that I made a poor choice on which classes of allies I brought with me. I picked two guys and used the whole game (Support and Commando), but in hindsight there are other ways to do it and maybe better classes to pick. But I felt like I had to keep using them (to maintain and benefit from their experience) because I was always on the verge of failing the combat, which I was too stubborn to turn down. Veteran is the default difficulty, btw. And finally, the final combat room can go die in a fire.

The Okay: The story. I just watched the first video review MeatMan posted above, and one of the many things it's wrong about is the voice acting. It isn't bland, it's the style of the era the game is set in. I also recall reading a few reviews that claimed that the game isn't actually an origin story of X-Com. That's just ignorant. At any rate, the story does ... change quite a bit at a certain point. The most honest thing I can probably say about the characters and story is that they are authentic to the aesthetic of the game (with reference to its time period) and that if you are going to dock this game for its story, you need to dock 80% of video games even more for the same (including X-Com EU, which as I said above, has a worse story and blander characters). I still feel that unprofessional reviews like the one from MeatMan's post (seriously, if you don't know which decade the game is set in, don't mock them for getting the aesthetics wrong) are searching for things to hate about the game because it isn't X-Com EU 2.

The Good: The style. I loved the period details in speech, dress, gender norms (read between the lines on files you can pick up on your teammates), expectations or definitions of privacy. I am becoming more interested in atmosphere in games, and this one has a lot of it. And as I said before, on PC it looks pretty great, which helps with the sense of style.

Overall: Above, I compared it to Boardwalk Empire. For obvious reasons, people expected BE to be the next Sopranos (a show I don't think is any good, for the record), but it isn't trying to be. BE took a long time to find its groove, and it has flaws, but it oozes style and it gets enough things right, I find, to be its own pretty great thing. I wouldn't exactly call The Bureau Pretty Great--maybe Good or Coulda Been Great--but it's good enough that when I finished it on Hard I started a new game on Normal, just to spend some more time with its aesthetic and to mess around with the combat in what now feels like Easy mode.

This is why I like community reviews more than I like professional ones. Doesn't sound like a 60$ buy, but sounds like a lot of fun when it goes on sale.

But there is still one really important question that you have ignored, sir. How are the achievements?:)

Most of them are easy or easily done. But the one for playing the entire game on Commander ... man, I don't know. On Commander, when a teammate is downed you can only stabilize them to get them back to base; you can't get them back up to fight more (so it's like real life, I guess). On that final combat room, and a few others, my guys were getting down every 20-30 seconds--partly because you can't heal them because you were also downed recently, as I said above.

Spoilers that are not actually spoilers, just a vague description of the enemies in the last room:

Spoiler:

In that final room, there are Elite Mutons (like walking tanks, except they can rocket jump across the room and land on you, drones (which can shoot you from above or heal enemies), advanced drones, (which can pick your guys up and hold them in midair, draining their health), commanders (who can provide support but also make new drones), scouts (who reminded me of Krogans, including the Krogan Charge from Mass Effect 1), and regular foot soldiers (who are the Peyton Mannings of grenade throwing). All of this is happening at once, and it's the last wave of 4 waves, all of which you have to do over if you fail.

And ammo will be a problem unless you wear the backpack that you gives you more ammo and no other bonuses.

Maybe I missed a way to cheat the AI, or I picked a bad class combo for my squad. But if you can do all of that on Commander, you're a better field agent than I am.

Got it for my birthday.

It's a bit boring.

Just finished this up this past weekend. My thoughts are pretty much in line with CptDomano's. I played on the difficulty one step up from Normal, and it was definitely challenging at the start, but once I got the plasma weapons and my powers levelled up, I was taking out the toughest of enemies like a BOWSS.

It really is a poor man's Mass Effect, and probably more specifically Mass Effect 3. The missions are EXTREMELY linear, with upgrades in plain sight right on the path. The AI is extremely smart and dumb at the same time. They are smart in that they will dive out of harm's way when a grenade is lobbed, but dumb because they seem to go into an even worse position after that. You really have to babysit them, which is a pain at first, but by the end, going into the command wheel every time I changed a clip really helped out with that. The levels are very arena-like, so you need to constantly be on the move to stay in cover.

I also agree the milieu was great, and in light of Mad Menmania, feels very authentic. The voice acting has that classic stern-but-sassy vibe that is commonly thought of when you imagine what the 60s were like.

I actually thought the story was great. Better than Mass Effect, with a late-game choice that completely threw me for a spin. Had no idea it was coming and provided a great payoff. Much more satisfying that ME3, and I was one of the rare folks who was not offended by that ending.

It was a very uneven experience. The missions & combat were fun, but the downtime was oddly empty feeling. I mean, a secret underground base with huge banks of computers, personnel, a firing range, a hanger, a hospital, etc. etc. sure was quiet. There were also several large rooms/areas in levels that seemed to be built just to be there. Perhaps they had more stuff in them but was cut out in the rush to make the deadline? There was one specific side mission you can do in the base that you are clearly given by an NPC ("go test out this piece of experimental equipment and then come back to me with the results") that just doesn't even really exist. Like, nothing happens. I even found forum discussions talking about it.

Finally, the lady who voiced Jack voiced the main female protagonist (there were only 2 ladies in the game, and sexism was definitely hit on in side dialog), and Garrus voices one of the possible squadmates you can customize. Pretty hilarious.

For future generations that may look up this thread: I just bought this game in the Summer Sale for $6, and it was not worth it. I would say it's worth $0; if someone gives it to you free, play it, but don't bother otherwise.

As I said in the Summer Sale thread, the best description that comes to mind is this: inept. It's anywhere from mediocre to terrible at everything it tries to do. Probably the cardinal sin: in a purported shooter, the frame rate is rather sluggish, even on a very fast machine set to quarter-resolution. (1280x800, in my case.)

Given how amazing Unreal-engine games can feel, the very poor performance in this title is pretty much unforgivable.

OK, I just finished this one. I don't normally review games as I finish them (because who cares what I think anyway) but I wanted to talk about this one.

Because by Cthulhu I hated it.

I love any number of horribly broken games. I give a pass on any number of things as long as I am entertained. As long as a game has a story I find interesting I'll put up with whatever janky mechanics you throw at me to get through it.

By the end I hated everything about this game. I hated the mechanics. I hated the story. I hated the characters. I hated the world it created. I hated what it did to the X-Com name. I admit using a cheat code to get through the final battle just to see if it managed to redeem itself at the end and it still failed. It was bad. Really bad. Hugely, mindbogglingly bad. Bad beyond all possible conception of badness.

OK, maybe it wasn't that bad, but f'htagn it wasn't good!

I bought it plus the DLC in the Steam sale and regret it. I'm not even going to try the DLC because I really can't bring myself to go back into it.

Great Cthulhu, where to begin?

I'll start with the story, because that's why I play games and why I got this one. (And I'm not going to spoiler anything because everyone needs to be warned of this one; it's spoiled like potato salad left out in the sun already so everyone needs to know to avoid it. But if for some inexplicable reason you want to play this and want to be surprised, skip the rest of this post!)

It's 1962 and aliens are invading. Yeah, I know. I missed that part of my American History classes as well. Wait a minute... I was alive in 1962 and I think I would have remembered if something like that had happened, but OK... just go with it.

You play Agent William Carter. He used to be a great agent, but his wife and child were killed when he was off on assignment and he is a bit upset about that. The first time you see him he's basically a drunk; there are a couple of empty bottles around from where he drank himself into a stupor. Then he gets shot and strangled by an alien.

Then he gets better. Yeah, something is odd right off the start.

He starts running missions for X-Com and its commander (who has put himself in charge in best Alexander Haig fashion) and the old top agent seems to be returning. He completes missions. He starts gaining the trust and respect of his colleagues. He is still haunted by the death of his family but he seems to be overcoming it, even though there are occasional weird "flashbacks" where he seems to be in some sort of interrogation and talking about it.

Too bad nothing ever comes of that. Literally. Those scenes are never explained.

You see, about 80% of the way through the game it is suddenly revealed that he is "possessed" by an alien. Yeah, it had been hinted at (there were a few major clues that something was up) but the game immediately implies that all the successes you had been having as Carter were really the alien helping him. The alien meets another of its kind and they openly discuss killing all of humanity to allow the aliens access to Earth. Carter obviously has some objection to this and manages to get the alien to release him.

At which point it becomes completely obvious that you are playing the alien as you simply pick another character to possess. And Carter becomes a prisoner and a source of ridicule. At least one character openly states "Yeah, I knew from his file that he was nothing but a failure."

In other words, all the character development for Carter was inconsequential and meaningless! So much for story. The only character development the game cares about is which skill you decided to select.

You continue the missions, now playing the character possessed by the alien. Carter, now an NPC (and still working on the assumption that the alien is a threat because the alien, again, had openly discussed killing all of humanity), attempts to stop you and you have to stop him. He gets arrested, breaks loose, and interferes with your current mission. You can even kill him. (I didn't.) Yeah, the character you spent the first two-thirds of the game playing becomes an opponent and a joke.

Look... Do not ask me to play a character in an RPG then take it away from me and make that character an incompetent, inconsequential threat. Yeah, I get it. I was playing the alien. But you didn't tell me that up front and in my mind one of the cardinal rules of an RPG is you never take a player's character away from them.

To me the way the "plot" unfolded destroyed any character development the story had. Near the end one of the major supporting characters gets killed. It's supposed to be an emotional moment, but since this character was the same one who had said "Yeah, I knew Carter was a failure" I was perfectly happy seeing them dead. Probably not the reaction I was supposed to have.

Oh yeah, the "plot". Somehow after we defeat the aliens X-Com is able to somehow completely cover up everything that happened. As if the complete destruction of dozens of cities and death or disappearance of thousands of people can somehow be covered up as an accident. And there is no mention of using mind-control or something like that; they just manage to convince everyone on the planet that nothing happened.

We'll ignore the fact that we apparently had laser and plasma weapons, interplanetary spacecraft, teleportation gates and who knows what else in 1962 and somehow conveniently forgot about it.

And the alien we were playing conveniently gets away and disappears as well. Yeah, that makes sense.

OK, so the story is garbage. What about the game.

It's a third-person, squad-based shooter with light RPG overtones. You have the character you control plus two others, all of whom have a variety of special abilities (from being able to deploy turrets to being able to mind-control opponents). You do this in the standard arena full of chest-high barricades.

Your opponents do seem to have rudimentary intelligence (they at least seem to have some concept of staying under cover and actually know how to try to flank you) but the way the game tries to challenge you is to throw swarms of them at you at once. You are hampered by having limited ammo (you have to run around the arena looking for weapons and ammo) and the fact that the only way to heal your squad is a single healing skill on your main character that is tied to a cooldown. (OK, if you pick one particular upgrade you can have a drone that heals as well.)

Overall combat is... boring? It's the same thing you've seen a thousand times before. The closest thing it feels like is Mass Effect, except Mass Effect was actually fun. You come into an area, enemies spawn and you shoot at them until you fall over. There's a bit of strategy involved when armored or shielded enemies show up (as there are weapons and abilities designed to rip through armor and/or shields) but that's about it. Otherwise it's just shoot until they fall over.

The final battle sees you facing waves of enemies, including at one point four of the elite mutons that are the toughest enemies in the game (who are shielded, armored and can leap onto you from anywhere in the arena), drones that can heal any of your opponents (or who can lift your squadmates into the air, rendering them useless), enemy leaders that can continue to create more drones, and who knows how many "normal" enemies. And that was what I saw at the easiest difficulty level. After a couple of defeats I decided I didn't care enough about the game to even try to figure out how I was supposed to win; I hacked open the console, enabled invulnerability and just killed everything on the level. And I don't feel the least bit bad about it.

So yeah, as someone who plays for story I hated the game. And as someone who at least has fun with a shooter if it at least feels competent and fun (for reference one of my favorite games is the original F.E.A.R., so I don't automatically hate anything shootery) I hated the shooting. And if you take out the story and the shooting... there isn't that much left.

Stay away. Stay far away.

But who cares what I think anyway.

Totally agreed. I got nowhere near as far as you did before quitting in disgust, but everything you're saying reinforces my one-word description of the game: inept. It's bad at almost everything it tries to do.

It only cost me six bucks, but it was an utter waste of six dollars.

Wow. For contrast, while I didn't think it was Game of the Year by any means, I had a fun time with it. I agree that shooting was mostly reminiscent of Mass Effect, and that it certainly wasn't up to the (highly exalted) level of that game. The plot was mediocre, but the setting itself was great. I had no expectations going in, which I'm sure helped my enjoyment of it, but the last two posts were so negative that I feel like somebody has to defend it, at least somewhat! All in all, I enjoyed it a surprising amount; I actually finished the game, which is more than I can say for many games.

Rallick wrote:

Wow. For contrast, while I didn't think it was Game of the Year by any means, I had a fun time with it. I agree that shooting was mostly reminiscent of Mass Effect, and that it certainly wasn't up to the (highly exalted) level of that game. The plot was mediocre, but the setting itself was great. I had no expectations going in, which I'm sure helped my enjoyment of it, but the last two posts were so negative that I feel like somebody has to defend it, at least somewhat! All in all, I enjoyed it a surprising amount; I actually finished the game, which is more than I can say for many games.

Playing it now. +1 on most of that, except I've never played a Mass Effect game. But there's a lot of missed opportunity and wasted potential all over the place.