Take a trip back in time with The Bureau: XCOM Declassified

The Bureau: XCOM Declassified was released back in August 2013, but I finally got my hands on it recently due to an awesome sale on Steam. The game got only meh reviews when it came out, but I had a chance to play it briefly back at PAX 13 and it seemed like it had potential. My only hesitation in playing The Bureau when it first came out was my dislike /mild repulsion of squad based games.

To be fair, it’s been many years (we’re talking original Xbox days) since I’ve tried Rainbow Six or the other popular squad based shooters, but they just drive me crazy. In addition to killing bad guys, now I have to give basic instructions to a squad of morons who clearly rode to the mission on a short bus.  I mean, why do I have to tell some level 1 rookie gunner to shoot over THERE, no I said THAT bad guy, the one over THERE! Oh, you died? Great, let me stop shooting baddies to go and revive you. Oh wait, *I* died? Let me wait for you to come and revive me, and wait, and wait, and wait. You’ve been shooting at the same target for 10 minutes? Let me come and help you since I killed all of the enemies on the ENTIRE LEVEL while you futzed around with 1 weak-ass alien. But being the open minded person that I am, I figured it was time to give a squad based game a fair shot (pun intended).

Perhaps we could hide behind DIFFERENT squad cars?

While I’m not generally a fan of squad based games, I am slightly obsessed with all things retro 1960s. I watch Mad Men religiously, I decorate my house in mid-century modern, hell I even drink Old Fashioned cocktails with rye. RYE! So you can imagine my inner turmoil about this game. (Full disclosure: I haven’t played any of the other XCOM games so there was nothing biasing me either way good or bad with respect to the rest of the series.)

After a few hours with the game I can tell you this: The graphics are pretty sharp when set to the correct screen resolution. These aren’t top of the line graphics but the game looks good and runs very well on my slightly aging gaming rig with a 2 year old mid-grade graphics card. The sound design is fine – not amazing and also not terrible. The voice acting is good for the most part. Dialogue scenes can be a bit awkward, like a bad B-movie. For example telling a comm officer to set a specific set of frequencies and then watching her stare at me, blink, and say, “OK done”. Done? You didn’t DO anything! You just started at me and said you did what I said, which clearly you did not. Yet somehow miraculously the mission continues on. Another annoying quirk is walking in a  room with a rifle, only to have it replaced in the cut-scene dialog with a puny hand gun. Come on designers – details matter!

If only there were some technology that allowed for portable maps.

The levels are fairly straight forward, and mostly linear. However, you may still get turned around at times (as did I) as there’s no map or even a compass/arrow showing your objective. Maybe I’m an idiot but come on – there is no MAP? I mean there is a literal map on a wall at our subterranean secret agent headquarters, but since I don’t have the option to rip it off the wall I am out of luck.

There are also apparently no cheat codes (that I can find) and the game does not support Xbox or other game controllers. The keyboard control scheme is fairly complex/confusing so I can see where it may not be easy to have the option of using a controller, but it would be nice. Speaking of which, what is with left shit? Everything in this game is done with left shift. Take cover? Left shift. Move from one cover to another? Left shift. Jump over something? Left shift. Guys, there are other keys on the keyboard that work just as well.

Overall, I found The Bureau to be playable and basic, silly fun. Killing aliens is satisfying and there is a sufficient amount of alien blood. There seems to be a limited amount of arsenal but overall the weapons are effective and satisfying. Ammo is limited so you have to be careful and accuracy is key when shooting. The squad-based comrades are mostly useless, but they won’t hesitate to bitch if you don’t give them orders. Just remember to give them something easy to shoot at so that when you come back 10 minutes later after killing 100 more bad guys, you’ll just need one final shot to finish the job.

 My verdict:

Overall an OK to good game, but be sure you get it on sale and don’t pay full price unless you are a die hard XCOM obsessed fan.