I love going back into the past when I play my games. Whether it's climbing around the splendid 15th century rome in Assassins Creed. Or horse riding in the 19th century wild west in Red Dead and or course exploring the fantastic detail in LA Noire of pre war Los Angles. So it was with great excitement when I discovered that The Bureau: XCOM Declassified is set in 1962 America. Great period, great clothes and an amazing set of narratives in history to play with. The excitement I am afraid didn't last very long….
This is a sort of prequel to the excellent strategy game XCOM Enemy Unknown that came out last year. This game is very different from it's predecessor and has a mixture of a 3rd person shooter and tactical combat like Full Spectrum Warrior on the old Xbox. You are Carter, a government agent and hero of this game. He is deeply troubled when we discover him at the start the game in a hotel room. He is also quite annoying and a bit of a dick , but the reasons for this becomes clear as game delves into his past. The 1960's style is evident here with sharp suited men, cigarette smoke filled rooms and cold war paranoia. Some of the design is fantastically detailed in its content but due to the linear nature of the game the design always feels out of reach and detached from the main action.
The aliens have arrived and soon you are saving people and gunning them down. The combat here is a shoot and cover based system but soon your introduced to the unique selling point mechanic of the game. In a battle you can freeze time with the touch of a button and Carter can order his squad members to attack certain areas like turrets, or aliens. You can also defend or flank your enemy from all sides. You can even taunt the aliens out of their hiding places only to be gunned down by your turrets moments later. This system works well and brings a fresh new element to the tried and tested 3rd person shooter. If you play the game as a straight shoot without using this system I don't think your going to get very far.
Sometimes I felt the system worked really well and at others times the outcome seemed random and out of my hands. You will very quickly want to kill your own squad members as a lot of the time they don't go where you want them to. They feel at times like small children that you have to tell everything to because they can't operate in the real world on their own. Rant over. Otherwise I enjoyed these battles and the map areas can be really exciting. The farms with their hay bales were my personal favourite areas.
The main base for XCOM is where you get your missions and spend some downtime. You can walk around the atmospheric rooms, with scientists gather with all they noisy sixties science machines. Here you can talk to people, listen to audio recordings, read files and hire soldiers. Initially exciting, this can get tiresome very quickly and you really yearn for the touches the original XCOM did with research labs and upgrading etc… such a shame.
The storytelling is very basic and the narrative thrust is dull. The writing is always bordering on the cliche, but it's hard not to I suppose when your dealing with alien invasions. The acting is also very wooden and I can't work out if this is the writers fault or them. The lip syncing is shocking at times. For me these are the elements when playing a game that are essitial to make you believe and immerse yourself into that world. If they can't do that properly, then it doesn't matter if the gameplay is brilliant (which it isn't ,) because they have failed.
The aliens themselves are a generic bunch, but with an arrange of different skills, strengths and weapons. You can capture these weapons and use them yourselves in battles. It's a nice touch when you swap between 60's pistols and futuristic rocket launchers, depending on what is needed in the battle arena. You also have special powers (AKA Mass effect) that you can use when fighting , but I tended not to bother with those.
The Bureau has had some well published problems in it's development process and I am afraid it shows here. XCOM is a brilliant franchise and last years game was excellent. it feels like someone high up has look at games such as Mass Effect, Gears of War etc...and said why don't we combine what makes these games sell into this game we are making. Why not? What could go wrong?
The answer is everything really. It's just simply dull in its design and execution. It's so disapointing because it had such a fascinating palate to draw upon with the time period, subject and world. it doesn't do anything badly, it just doesn't do anything good. It all so bland. I sat there stumbling upon mission onto mission, at the same time not engrossed I would do other things. I would play with my phone, feed the dog, try not to go bankrupt and occasionally would look up to see nothing surprising has happened over the 15 hours of game play on offer.
CONCLUSION
I can't recommend this game whatsoever in this stage of the Xbox life span. It's not bad, it's not terrible, it just...the Justin Bieber equivalent of the gaming world. It's efficient, solid and very, very bland. It's also haunted by the ghost of it's brilliant cousin from lasy year. You will probably all have alist of all thew Xbox games you want to play before the Xboxone arrives just before xmas. There are a lot of great games I would recommend and would a lot of games I would say are a must play, if you haven't already. This I would down the list at 104th.
