The Bureau: XCOM Declassified: The Review

The Burea: XCOM Declassfied

There’s a board game called Taboo!, which is itself apparently based on another game called Articulate! The core mechanic in these games is that a player has a word which they must describe without using a set of words on the same card. Thus, one must explain the idea of a cow well enough for one’s teammates to guess it, without using “field”, “beef” or “milk”.
If The Bureau: XCOM Declassified were to become the subject of this game, the challenge would be to describe it without using the words “Mad Men”, “Mass Effect 2? and “Microprose”. This would be basically impossible.
A fourth, less alliterative term to throw into the mix would be “Syndicate“. Electronic Arts’ 2012 update of Bullfrog’s 1993 classic, turned it from an isometric small-team strategy game to a first-person shooter. The update was met with considerable cynicism, and despite a surprisingly warm critical response it was not a success in the marketplace.
When not one but two remakes of the British-made alien invasion strategy classic UFO: Enemy Unknown (also sold as XCOM: UFO Defense) - a game with a strong claim to be the best game of its time, and one of the best of all time – were announced by 2K Games, the response could hardly have been more distinct. XCOM: Enemy Unknown, a turn-based near-future strategy game by Firaxis, was hailed as the torch-carrier of the franchise. The second, a first-person shooter with squad management elements set in the 1960s, was met with a degree of bewildered horror – although the idea was not wholly alien to the X-COM franchise, having been the focus of the cancelled X-COM Alliance, it was a very long way from the Platonic ideal of X-COM games.
The official line is that this was an unusually early point in the development cycle to see the product, and that many of these features would never have made the final cut in any case. Regardless 2K Marin, facing immediate hostility, withdrew after E3 2011 and revised their model. The first-person perspective was replaced by a familiar third-person view, and the “time unit” system for activating the special abilities of your squad replaced by a cool-down mechanism. The ability to capture alien units on the battlefield, shown off at E3, has also been decommissioned – the “Titan” alien gunship seen co-opted to fight on your side occurs, but only as an end-of-mission boss.
Familiar and strange
The conceptual loop of the two XCOMs is actually essentially identical. At your base, you prepare for your next mission, checking in on the progress of your scientists, catching up with the training of agents and preparing your team and equipment for the next mission. While completing those missions, agents can die, and their deaths are permanent and irrevocable – they must be replaced with raw recruits.
The perspective, however, is totally different. Instead of the godlike head of XCOM, you are William Carter, a borderline alcoholic rageball reassigned to the Bureau from the CIA. And that changes everything.
When Carter explores the base, he explores the base – you have to steer him around it. As the game goes on, new areas are unlocked, containing new characters to interact with. There are some base-located missions, but the action between missions is generally limited to walking around, listening to conversations between extras and having dialog-wheel conversations with your brother and sister officers.
If this sounds familiar, it should. However, the setting is a pleasure to wander around. The art design of The Bureau is nicely judged, with realistic backdrops and somewhat stylised characters. As mentioned, it’s going to be hard for reviewers to look past Mad Men - Carter begins his XCOM career in a three-piece suit (jacket raffishly abandoned) and later switches to 1960s man-of-action jumper and twill slacks.
It’s pretty fetch.
The attention to detail is nice – the fabric of his trouser seat creases as he runs – although this generation of technology still seems unable to get a tie right. However, the roots of the design go back to Bond films, The Man from UNCLE, and a little both of NASA and Doctor Strangelove in the construction of the base. The period features are neat – Bureau chief Myron Faukes has a photograph of President Kennedy on his wall, J Edgar Hoover appears in a brief cameo and the characters’ faces have the strong, slightly cartoonish features of 60s poster art.
Carter is a classic tough guy with a troubled past – which may explain why he seems to overcommit emotionally, treating the deaths of characters we saw him interact with briefly like the loss of a loved one.
However, there is only so much to do in the base – there are around a dozen characters available for conversation of some shape or form, but not every one will have anything of interest to say from mission to mission. Characterization is efficient – the uncompromising leader, the former Nazi scientist, the driven female second-in-command – but necessarily somewhat broad-brush.
And, although very nicely depicted graphically, the early 60s gloss is primarily aesthetic – even primitive human weapons behave as smoothly as 21st century firearms, and although there are nods to the politics of the time – Agent Weaver dealing with doubts about her ability because of her gender, Professor Weir half-concealing his homosexuality – it feels, again, skin-deep.

°° Flank steak °°

The meat of the game lies in the missions, with their radically rejigged gameplay. The tutorial level, in which Carter  fights his way through the first, cataclysmic alien attack, recruiting team members as he goes, chooses to go the “give them the midgame, then set them back” path by making Carter’s companions level 5 – the highest level for team members. As a result, killing the first wave of aliens with your AI companions is tremendous fun, using the Mass Effect-style rotary wheel to call down airstrikes, cloak and throw out laser turrets, while your puny Level 1 character crouches behind cover and team heals.

Source:
Forbes.com