Here is another game that I got out of that humble bundle split with +Younes Abutaleb. I had some pretty clear expectations for this game before going into it having seen the Zero Punctuation review. But, even though I had these adjusted expectations I was still a little disappointed by the game in some of its aspects.
The Bureau is the eighth game in the venerable XCOM series and in keeping with the same kind of tradition that has developed within the series covers the meeting between a hostile alien civilization and human beings. The angle this game takes compared to the other games in the series is that its mostly a third person shooter with a character driven narrative, but it does have the hallmark of any XCOM game in its squad based skills mechanics. The game was pretty much an inhouse affair with the development and publishing being done by different departments within 2K Games who made it available on consoles (PS3 and Xbox 360) and PC's (Windows and Mac OS).
The character based narrative is one of the major differences 'The Bureau' has compared to other XCOM games so it deserves a bit of an individual look. Unfortunately once you do get to poking around and looking you won't really find anything that is really moving. Its a perfectly serviceable story that keeps you going, but there are a number of loopholes be they purposeful or unaccounted for by the developers that really left me confused at what was going on. The characters themselves aren't that bad, although for the most part they are very one dimensional and some of them are cookie cutter 'heros' or 'antiheros'. I had a bit of an issue with how the narrative of this XCOM fits in with the rest of the series, but that might be overthinking the entire thing, I just want to say that I could really find a way to make sense of it all. One aspect of the entire design of the narrative and the game that might be an issue for some people is that it is a very focused linear experience, this isn't a bad or a good thing on its own as its a preference issue but it is something that has to be clearly stated up front as it pretty much guides the entire gaming experience here.
Moving on to the game itself I have to say that it was a lot smoother than I had expected it to be. Its very compitently put together as a shooter in my opinion, but there were a number of pacing issues and AI issues that brought the experience down in my opinion. The first one that I saw was that the difficult of the enemy units doesn't change at all during the game. This ends up causing you to have some very frustrating experiences early on in the game as the enemies are really punishing but then suddenly you turn a corner and just start stomping all over them as you get stronger and they stay the same. This essentially meant that the deeper in the game I got the easier it became to fight and the challenge went down making combat feel like a chore. The second large issue was the skills and powers that I just mentioned, yes they are interesting the first time they are used on you and the first time you use them but after a while you have so many abilities you can simply overwhelem anything you have to deal with and you end up just hiding until the cooldowns reset for you to launch your second assult. Do keep in mind that I was playing the game on the hardest difficultly and gunning for the no deaths achievement, so I'm assuming that it is even easier on the lower difficulties. It isn't all issues though, I like the different class abilities between the squad members with each one having a very distinct feel, although I can't say that in the middle of combat I had the time to take advanatage of everything.
The aesthics of the game are going to be our final stop in this review since they weren't really the big selling point for the game but I do have to say they did a decent job in the experience as a whole. I really enjoyed the feel of the environments and characters with some of the final areas just being beautiful. There was a bit of roughness around the edges when you start really examining the look of it all, but that is just me nitpicking at this point. I thought as a whole the experience was really put together well when it came to conveying the feel of the game the military basis felt tense and small, the small cities really conveyed that 1950's and 1960's feel, the alien locations felt strange and advanced so I have nothing to comlpain about here. The only issue here I think would be the lack of exploration, but that might not be fair as it is part of the nature of the game, the game is designed to be linear so of course the environments are going to drive you down a specific path.
'The Bureau' from what I've read isn't the worst game in the XCOM franchise and from my experience with the game I can say that isn't that bad of a game. The thing is, with your limited time and money should you be using both to play a game that isn't 'that bad' instead of playing something that is good or great. I don't think you would want to do that, I would not want to do that either, that why I was a bit disappointed with the entire experience since I just felt that I could have been playing something better than this medicore experience.
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