The Bureau: XCOM Declassified reviews

I've been a fan of the x-com franchise for a long time and I was interested to see how it work in this form- taking away the turn based strategy element (it had been done before- badly, with x-com enforcer).

2K have made a well paced game with an interesting story. The combat system is pretty good with the way you control your team mates and the skill trees are decent, as are the choice based dialogues outside of battle- though I did miss certain things like the research elements and ufo missions.

Overall, I enjoyed the experience and the game has ok replay value but it was a bit short for my liking (though that does kind of fit with the urgency of the story) and the cut-scenes were a bit buggy at times.

If you want a connection or anything to do with the other games from the X-Com series, then you will be sadly disappointed. Story and gameplay are average, and the range of tactical ability falls short of the games counterparts, Very similar to brothers in arms, Just with aliens. 5/10

I'm a big XCOM fan from way back in 91. Love my strategy games. Very much like a Brothers in Arms but with aliens. Strategy Squad based game. Love the battle wheel, bought a change from many games. Nice pace to upgrade weapons. Put on hardest level is definitely challenging. Too much boring dialog cut scenes, Thank God for “skip”. Game too short though. Could have been twice as long

Although I give this 2 stars there are parts of this game that are funny, innovative and enjoyable.

However…

I've played a lot of RPG's and can leap plot holes in a single bound but this one had me wondering where to leap to- You think you know what is going on then suddenly your character is talking about things you have no idea how he discovered considering a moment before he was asking everyone to explain to him what on earth is going on, and everyone else seemed as baffled as him.

So if you buy the game and when that moment happens just don't touch the controls for a moment and you'll see your character begin to fidget on screen as uncomfortably as you are off screen until he solves the problem by reaching for his hip flask and taking a quick swig – now that we are both numb we can move on.

Part of the problem stems from the developers trying to use the Mass Effect style talk wheel, except in this game you can choose every option so you can play good cop and bad cop with everyone you speak to making them think you have a serious disorder. By pressing every option it also triggers characters to tell you stuff that clearly should come come later in the game and not early on. Whoever did the QA on the dialogue and story did not have linear thinking.

The ones who did have linear thinking are the level designers, walk this way, hide behind this cover, move to the left or right, finish level. This is not the finest example of using Unreal 3 – the problem with U3 is that it gets stale real fast as a cover shoot – especially when you can't shoot in this game.

Why can't you shoot, because your team has no AI they need you to be their AI so you spend most of your time micromanaging their movements, who they are shooting at reviving each other, reviving you because you got shot while having to manage them, reviving them because they tried to revive you out of cover.

And then you return to base and wander around and see some really funny and imaginative things occur and you wonder what this game could of been if the developers captured that magic and expanded on it they might have had a hit.

Someone somewhere must love this game but it ain't me. Approach with caution.

Great to play the game in the first person, and also the battle wheel, controlling the other units.

Great game. Lots of easy and hard parts. You couldnt stop playing at times

There are no negatives about this game. Though I wish it had more DLCs