The Bureau: XCOM Declassified Review

Games, much like films or music albums, aren’t simply products of the effort of its creators over a couple of years. They are also products of the trials and tribulations the teams had to go through while making it. Just like a kid with troubled childhood will grow into a troubled adult without proper guidance, a troubled creation process is not going to lead to the making of a cohesive product. Especially, if the development process has been as lengthy and troubled as The Bureau’s which has been cycled through different teams, names and concepts through the seven years from its conception to the half-baked mess it has resulted in.

Based in the XCOM universe but set back in the 1960s at the height of the Cold War, The Bureau’s initial premise of X-Files meets undercover espionage sounds intriguing but it takes mere minutes before it runs into clichés. From the moment you’re given control of William Carter, a CIA operative, you can see the potential of its premise being choked by the clichés in the very first level. Add cookie-cutter cover-based shooter mechanics to the mix with a gruff-voiced protagonist living under the shadows of a troubled past and you’ve got atleast half a dozen blockbuster games in recent years.

The Bureau’s major influence is Mass Effect as its “tactical” squad-based shooter mechanics are similar to those from BioWare’s space opera. You have two squad-members to help you out and you can slow down the game while giving them commands. These squadmates can belong to different classes which gives you a bit of tactical variety. It spices up things a little by enabling permadeath for your squadmates, a nod to the XCOM series’ main games. The ally powers are also neatly varied to provide a solid diversity in terms of tactical options.

In theory, The Bureau’s tactical combat should have been great. In practice however, it is crippled partly by its design and partly by the ally AI relying almost entirely on your commands. In the heat of battle, your allies will not fire unless you explicitly command them to do so. That’d have been less annoying if the friendly AI didn’t have a tendency to randomly forget your commands and switch back to an idle state in the middle of the combat.

Honestly, the combat does get better as difficulty ramps up, newer ally powers get unlocked and enemy variety opens up in the final few levels but that’s a late return for an inconsistent, largely mediocre underutilization of its combat’s potential.

Between the story missions, you return to the base from where you can recruit new party members, send them to dispatch missions where they can earn XP and find new technology or recruits while you’re out fighting. There are a couple of sidequests – some of them combat-based, others purely “talk to A and then to B and back to A” as many hybrid-RPGs quests have devolved into lately. There are one or two surprises in store in few of these sidequests when The Bureau suddenly remembers to utilize its Cold War era setting but they are few and far between.

For large parts, The Bureau’s story plays out like any other alien invasion story grossly underutilizing its own potential. Espionage, Cold War era paranoia are merely mentioned in the passing as most dialogues reek of lazy writing. Carter’s gruff, “badass” voice doesn’t help the matters either. There are moments when The Bureau does remembers its unique 60s setting and tries using it but they almost seem coincidental than purposeful.

There are a few late surprises in The Bureau’s arsenal and while they do redeem it in some ways those story elements come in far too late and are a little too on-the-nose for them to be effective.

Even if the setting is underused by the story, the environments and sound design are solid in bringing the 60s vibe. As you traverse through various towns, the setting is brought to life with rock n’ roll songs playing off the radio occasionally.

In terms of replay value, there is very little. Your choices seem to matter very little when it comes to sidequests, the allies you recruit are generic and there is next to zero interaction with any of them and the endings all hinge upon a decision late into the game, nothing that a separate savefile couldn’t help.

As for how faithful it stays to the XCOM series, there are references that series veteran – be it in the alien species you encounter or the technology you use and it also ties in neatly with the existing games in the series, all of which take place in the future of the series. Besides that and the aforementioned permadeath, The Bureau bares very little resemblance to XCOM for its fans. It creates neither the B-grade sci-fi horror vibe through its story nor does it capture the tension and weight that hinges on your tactical commands in combat baring few exceptions in its final levels.

Inconsistent in both design and execution,  it is clear to see that The Bureau isn’t a product of a singular vision. It’s as if for seven years, different set of people put in different ideas and none of them got the time to implement them properly. It is a pity because if The Bureau had been made under a singular vision, there were few interesting ideas both in its story and in its tactical combat which could have offered something unique to the genre.

In its current state however, The Bureau is a very familiar alien in a human’s clothing. It is neither able to set itself apart from its obvious influences nor is it able to make the few unique ideas it has stand-out to their potential.

[The game was reviewed on the Xbox 360 platform]