Whenever
a game’s development cycle is so lengthy that the original game gets completely
scrapped, it’s safe to assume that the game won’t bust any sales charts.
Unfortunately, the Bureau: XCOM Declassified isn't an exception to this rule
and I think it’s fair to say that the troublesome development is what ruined this
potentially good game. The Bureau plays around with some interesting ideas but
fails to successfully execute them, making it a pretty huge disappointment for
fans of the XCOM series.
 |
| The art style does a great job of capturing the '60's setting |
The
Bureau aims to explain the origins of the alien ass-kicking XCOM program by
tracing it back to its Cold War roots. It reveals that the XCOM program was already
in place as a back up plan to defend against the Russians, but aliens invaded
Earth their priorities changed. The story does a pretty poor job of actually
explaining the origins of XCOM, however, as it skips many details (such as
where the name XCOM comes from) and many of the details that are revealed are
lazily explained. The Bureau’s story is nothing to get excited about and
eventually falls off into unbelievable nonsense later on. Most of the
characters are just boring clichés especially William Carter (that’s you) who’s
nothing more than your average hardened war vet with a tragic past called back
to duty for some catastrophic event (in this case its aliens).
For some
reason, the Bureau isn't happy with just being a tactical third-person shooter
and so decides to throw in a dialogue wheel ripped straight out of Mass Effect. The dialogue wheel acts as
nothing more than a filler in-between each mission; it feels completely out of
place and unnecessary, with most the dialogue being far too boring to listen to
anyway. Much like the clichéd characters and lacklustre story, the writing in
this game is pretty poor with some corny sprinkled on top so that the wartime clichés
don’t get lonely. The out of place dialogue wheel would be bad enough if it wasn't for the disappointingly mundane world. The lack of exploration in
missions, bad writing, and boring dialogue make the game too unengaging to
actually want to find out more.
 |
| Combat features an intuitive tactical wheel that allows you to fire off various abilities |
The main
thing that 2k Marin were hyping up about this game was the tactical combat that
would supposedly blend with the 3rd person shooting to make some
great combat, and to be fair to them the combat is best part of XCOM
Declassified. When you’re not shooting spaceman with your depressingly
underpowered rifles you’ll spend the rest of combat in the “tactical wheel” (it’s
actually more of a tactical action bar if you’re playing on PC) issuing
commands to your brainless companions. Much like in Enemy Unknown everybody has
an assigned class that will determine what abilities they can unlock, but unfortunately
that’s pretty much where the similarities between the two games end. There’s a
very limited progression system where you allocate skill points, but characters
can only level 5 times and the skills lack the depth that made Enemy Unknown’s
skill points so much more interesting.
Using the tactical wheel is, for the
most part, fairly responsive and you really can’t get through the game by just
shooting everything. Combat can get quite frustrating at times, however, because
you can still be shot when using tactical mode and friendly AI will immediately
fire off abilities instead of allowing you to queue them up with other abilities.
In the heat of combat trying to use abilities becomes a desperate scramble to fire
off as many as possible before getting shredded by alien lasers. One of my main
frustrations with the combat is that when you deploy a turret or want to throw
down some combat stims in a specific area you have to actually manoeuvre up
stairs and around walls, which can cause it to get stuck on barriers and
completely ruins the flow of combat.
 |
| The story has the potential to be quite interesting but ends up being dull and unengaging |
XCOM, I
almost feel guilty calling this an XCOM game, has quite a colourful aesthetic that
does a great job of capturing the 60’s setting of the game. Level design is
often quite bland with many areas being repeated throughout the game. The game
generally looks okay and on PC it runs pretty well on medium to high settings
with some major FPS drops when screen reflections are enabled. The sound design
is generally pretty good: voice acting is poor in most areas, but Lee from Telltale’s The Walking Dead makes a quick cameo to up the standard a bit
before it goes back to being bland and boring. Weapons sound okayish and certainly pack a nice kick and
the soundtrack is the usual over-the-top high octane action movie noise.
Overall,
The Bureau: XCOM Declassified only manages to declassify how not to do the story, progression,
exploration, writing, and pretty much everything else in a video game. The
combat is the only half-decent thing in this game and even that is riddled with
frustrating issues.
Strengths:
-Combat is generally fun and reasonably
fluid
-Colourful art style captures the 60’s
setting
-Lee from The Walking Dead makes a cameo!
Weaknesses:
-Using the tactical wheel isn't as fluid
as it should be
-Story is bland and boring
-Mission
structure is predictable and repetitive (fight aliens, retrieve
something/someone, return home)
-Most weapons feel wholly underpowered
-Progression system is limited and lacks
any real depth
-Very little weapon variety
-Level design is generally quite boring
and is often repeated
-Out of place dialogue wheel feels unnecessary,
with bland dialogue to go
with it
No comments:
Post a Comment