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The Bureau: Xcom Review
A great many people were expecting The Bureau to be an outright, cut-and-dried failure. Created from the ashes of a now-defunct FPS project, it's a meshing of XCOM-style strategy with third-person action, and it all works quite brilliantly for nearly the entire duration. In fact (after a protracted and frankly painful opening mission) the game blossoms into the kind of thing that could - and should - satisfy just about everybody. The action stuff is taut and the gunplay responsive, and the strategy trimmings are about as close to XCOM as it's possible to get in a non turn-based actioner like this.
Almost everything about it owes a significant debt to Mass Effect 2, and the game has you doing battle with the same rascally aliens that featured in XCOM: Enemy Unknown. Despite its troubled production it's clearly a game made by people who love the XCOM brand, and even when it gets ridiculous (or a tad pretentious towards the end) it never stops oozing class from every pore. This may be a project that fans gave up hope for a long, long time ago, but its creators' believe in it never stops shining through.
The mechanics are simple. When you're in the midst of combat, pressing one button will instantaneously deploy something called "Battle Focus" which allows you to individually direct your squad mates around the battlefield, while the real world slows down to a lethargic crawl. At first your squad are equipped with kit that isn't especially helpful, but once you start levelling them up you unlock things like rocket turrets and scatter grenades which quickly become invaluable.
It's a real thrill to constantly move your team around the battlefield, directing their fire and special attacks as they go. As the game gets more difficult this could potentially have gotten frustrating if the AI wasn't perfect… but it damn near is. Retreat from a scenario that's suddenly too hot and they'll quickly take the initiative to follow you. Get too caught up in your own fights and you'll occasionally find them performing the skills that you were just about to instruct them to perform. Recent games like Fuse have forced players to deal with lunk-headed AI to the terrible detriment of the overall experience, but you'll find nothing like that here.
Like Mass Effect 2, The Bureau is a deeply linear experience when you're in the field, but XCOM headquarters is basically the game's equivalent of Commander Shepherd's ship, with side-missions galore carefully hidden around the premises if you wish to look for them. They're not essential to success so they can be ignored, but it is worth doing a bit of snooping now and again, if only so you can unlock the odd Dispatch Mission: all of which assist you in levelling your B squad up very quickly indeed.
It's a great looking game - the alien cavern that shimmers beneath a lake is a particular highlight - and at 7-8 hours or so, the campaign doesn't ever outstay its welcome. The finale is a bit too brutal and the story relies on too many cliches for this to be a true classic, but nevertheless this is about ten times better than expected, and more than worthy of your time. Cult status beckons.
8/10
Review By Chet Roivas​
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