The Bureau: XCOM Declassified

Welcome to XCOM You begin the game as Agent William Carter, who finds himself caught in a secret alien invasion of Earth after being shot during the opening events. From there, you're introduced to a central hub filled with a cast of characters who all play a role in either the story or gameplay. From the hub, you'll be assigned missions across various locations in the United States to stop the aliens' plans. There are two mission types. Main missions advance the story, while extra assignments add flavor to the narrative and often reward you with upgrades for Carter or your squad. Alongside Carter, you'll always have two agents that you can command through a radial menu. One important thing to note is that these agents can die permanently. While the game is primarily a third-person cover shooter, you'll also unlock a variety of special abilities. Carter has his own unique ability tree, while recruited agents can be assigned one of four different classes. Choosing an agent's class when they join your team gives you a surprising amount of strategic freedom, allowing you to build a squad around your preferred playstyle. Personally, I leaned heavily into abilities that distracted enemies. Between Carter's powers and my squadmates' skills, I was often able to keep enemies occupied long enough to eliminate them with little retaliation. As you progress, Carter can level up to level 10, while your recruited agents can reach level 5. One feature that clearly reflects the game's XCOM roots is permanent death. If an agent dies in combat, they're gone for good, forcing you to recruit someone else to take their place. I believe you're limited to around ten recruits at a time, so keeping your squad alive is just as important as succeeding in the missions themselves. The final mission type involves sending agents away on assignments. Each assignment has a required difficulty rating. For example, a mission with a difficulty of 6 could be completed by sending two level 3 agents. These away missions reward your agents with experience while also granting useful bonuses, such as new recruits or perks. Both Carter and your agents can equip these perks, giving you even more opportunities to customize your squad. Overall, I thought the game has the ideas to be a good game. Full of interesting ideas. Its biggest weakness, however, is the squad AI. Your teammates are incredibly unreliable. The combat arenas are heavily inspired by Gears of War, and that style works alright, but your agents make poor decisions far too often. Even when you specifically order them to stay in a safe position, they'll frequently abandon it after only a few moments. I found this incredibly frustrating, and it ultimately pushed me toward a strategy focused on distracting enemies and killing them as quickly as possible before my squad could get themselves into trouble. The story itself works. There are plenty of collectibles, notes, and conversations scattered throughout the game that flesh out the world, and I honestly came away somewhat impressed with how much extra reading there was than I expected. It isn't an amazing narrative, but it's certainly stronger than I anticipated. I was also surprised by the game's length. It took me around 12 hours to finish while completing most of the side objectives, which was considerably longer than I expected. If you can tolerate the inconsistent squad AI, there's a decent amount of replay value thanks to the different squad compositions, class choices, and perk combinations. The voice acting is a mixed bag, ranging from perfectly competent to genuinely rough. In the end, I think the game could have been something special. might even have been an excellent one if all of its systems worked together more cohesively. You can clearly see the developers' ambition, and there are plenty of smart ideas throughout. It feels like the team either ran out of time or simply couldn't bring all of those ideas together as smoothly as they intended. Despite its flaws, I think it's an interesting game that deserves more credit than it often gets, and I'd absolutely recommend giving it at least one playthrough.

在上世纪五六十年代，在漂亮国与外星人军团作战，这样的TPS还有第二款吗？

It has a lot of style, being a 1950's aliens over taking the earth scenario, but the X-Com mechanics are clunky in this live play edition and the squad commands don't flow. AI allies are brainless and fragile, making it a chore to assign them to do things and not get wrecked even behind cover. This should have been a single player game or simply not have the player controlling dim witted AI allies while running around. It lends nothing to the experience.

Ok, es könnte unter 2 Bedingungen spaß machen: 1. Wenn die beiden NPC-Begleiter nicht mit Wasserpistolen schießen würden. 2. Wenn man sie durch einen 3-Spieler Koop ersetzt. Da beides nicht der Fall ist, bin ich raus. Das Leben ist zu kurz dafür, auch wenn die Story bestimmt "ganz toll" ist. 3/10 Punkte.

❤ Audience ❤ ☐ Beginner ☑ Casual Gamer ☑ Normal Gamer ☐ Expert ☼ Graphics ☼ ☐ Bad ☑ Alright ☐ Good ☐ Beautiful ☐ Fantastic ♬ Music ♬ ☐ Bad ☑ Alright ☐ Good ☐ Beautiful ☐ Fantastic ☠ Difficulty ☠ ☐ Easy ☑ Average ☐ Easy to learn / Hard to master ☐ Hard ☐ Unfair § Bugs § ☑ Bugs destroy the game ☐ Lots of bugs ☐ Few Bugs ☐ You can use them for speedrun ☐ Nothing encountered ☯ Story ☯ ☐ There is none ☐ Bad ☑ Alright ☐ Good ☐ Fantastic ⚔ Gameplay ⚔ ☐ Frustrating ☐ Sleepy ☐ Boring ☑ Fun ☐ Challenging ۞ Game time / Length ۞ ☐ Really short (0 - 3 hours) ☐ Short (4 - 7 hours) ☑ Few hours (8 - 20 hours) ☐ Long (21-50 hours) ☐ Very Long (51-100 hours) ☐ Extremely Long (101+ hours) $ Price / Quality $ ☐ Full price ☑ Wait for Sale ☐ Don't buy ☐ Refund it if you can

Woof. I don't know why they did this to XCOM, but it didn't deserve it. Only play this if you're into grey-brown-em-ups or if you're a curious masochist.

[b]Juego entretenido. Shooter táctico en tercera persona con un pequeño componente de estrategia. Tiene sus fallos pero no es un mal juego. No te vas a aburrir y la historia te va a gustar. Recomendado si eres fan de la saga [i]XCOM[/i] y lo ves de oferta.[/b] Dicho esto, paso a analizar más en profundidad, por si quieres hacerte una idea más concreta antes de comprar...[hr][/hr][b]> DURACIÓN:[/b] [i]The Bureau: XCOM Declassified[/i] tiene una duración aproximada de entre 12 y 14 horas, en dificultad normal. En lo que se refiere a rejugabilidad no ofrece mucho, ya que el desarrollo de la historia y su diseño de niveles son completamente lineales y más allá de completar los logros, no dispone de más contenido.[hr][/hr][b]> PUNTOS POSITIVOS:[/b] - La trama es uno de sus puntos fuertes. [i]The Bureau[/i] nos cuenta el origen de la agencia en plena guerra fría, a principios de los años 60 y cómo esta tiene que enfrentarse al inicio de la invasión alien. Si has jugado a la saga principal te va a gustar. - Gráficamente es muy bueno para su año de salida (2013) y a día de hoy se mantiene dignamente. En cuanto a su apartado artístico y ambientación, tanto la estética de los años 60 como la de los extraterrestes están muy conseguidas. Se nota que el trabajo en este sentido ha sido notable. - Excelente doblaje al castellano, casi al nivel de una película. Ayuda mucho a sumergirse en la historia. - Es un shooter táctico en tercera persona con mecánicas de estrategia, gestión y alguna pincelada de RPG, al estilo de los [i]XCOM[/i] clásicos. Una mezcla que da como resultado un gameplay variado, entretenido y que en ningún momento se hace pesado. - Los combates son bastante frenéticos y llenos de acción y el sistema de órdenes es bastante original. Hay habilidades muy chulas que permiten elaborar tácticas divertidas y satisfactorias de llevar a cabo.[hr][/hr][b]> PUNTOS NEGATIVOS:[/b] - Los controles se sienten un poco toscos y el sistema de coberturas no va todo lo fluido que debería. Al principio cuesta un poco hacerse a ello, aunque finalmente acabas por acostumbrarte. - En ocasiones los compañeros van un poco a lo suyo y se ubican en posiciones donde no disponen de buenas coberturas. No es algo grave ni que pase siempre, pero a veces sí que puede llegar a frustrar un poco. - La gestión de nuestro grupo de agentes está un poco falta de profundidad. Les das equipamiento y les asignas misiones secundarias para que ganen experiencia y habilidades, pero luego te das cuenta de que a la mayoría no los vas a usar en combate, porque el juego solo te deja llevar a 2 compañeros y tampoco hay tantas misiones. - Da la sensación de que las misiones secundarias y el tema de las investigaciones de la agencia están de relleno. Se le podría haber dado un poco más de profundidad al juego en este sentido si su desarrollo no fuera tan lineal. Esto lo hacen muy bien el resto de juegos de la saga y aquí falla.[hr][/hr][b]> EN RESUMEN:[/b] - Como shooter no es de los mejores. No es comparable a otros juegos del género, superiores en lo jugable. - Se nota que está dirigido a los jugadores de [i]XCOM[/i], pero las mecánicas de estrategia y gestión se quedan a medias. Da la sensación de que si hubieran puesto más empeño es este aspecto el resultado podría haber sido un mejor juego. - Aún con todos sus fallos el juego es divertido. Su acción frenética, su historia y su apartado artístico consiguen atraparte y su corta duración contribuye a que se haga ameno y disfrutable. Si eres fan de XCOM y lo ves en oferta es una buena opción.

Like many before me, I also wish there was a "Neutral" button. But given I can only recommend or not recommend this game, I tend to say I rather not recommend it. Which is a shame because it looked like a perfect 7/10 game. However, I just dont like how in several places the game design is just "let the players fight as many waves of enemies as possible". This is true especially for the very last mission which was quite a pain in a neck. I also wish the human weapons got improved as the game goes on - after all, you manage to steal basically all weapons that aliens have and your engineers look into them, so why not the gained knowledge to improve your firearms? Lastly, the end of the story is weird. What happened to agent Carter? As for the good stuff, dialogues and voice-acting are solid, atmosphere is perfect, optimalization seemed fine to me and I had no problem playing the game on Steam Deck - meaning it's perfectly playable even with a controller.

Fun and stylish game about cool men and women with intriguing xcom-like plot. Nowadays, it feels like a breath of fresh air.