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[CognitiveDissonance]

I've been watching livestreams of this, and it's fantastic! My only complaint? That I'm at work and can't try it for myself

[Nadaka]

I've been watching livestreams of this, and it's fantastic! My only complaint? That I'm at work and can't try it for myself

I to am at work, going to get to play it in a few hours. I am going to reserve judgment... a lot of people are clearly disappointed but ill see how it goes.

[CognitiveDissonance]

I've been watching livestreams of this, and it's fantastic! My only complaint? That I'm at work and can't try it for myself

I to am at work, going to get to play it in a few hours. I am going to reserve judgment... a lot of people are clearly disappointed but ill see how it goes.

I am lucky to have a tablet, and unlimited wifi access. Twitch ahoy!

I like it. It has the exact same limitations as UFO: Enemy Unknown, but they make a lot more sense in context. The characters are kischy as hell, but I fully expected that.

It's essentially XCOM meets Gears of War with a smidgeon of Dark Souls, because they like throwing bosses at you at every turn.

[hemmingjay]

Ok I decided to keep it and try it with low expectations. I'm only 2 hours in but I think it's pretty decent. It feels like the 1950's, the command scheme is kind of like Mass Effect meets Rainbow 6. The production is pretty solid and overall, I would give it a 7.5. It's a solid squad shooter with an interesting setting. If it holds up for at least 10 hours I might up my rating to an 8.

Honestly, I have 2 hours in Saints Row 4 and 2 into this both today. I like this better than SR 4 because at least this is breaking new(ish) ground and has less technical issues for me.

[umiman]

The only reason why I'm not interested in this came from a 30 minute gameplay video the studio published awhile back.

In it, one of the devs kept going... "why can you suddenly develop psychic powers in the field? It's a game! That's why!"

Um... no. There's a difference between unlocking a new grenade or maybe some new strategy. But suddenly having the ability to levitate aliens with your MIND without any explanation whatsoever is something completely different. I understand XCOM is generally campy but there's a limit to the thing... and that one statement broke my faith in it. If the dev team themselves can't put some attention into their own mechanics, why on earth should I care about their product.

[hemmingjay]

Yeah, that's just a bad interview then. Everything I have experienced in the game has been explained pretty well by background media, conversations, memos, radio broadcasts, etc.

[Silent_Thunder]

In all honesty, the Xcom name has done far more harm than good. At first people raged against the game because it Wasn't Xcom. Which was a fair complaint before Xcom EU was revealed. But now that it has, but still having the Xcom IP attached to it, it's going to be compared to Xcom EU, which I feel hurts it a ton still. If it had been its own little thing, I think it would be doing much more favorably in the review department. Sorta like how a servicable domestic beer tastes like crap after you'd had fancy imports.

(I do mean like a Sam Adams or a Yuengling, I'm not trying to call Bud Lite or Miller servicable in any sense of the word XD )

[umiman]

Here's the gameplay preview I was talking about. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAFjGgEe30E

One of the moments I was referring to is at about the 9:36. He actually goes on to repeat how IDGAF how the powers work throughout the whole video. Just completely turned me off.

[Krevsin]

I've played 3 hours of this game at my cousin's. Today, she told me what happens in the rest of it. I combined my previous opinions with her new experiences and this sorta-review-is thing came out. Enjoy!

The squad based gameplay is solid, but the missions are dull and repetitive, the alien design is uninspired (Say whatever you want, but that tar thing was at least something new and original). The story is dumb and the characters are unlikeable. Yeah, they start off kinda interesting in that maybe they are parodies, but nope, they play it straight and I grew bored of Carter after an hour and a half.

Do you know which other games have solid (or even superior) squad based combat? SWAT 4. The Mass Effect Series. Brothers In Arms. All of these games manage to combine solid squad based shooting with an interesting plot. This game? In the first 3 hours, there's nothing more than "ALIUMS INVAEDED AMERICUH. YUO MUSST SAEV AMERICUH. YAY AMERICUH" and according to my cousin, the remaining 5 hours offer no further development of plot or character.

Then there are the visuals, oh the visuals. As I said, the aliens look uninspired and BROWN or GREY, although there are some ones that look DIRTY WHITE and PALE YELLOW. That is pretty much the game's entire colour palette in 4 words; Brown, Grey, Dirty white and Pale Yellow. Nothing looks like it was a pleasant place to live, ever, not even the houses you enter. And don't give me that stuff about "Atmosphere" and "That's how it's supposed to look" because Metro 2033 managed to create a very homely experience (well,at least in the stations) with the same colour palette, albeit slightly expanded with black and a bit of red and green.

And to my final point: The game is 8 hours long. Okay, I can stomach that, Portal was, what, 2 hours? Well, unlike portal, which offered a superb story with interesting and unorthodox characters, the story in The Bureau is basically "SAVE AMERICUH, AMERICUH FCUK YEAH, OH AND THERE'S ALSO THE WORLD BUT LOOK; AMERICUH!" with characters that are dull (Carter: I have a tragic backstory so generic it generates boredom instead of sympathy. Also, I am an asshole.) and uninteresting.

Bottom line: X-com: Burau Declassified is a brown-grey squad-based shooter with a very basic story, uninspired alien design, boring characters and repetitive missions. What does stand out is the solid squad-based shooty gameplay, but you can get that in almost every other game and chances are, that game is going to have a much better story. I can only recommend this to people who really want to play a brown & grey Alium shooter with some minor X-Com elements, like equipping weapons. But you're better off playing Mass Effect 3, since it has that too.

[Darkmere]

I'm not sure I followed all of that, can you put some more all-caps misspelled words in it?

[Krevsin]

I'm not sure I followed all of that, can you put some more all-caps misspelled words in it?

If you were to read it, you'd see that the misspelled caps stuff was the summary of the plot 

tl;dr version of the previous post: Play the game if you really want to play a squad-based semi X-Com game, but squad based shooty games have been done before and better, with a better story, bigger palette and likeable characters.

[Darkmere]

Ah... sarcasm failure on the internet.

I'm just gonna walk away.

[Krevsin]

Ah... sarcasm failure on the internet.

I'm just gonna walk away.

I am well aware that it was sarcasm. I am also well aware that I ruined your perfect sarcastic post by making an honest response to it. Because why not.

[CognitiveDissonance]

First off, I'll readily confess to being an XCOM fanboy. I've played them all, and enjoyed everything I've played. I even liked Enforcer, for all its failings.

I have been having a blast with this game. There are infinite upon infinite tiny references to other games in the series (such as Apocalypse and UFO: Afterlight) as well as little hidden jokes (such as the book Arrow to the Knee by D. V. King. It took me about 3 hours to figure it's DOVAHKIN and then I laughed hysterically)

The squad combat is fun, with the exception of the rare bugs. The classes are much better fleshed out than XCOM: Enemy Unknown, and the combat feels satisfying. I actually have quite a few complaints, but they haven't ruined my experience.

- The difficulty isn't that great   
- The story is relatively simple and predictable
- Small squads are small...
- Main character's abilities are overpowered
- Boss fights are silly

And a few more. Nevertheless, I'm having a lot fun with this game. I also am aware that it has no replay value, which makes me sad. I do hope that they continue the series, just like what UFO: Aftermath did. The setting here actually extremely similar.
Which reminds me... I should get back to my LP of just that...

EDIT: That said, with the IGN interview... I don't know who the game's rep is, but he does NOT understand the XCOM fanbase. Not in the least.

I also feel like addressing powers now. The downside? The powers are given to you/your units inexplicably, and they are powerful. Why does the assault/commando have a force push? Why can I levitate things? Why does the Engineer have a Scatter sonic bomb that works from day 1? Because you leveled up!

Well, there ARE actually explanations for (mostly) everything in the game, semi-hidden in optional areas and overheard/optional dialogue. What's a real shame is that nobody in-game properly reacts to the bizarre abilities that Carter develops.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

If my CO started throwing silicoids at people and pulling drones out of his pocket, I would be a bit worried. Just a bit.

This part of it is really imperfect... but at least they tried to cover it. It would have been better if the specialized items were presented as technological breakthroughs, and Carter's specials were reserved until the story progresses to the right place. No real excuses there.

[Krevsin]

I really liked your LP of the UFO: After... series. You should definetly continue that.

No matter how dissapointed I am in The Bureau, I would love to see an offspin X-COM:SquadlyTacticyShootyGame series, with the flaws of this one ironed out.