What a strange trip we have with The Bureau. Originally this was XCOM, the third person squad based shooter which was the reboot of the classic X-Com series. After development problems and fan reaction, this gave Firaxis the chance to create a true spiritual successor in the form of XCOM: Enemy Unknown. But then the success of Enemy Unknown convinced 2K to take XCOM and try to make it sell-able under 2K Marin as The Bureau.
And that was a lot of XCOM mentioned in a single paragraph. The Bureau shows the spark that the original developers had in this concept, but this is very much a shell of its former self.
The Shooting 60s:
The Bureau takes place in the 60s and when the aliens from Enemy Unknown originally attacked. You play as agent Carter, a pretty forgettable character who of course has a tragic back story. After a delivery mission goes wrong, Carter is imbued with alien powers which get him a top field position at the newly formed organization XCOM.
But this is not the XCOM of Enemy Unknown and you won’t be mounting a grand global campaign to save the world. Instead, you’ll be going on a series of linear missions to take on the aliens.
From the get go, it’s easy to see that much of what was being promoted from XCOM: A combination of third person combat with the base development and progression of the original game has been gutted. There are no grand decisions for you to make at home base or areas to explore for clues and technology to aid you.
The most X-COM like decision you’ll make is deciding what missions to do, but don’t be expecting the Meta layer of running the organization like in Enemy Unknown.
Instead the game’s primary focus is on the third person squad based combat. You’re always saddled with two generic characters of your choosing. Each person can be one of four classes which determine what skills they can unlock after earning enough experience.
Giving orders to your troops is a much clunkier process using the keyboard compared to a gamepad.
Combat plays much like the Brothers in Arms series or Mass Effect — where combat is real time, but you can pause it to issue orders to your comrades. “Battle Focus” as The Bureau calls it, slows down time allowing you to issue orders.
The UI felt really clunky to me using a keyboard and mouse, as it seemed that the UI was made for using either one or the other, not both. You can use the mouse to quickly issue move commands, but have to guide a beacon using the keyboard to the position. Also the quick commands for issuing orders without going into battle focus are originally hot key to the F command keys which are a pain to reach while you’re trying to fight a mutton.
This creates a dilemma, you’ll want to use the keyboard and mouse for better aiming during combat, but a gamepad feels more natural for the issuing of orders to your characters.
Unfortunately combat, which is the primary focus of The Bureau, just doesn’t work despite the tinkering by 2k Marin due to what appears to be them making the best of a bad situation.
Brain Dead Battles:
The Bureau’s squad based real time combat could have been an interesting experience, if it wasn’t for poor AI and sloppy mechanics.
Your squaddies are very stupid and practically rely on you to babysit them to do anything right. They will not move from cover if being hit, take shots to the face instead of hiding ,won’t move if a grenade is about to blow up at their feet and the list just goes on.
The levels look alright, but were all based on the same blueprint of linear corridors leading to big areas for combat.
Like Enemy Unknown, The Bureau tries to introduce tactics in the form of flanking cover and covering fire, but here it doesn’t work.
Remember how I said you had to draw a path using the in game cursor to tell a character to move? Well it turns out that the AI doesn’t recognize the path and instead will just move straight to your beacon, without a care in the world or the gun emplacements firing on them.
To make the combat even more frustrating, according to the game, characters receive accuracy bonuses when you order them to fire on someone. Unfortunately otherwise they do barely any damage unless it’s skill related, forcing you to keep returning to the clunky UI. Having switched between gamepad and keyboard, you’re pretty much forced to use the gamepad for your squad to make any difference in combat.
Instead of leading the best of the best, The Bureau felt like I was a chaperone on a school trip. And the sloppiness continues into the overall presentation. The menus are annoying to go through to issue equipment or change squaddies. The character models all look similar as square jaw men with differences only in clothing and hair.
In fact, I’m pretty sure that Nolan North not only voiced the main character but my squaddies as well, leading to the illusion of me leading an army of Nolan Norths to save the world.
And the level design was as basic as it gets. The problem with real time squad combat is that in order for the player to feel like they’re doing something, it limits the level design into one type: Big open areas. Combined with the linear path through, every level follows the same pattern: Walk down a narrow corridor (regardless of you being outside or not) until you reach a big area, fight until everyone dies and repeat.
Larger enemies are more annoying by the fact that you’ll run out of ammo before being able to kill them, than having a tactical challenge.
Enemy design becomes less about out thinking and more about dealing with the frustrating mechanics.
Shields, heavily armored enemies and more are introduced and you’ll quickly find that your three man squad just doesn’t cut it on the higher difficulties.
Trying to deal with armored muttons, one of them basically walked from one end of an area to the other while constantly being targeted and fired on by my guys and we couldn’t even get it down to 50% before it was in firing range, killing everyone. Not helping matters was a very low supply of ammo and I was always running out before the end of a fight.
In fact, most of the times I died was because I ran out of ammo before the enemy died and then was killed trying to find what ammo drops were available in the area.
It’s hard to tell what was the state of The Bureau before it was handed off to 2k Marin. But the gameplay here just doesn’t live up to the XCOM name. I don’t blame them completely for The Bureau, but they do shoulder some blame for what we were left with.
Once upon a time, the idea of combining the progression model of X-COM with a third person shooter sounded great to me. But after taking so long to get here, The Bureau is a day late and a few dollars short.
