The Bureau: XCOM Declassified is now available in North America and will be available internationally on August 23, 2013 for the Xbox 360 games and entertainment system from Microsoft, PlayStation®3 computer entertainment system and Windows PC. The Bureau is a daringly different blend of the strategy and action genres, resulting in a challenging tactical shooter that’s refreshingly deep, original, and according to Game Informer, “worthy of the XCOM name.
GenreAction
Platforms xbox360
DEVELOPER 2K Marin | PUBLISHER Codemasters | RELEASE DATE
The Bureau: XCOM Declassified Reviews xbox360
gamer.no review
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3djuegos.com review
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insidegamingdaily.com review
By resembling both a shooter and real-time version of XCOM: Enemy Unknown, The Bureau: XCOM Declassified isn’t the easiest game to grasp. Yet, if you tough it out through the game’s initial hours, there’s a lot gratification to be found in AI team management. Your squad’s dependency on your orders is both their strength and weakness. While the AI could have better aim and spatial awareness, they at least make up for those issues by having potent and stackable abilities. The 1960′s setting provides a fitting backdrop for this XCOM origin story, enough that another 20th century XCOM doesn’t sound like a bad idea before going back to the future.
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videogamer.com review
The dissipated lighting effect that every game since Crysis 2 has used is even applied to the alien guns when they reload – shafts of light splitting through the cracks in the chrome. And this is all married by brilliant sound design, with the discordant humming of the alien technology causing hairs to stand on end. Although not perfect, The Bureau is a brilliant squad shooter with an intriguing story and brains.
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godisageek.com review
The Bureau: XCOM Declassified is a good shooter occasionally elevated beyond that by its subject matter. Unfortunately, every time it has a really good idea, someone else has already done it. The action, squad system and dialogue wheel are almost point-by-point imitations of those seen in Mass Effect 3, and the perma-death element just doesn’t have the impact that it has in Enemy Unknown. While the mechanics are solid and the firefights are always great fun and just on the right side of challenging (at least when played on Squaddie – or Normal – difficulty), 2K Marin just don’t take enough risks to hit the big time here.
oxm.co.uk review
The Bureau doesn’t have to be thought of as an XCOM game, if you don’t want to. We got one of those last year, after all, and it was brilliant. Free from most of the responsibility of living up to that formidable legacy, then, The Bureau is comfortably its own creature – and all the better for it. A smartly turned-out squad-based cover shooter, not to mention an authentic-feeling and authentic-looking period piece, The Bureau might not be as good as Enemy Unknown, but it certainly has a style and a charm of its own. The years of development hell have been worth it.
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venturebeat.com review
This is what permadeath does; it attaches you to your characters and makes you want to take care of them. And The Bureau handles this as well as I’ve ever seen it. Every close call, every mad dash to select my “Heal†ability, and every time I moved a seasoned veteran out of danger drew its power directly from my connection to my A.I. teammates. I could always replace them, sure. But I didn’t want to.
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cheatcc.com review
The Bureau: XCOM Declassified is a quantum leap forward from XCOM games past, even last year’s XCOM: Enemy Unknown. Typically, the character models in previous titles, are meant to be viewed from a distance, and look very blocky up-close. This game dispels that notion completely with detailed and customizable character models. Environments were meant to be viewed from a distance as well, and suffered from the same pixilation as character models. In case you haven’t figured it out by now, The Bureau: XCOM Declassified looks pretty damn good, especially compared to its predecessors.
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egmnow.com review
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gamingtrend.com review
It’s a tall order for 2K Marin to compete with Firaxis’ excellent XCOM: Enemy Unknown. But in the end, The Bureau is a completely different game that stands on its own. While they didn’t make the next game of the year, 2K Marin has crafted their own XCOM adventure. It’s one that features some lifeless characters and a nonsensical story, but also some of the best squad-based third person shooting you’re going to see all year.
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escapistmagazine.com review
Though the lack of depth in the XCOM backstory is a little disappointing, the gameplay is a different matter entirely. The tactical squad-based shooter mechanics deliver where the narrative fails to do so. If you’ve ever wondered what it would be like to play an XCOM mission from the perspective of a soldier on the ground, The Bureau provides that. If you like dashing between cover, flanking groups of aliens for easy kills, and ordering your squad mates to drop Laser Turrets or perform Critical Strikes on softer targets, then The Bureau will be right up your alley. If you’re a one-man army, however, and hate to rely on your team, the experience will likely be a frustrating one. The Bureau punishes you for trying to go it alone, and rewards you for solid team tactics. Whether you’re trying to take down a Heavy Sectopod or you’re facing down a Muton, you’ll be heavily dependent on your squad to draw fire, flank the enemies, and for their special class-specific abilities.
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hardcoregamer.com review
The story is surprisingly deep and elevates it from seeing like a generic third-person shooter. As a plus, seeing 1960s G-men with alien technology strapped to them is a sight to behold. While mixing strategy elements with shooter ones doesn’t always jive, those with long attention spans who love multitasking may find it appealing. It’s just a shame that the whole thing comes in a package that looks like a rushed movie tie-in, as with more time to both polish the visuals and perfect the gameplay, The Bureau could have been more than just a throwaway shooter with strategy elements tacked on.
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giantbomb.com review
The Bureau makes for a decent enough 10 hours of alien-obliterating combat, but all the way through you’ll find yourself lamenting the many aspects that feel like they could have, and should have, been better.
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metro.co.uk review
Its main problem is the lack of confidence all involved seems to have had in the project, and there’s a sense a half-finished game has been knocked into shape and released as is so that 2K Games can finally be rid of it. Not only does XCOM in general deserve better but so does The Bureau itself.
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gaming-age.com review
The Bureau: XCOM Declassified isn’t a fun game, nor is it a worthy successor of any sort to XCOM: Enemy Unknown. It’s not too surprising considering the troubled development cycle for The Bureau, but that doesn’t make it any less disappointing. The XCOM franchise deserves better than this, an experiment to take XCOM out of its comfort zone that clearly went awry.
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