Real ones know that the only XCOM spin off worth its salt is Hasbro’s 1999 play-by-mail banger First Alien Invasion, although that didn’t stop System Shock 2 studio Irrational from getting to work on an FPS set in the strategy series’ universe after being acquired by 2K in 2006. If your sentiments are anything like I remember a lot of the internet feeling at the time, you may get nightmarish flashbacks to the trailer below, first shown at E3 2010. The project was eventually canceled and adapted into 2013’s The Bureau: XCOM Declassified, but Irrational co-founder and current Wild Bastards studio Blue Manchu founder Jon Chey has shed some light on the FPS’s development, and it sounds like it was once a far more ambitious project. Kaiju ambitious.
]]>XCOM's 2013 squad-based shooter spin-off The Bureau: XCOM Declassified is available free for the next day-and-a-bit from the Humble Store. Our Alec will tell you it's one of those enjoyable-enough 7/10 perfectly average action games, which makes it not bad as a freebie. Me, my interests are slightly more morbid: I want to see the game which changed form wildly as its development dragged on and ultimately was the final game from BioShock 2 studio 2K Marin before 2K killed them. Also I want to shoot aliens with zapguns.
]]>We don’t do scores on RPS, but sometimes we mourn for the inability to deploy a 7/10. The ur-score, the most double-edged of critical swords, the good but not great, the better than it deserves to be, the guilty pleasure, the bungled aspiration, the knows exactly what it is, the straight down the line. One score that can mean so much.
There is one particular type of 7/10 game that heralds joy, not disappointment: the solid, maybe ever so slightly wonky action game with no interest in being anything more than a solid action game.
]]>Oh boy. It is officially another One Of Those Days. The diabolical layoff stampede beast of certain doom has struck again, this time allegedly laying waste to the whole of The Bureau: XCOM Declassified and BioShock 2 developer 2K Marin. For now, 2K is only officially saying that there have been "staff reductions" at the oft-beleaguered studio, but sources close to the situation told RPS a significantly more dire tale.
]]>Eldritch just got announced by former BioShock 2/Borderlands developers David and Kyle Pittman, but it's already rocketed to the top of my list of Exciting Doodads That I Will (Lovingly) Obliterate With My Excitement Lasers. The headline does not lie. The roguelike-like counts games like Thief and Dishonored among its closest inspirations, bringing them together in a clammy, tentacle-slathered Lovecraftian embrace. In short, you can fight, sure, but you can also stealth past enemies, upgrade otherworldly powers, and climb around the environment to discover alternate paths through the harrowing infini-dungeon. Oh Eldritch, let me count the ways. Wait, I already did. You should probably just watch the (refreshingly silly) trailer, then.
]]>It’d be a relief to spend a few days of gaming in the company of dapper sixties agents rather than gruff space marines. Sadly, the heroes of The Bureau, dress code aside, are space marines. They shoot monsters, then roll between carefully placed cover and magically summon turrets. There are tactics to be found, but are they in sufficient quantity to make the rest of the experience worthwhile? Here’s wot I think.
]]>Earlier in the week Cara reported in on her time with The Bureau: XCOM Declassified, and gave it Jeff Goldblum. Now though you can supplement these frivolous editorialisations with your own eyes-on experience, because the special news investigators of VG247 have posted footage of the same sequence that Cara played, and you can see that below.
]]>There is a button you can press in The Bureau: XCOM Declassified where it slows everything down like in the tennis replays when you want to see how close the ball was to being 'out' but then it wasn't. Instead of being Andy Murray though, you are Fedora Fedorasson and there is a film grain on everything and aliens are running around on the court. Also it is a third person XCOM game and not tennis.
]]>Maybe I'm in the minority here, but I actually think the original concept for what eventually went on to become The Bureau: XCOM Declassified would've made for a pretty cool game... if it wasn't called XCOM. 1960s X-Files? A story that lures players into its irresistible green glow with both unrelenting mystery and the social/political tensions of the time? I would've played that. Don't get me wrong: I'm incredibly glad that XCOM is back to being all about tactics, but this cut-scene-tastic Bureau trailer just feels generic. Everybody has neat hats, but we may as well be watching Commander Shepard (the boring vanilla male version) get levitated into the air by some unknowable alien force. Old timey hats or not, this just feels a bit, er, old hat.
]]>I just read Adam's thoughts on the previous footage of The Bureau: XCOM Declassified, and I can see why he was grumpy. His video was from earlier on in the game, whereas Revision3's runthrough is from bit later on, but his points stand: the moment-to-moment shooting doesn't seem nearly as interesting as the command system that tosses the rest of the squad into battle, and every time it's dropped in favour of cover-based blasting it doesn't feel right. I disagree with him that it should just be turn-based, however. I'm not that much of a grump.
]]>Two things to note in regards to this latest The Bureau: XCOM Declassified video. Actually, make that three things because it's worth mentioning that the name becomes worse every time I have to type it. It's not the worst use of a colon this side of an alien probing session, but it is a tad cumbersome. I'm also increasingly wary of the stop-start nature of the command system and, yes, I know that may seem a strange complaint coming from a man who loves all things turn-based. I guess I just want it to go the whole way and be turn-based. My final objection, before dropping the video onto your screen, relates to the setting. The nifty period style doesn't seem to extend beyond the hats - the rest comes across as more futuristic than actual XCOM.
]]>I love XCOM, X-COM and pretty much any variant thereof. Heck, I'd probably buy X-MOC, a spoof version in which the invading aliens are broad parodies of Z-list celebrities, provided the combat was turn-based and the deaths were permanent. The idea of an alien invasion in a period setting that permits excessive use of fedoras and chain-smoking agents is also pleasing to my aesthetic sensibilities, so it's odd that The Bureau: XCOM Declassified isn't causing me to polish my shiniest shoes in preparation for good some old-fashioned investigation and elimination. Like the evidence of extraterrestrials that the agency is so keen to censor or destroy, the footage of the game in action is perplexing, if not outright alarming. It looks like XCOM but where is the 'end turn' button and why do these agents have so much techno-magic? Take a look.
]]>I'm really sorry about this. I'm about to ruin XCOM for you. Are you ready? To the tune of Sex Bomb, by Tom Jones:
XCOM, XCOM, you're my XCOM And baby you can turn me on
There, now you can all share in the pain. I've had that in my head for the past half-hour, after watching VG247's sneakily snuck video of The Bureau: XCOM Declassified. What was once simply known as XCOM and was an FPS is now a third-person cover-based shooter that looks a whole lot more like an XCOM game of yore.
]]>It's alive! The name change from XCOM: Mad Men Edition to The Bureau had been anticipated for some time, but we weren't entirely clear as to whether the former first-person reboot would retain any trappings of its original title. Moments ago, a video and press release revealed that 2K Marin, they of Bioshock 2, are indeed working on the game and that it will be called The Bureau: XCOM Declassified. It'll also be out on August 20th. I'm glad it's a period piece and I'm glad it still has XCOM in the name because I'd enjoy seeing at least some of the transition from men in fedoras with retrofitted alien tech to hovering super-snipers. Here's the trailer. It's live action.
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