The Bureau: XCOM Declassified - Introduction

If you had told me that XCOM, a classic turn-based strategy game, would be mixed with Mad Men-like aesthetics, wrapped up in a Mass Effect-style third person shooter, I'd laugh it off as a publishers wanting to boil everything down to the lowest common denominator to sell more copies. And to be fair, gamers did whenever this game was first announced. We asked why an XCOM game in the style of the original couldn't exist in the 21st century, and we got what we wanted in XCOM: Enemy Unknown, and it was awesome!

It's time to slap some asses and kill some aliens

But what happened to the game that was announced? Well, it went dark for a year or two before being repackaged as The Bureau: XCOM Declassified, set in Cold War-era America when aliens makes first contact and start a planet-wide war. And it plays exactly like they promised: Mass Effect, right down to the squad combat and the strangely similar powers you can unlock for William Carter and his soldiers, and even having a hub area to return to and talk to your colleagues.

However, it still manages to capture some aspects of XCOM, namely, the permanent death of your squad members, the customisation and even the enemies you face are all enemies that are in XCOM: Enemy Unknown.

So I go into The Bureau cautiously optimistic, Yes, this is a game with a troubled development cycle, but it's also set in a fantastic universe, and is taking aspects from the original series, and from one of the most critically acclaimed third person shooters in recent memory. And it looks like Mad Men, which is just the icing on the cake, to be honest.