1. To everyone saying "it's Jim Sterling," you say that like it's some automatic form of discredit to the guy. Meanwhile, he's actually a damn good writer and just happens to not give a shit half the time because people are whiny entitled fuckholes and he likes to piss them off. Therefore, saying "it's Jim Sterling" means about as much as YOU think Jim Sterling means.
2. The game went through massive delays, revisions, and even a stint of "rumored as cancelled without confirmation from company of one nor the other." It's hard to expect it to come out unscathed from all of that. Shit, look at all of the circumstances around The Bureau:
- XCOM gets announced as reboot with first-person shooter and strategy mixed together. Very little gameplay shown. People dig the aesthetics, but bemoan the shooter part of the game.
- XCOM: Enemy Unknown gets announced. People get stoked about a Firaxis-developed strategy game in the vein of the original.
- No one hears about XCOM for a little while, which leads to rumors starting that it has been put on hiatus, axed, cancelled, etc. 2K Marin does nothing to make comments on it in one way or the other.
- XCOM: Enemy Unknown comes out, sells well, gets strong critical reception, and people fucking love it. 2K realizes that people want their strategy in some XCOM shit.
- XCOM comes back as "The Bureau: XCOM Declassified," moving the XCOM moniker to the back of the title. This implies a link to the XCOM universe, but it is not an "official" XCOM game. Therefore, if it turns out bad or doesn't sell, it's just an "experimental spin-off." The game we see takes out the "-shock" game elements that we originally saw and replaces them with third-person shooter gameplay like Mass Effect, strategy gameplay kind of like XCOM: Enemy Unknown, and a load of other gameplay styles that shouts out "we're trying to appeal to everyone, identity crisis, identity crisis." People react in a very mixed manner.
- The Bureau: XCOM Declassified shows up for pre-order for $5 off on digital PC retailer sites. Green Man Gaming runs a special where pre-ordering it will also get you Spec Ops: The Line and XCOM: Enemy Unknown as well as DLC for The Bureau. This is all but a sign that 2K doesn't plan on this game selling once it is out, as those prices are determined by the publishers, not the online stores. I know this because Amazon knows this, and Amazon is the one who directly informed me of such whenever I had bought Tomb Raider from them two days before they dropped the price down by $5.00 and I complained to customer service about it.
- Jim Sterling's review "accidentally" leaks. The review generally sounds like what we would expect to hear: a troubled game that has no identity and tries to be everything (coincidentally, most troubled games try to appeal to many demographics of players with multiple types of genre mechanics in the hopes that one will click with someone). Score is 4.5 out of 10.
While people may not trust Sterling, the guy is someone who loves the shit out of the XCOM franchise. Honestly, in that review, it sounded like he really hated that he wasn't enjoying the game. It almost sounded painful, not from a "I played this game" standpoint, but from a "I really wanted this game to be fucking awesome" standpoint.
So overall...is anyone surprised by the review?
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