Quick Look: The Bureau: XCOM Declassified

Myron Faulke looks like a white haired Michael Pachter.

I put in a few hours last night and got a little further then Brad. I am having fun with this game despite the bad reviews around the net. The game is hard if you don't plan out your strategy correctly, just like XCOM Enemy Unknown. I will play more tonight and might start SR4 on PC. Played a few hours of SR4 on 360 and was not to impressed but it was the 360 version. I still think Pay Day 2 is better then both these games and can see myself playing that more. This QL was 110% better then your PAY DAY 2 QL -FYI

Everyone's eyes look so dead! Aaaah!

I have a nerve disease, so it's physically impossible for me to play with a mouse and keyboard for long stretches of time. I've done both though, one is not better than the other as long as you up the sensitivity on your sticks on the gamepad.

The collision detection is very good. The character models look especially lifelike, but there's a disconnect when their faces animate because it looks less than great.

Looks like a good rental to me. There are other games vying for my money right now.

Because it's more comfortable control.

I like the control inputs of a controller a lot better than KB/M. I highly prefer stick walking over WASD, prefer trigger pulling over mouse clicking and so on. But I guess that's what opinions are for.

Put new game on max, bitch about frame rate. :P

I'd like to think if they turned off tesselation, it would run better. That requires a restart it looked like. Also they have AA on max, which may be 8x FSAA a total FPS killer. Tesselation runs under DX11, so maybe going the DX10 launcher would be better. I don't think they tried the other launcher.

Other than that the game looks good. I think the graphics were very well done once a balanced setting is found.

Yeah, for third person games, especially those developed with a console as a lead platform (radial interfaces are usually a dead giveaway), the controller's usually my weapon of choice.

Man... I know the reviews aren't great by I love the vibe! I'll probably get it anyway....

Brad: "If you play this like a regular 3rd person shooter you will die."

*proceeds to not use any abilities and then dies*

I remember them announcing that the UI charges when using a KB and mouse.

It looks like this is missing another 3 months worth of polish and this could have been pretty great. I suppose it's been delayed too many times already for that to happen.

This looks better than some of the reviews had me believe, but I'm kinda glad I waited on the purchase, given the performance issues and general jank. I'll probably pick it up when it goes on sale in a few months (hopefully by then some issues will have been resolved). It looks like a competent game with a decent style and mechanics that would I enjoy.

Loving the main dude's voice actor

Yeah, would've be nice to know if turning down the settings would have improved things but it's understandable not wanting to quit out (again). Despite what Brad's been told having a 670 doesn't mean you get to turn everything up to 11 AND get a smooth 60fps.

edit: I see he set it to low without restarting towards the end, inclined to believe the optimization is fine.

XCOM: Mass Effect? I'm sorta down with that.

I've put in about 4 or 5 hours into this game so far and it's pretty fun IMO. I totally dig the setting and atmosphere and think reviewers are being a little harsh on this title. I'd personally give it a 7.5 which is to say good but not great or innovative. I can totally see waiting for a slight price drop when you compare the value against other full price titles like SR4 but I still think it's a good title that's worth a solid $25 or $30 bucks. I got it with the SpecOps and XCom Collection bonuses so full price on Steam worked out for me personally.

I nearly clapped at the part where they got the radio thing on the first try.

I assume you guys didn't watch to the end, when we dropped everything to lowest and it still ran like a dog.

Game looks fun enough, IDK if i could spend $60 on it right now when other games are coming out but a def buy when its on sale.

I have my video/audio piped into the living to my TV as a second screen, and playing in the living room with a controller is WAY more comfortable than with a mouse & keyboard. I can lay on the floor (forwards and back), sit on the couch, in a chair, hell I just stood in the middle of the living room for about half an hour yesterday while playing this.

I sit in a chair at my desk at work all day long, I do NOT particularly enjoy sitting in a chair at a desk at home for hours more. So just stretching out across the floor with a pillow behind my head is WAY more comfy.

Did you read the first comment when he said "Tessellation would make it run better which would require a restart"? Most PC games will let you change some settings on the fly but the more intensive stuff like tessellation and sometimes AA? need a complete restart of the game, hence the "You need to restart for the effects to take place" message that popped up when you changed settings in the game...

Instability aside, it seems fine, but not great. Just proficient. I'll wait for a big sale on this.

The style and 50's-ish setting are really fantastic. You can tell that there was a certain passion behind the idea.

It just doesn't look like my kind of game otherwise though, which is a shame.

I'm really glad video games are beginning to drop the "shotguns are only effective for 5 feet" trope. It's stupid.

this looks totally cool and good? it seems like a perfectly good implementation of XCOM enemy unknown gameplay into a tactical third person shooter / mass effect thing. it seems like they do the world pretty well too. i know reviews have been slamming it, and i generally don't disagree too much when the consensus seems to be "game suck"

Oh. Ohhh. I thought the QL EX was the actual one, and not paying full attention to was talking, got super confused when it sounded like Vinny was promoting the game.

Change settings. Don't restart. Blame game.

#TeamBrad

Looking at the response, the history behind the development, and this QL, the final product would not have been enough to carry the franchise had Firaxis never made Enemy Unknown. I was one of the people upon announcement that gave the XCOM first person shooter (which was actually more about running and photography than shooting originally) more than enough benefit of the doubt. So I still believe a non-traditional XCOM game is doable and worthwhile but it needs to be good enough to live up to the legacy and only leave the true crazies by the wayside. It's unfortunate that The Bureau just isn't that game and it's to our benefit that Firaxis made a hell of an XCOM game instead.

Shame they tried to marry into the fiction of the Enemy Unknown universe given how The Bureau doesn't live up to it and it kinda shits on the continuity. But I'm sure the teams are just relieved to get it out the door and move on to something else.

Brad "Tactix" Shoemaker.

Looks like a fun enough game. Shame about the performance, hopefully it's just a driver issue.

It looks pretty good to me, weird tech issues aside. I mean, it seems like it could be deeper. Hopefully it gets better later on with that. It's a little strange to me that they seemed to forego a lot of what makes XCOM what it is. That is, the stuff outside of the missions (e.g.: base building, research management). Maybe that stuff is there and we just didn't see it in the Quick Look? Regardless, the gameplay seems intense and interesting enough to hold my interest for a bit, and maybe satiate my thirst for some solid strategy until Enemy Within drops later this year.

Im pretty sure theres like 1-2 settings that make the framerate drop. Also new drivers might help, like with most new PC games. Fruther, I think the settings weren't reset, when dialogue popped and said it want to restart xcom?

I really like the early '60s aesthetic they have going on. May pick it up when it gets cheaper.

Pretty sure I heard a dev say something about there not being base building in there because the focus of the game is so different (commander of xcom vs dude in the field) and xcom not really excisting yet.

I hope there being alien weapons you can pick up means you can send'em off to r&d to get new tech for your dudes or something though. And I wonder if any of the "you can use the tech now and gain a combat advantage or save it for later and get research points" mechanics are still in there in this iteration. All the different versions kinda bleed together for me.

That main character voice acting is... unconvincing. It sounds like they cast someone based on the sound of his voice, instead of his acting strength.

This is my favourite clone on the citadel.... COMMANDER.

I had similar issues with the framerate. I was running an i7 with a Radeon 7950. For me, fixing it was just a matter of disabling PhysX (which I had turned on because I'm dumb) and turning down the shadows. Once I did that I went from ~15-20 FPS to ~40-60.

I thought this looked slightly interesting, so I fired up Steam to check the price. "$49.99 USD is pretty good!" I thought, so I clicked on it. I was jsut about to buy it when I noticed the price is suddenly $79.99 AU.

Lost sale.

I really cant notice bad framerate. It seems fine to me.

The one setting in the game that was dragging down the frame rate, screen space reflections, doesn't require a restart. I verified it myself this morning.

Haha, "massively effective" I get it.

Re: Lift, in a game sure, but dudes got their own targets and areas they are responsible for and I'd rather have to control them than my AI dudes deciding for themselves what to do too much.

@toastface: Maybe check out greenmangaming. If they don't let you pay in USD, they at least have 20-30% rebates going most of the time, and you just get a steam key.

This looks fun to me.

Are you supposed to automatically convert it in your head to AU? Thinking it's 50 is optimistic at best. I don't live there - just saying that that's the reality.

write your congressman yadda yadda

Doesn't look terrible, but I wish it were just a third person shooting Enemy Unknown. I hope they are able to build another game like that since they've already got the layout for it down pretty well. The recruiting squadmates and using their abilities in combat seems really cool. Hopefully it makes it into a better game.

@brad Brad, Graphics card is much more important than CPU for gaming at high frames on PC. ;)

Its better to have a good Gr.card and mediocre CPU than the other way around.