Quick Look: The Bureau: XCOM Declassified

Yes, and it confused the hell out of me.

Tell us why!

Brad playing on anything but easy dont blame the game.

So, does obviously means that the PC version is 'completely unplayable' and that you 'should only play this on consoles' and that 'anyone playing this on PC must be insane', right?

@spiritof:

Nothing is better than Freedom Fighters.

Nice Power Rangers reference.

I find it kinda funny that they think a 660ti, which I think they are running, can max out games anymore. It's not cause it couldn't, it's just because the standards at which developers are optimizing for is so much more capable. It's the way of PC gaming, in a couple of patches it will be fixed. I will how ever say that it's gotten a lot better the last two years. But I got a feeling that it will go back to same old badly optimized ports when the new consoles launch, as is the norm. The current generation was really bad tough, the mid to late 2000 was just atrocious. Hope this is not a sign of things to come.

I don't really understand this big focus on the frame rate in the video. It's a modern PC game on a decent setup, and all the options are cranked to 11. Of course it's not going to run silky smooth. Also, it's pretty commonplace for a new release on PC to require some patches or new drivers to run at its best.

And just because the video game tells you restarting isn't necessary doesn't mean you shouldn't try it out. I just recently solved a bit of an issue I was having in the PC version of Sleeping Dogs by restarting after changing an option that supposedly didn't require a restart.

This stuff seems like it should be common sense for someone who plays PC games, right? Who doesn't have to fiddle with PC options to get the game running ideally?

Use a mouse when you're shooting, for the love of god, we're watching here.

@duke_of_irl: That was just depressing. Especially hearing Brad of all people who seems to be the guy always talking tech and hardware. I can forgive pretty much anything in a quick look, but continuously harping on the performance when you've got all your settings cranked to max and not paying any mind to the "you must restart your PC for the changes to take effect" instructions was just utter nonsense.

This isn't a console game, performance is wholly within your power to change. Change your freaking settings. You're running at 1080p with Anti-aliasing set to high. Totally unnecessary unless you've got the performance to spare but in this game you obviously don't. That should have been the first setting changed and then you have tessellation and physx set to max? Come on man, this isn't even new stuff.

The fact that it took 80% of the entire quick look to make any meaningful changes, and even then it was going to the extreme opposite end of the spectrum was just disappointing.

I have this game, I hate this game I hate this game I hate this game.

My squad mates are more useless than jellyfish in a dogfight. I hate this game.

edit: wait, I have to come back. You have to tell your squaddies everything twice otherwise they will just carry on doing what they were doing (getting shot and asking for help).

Can I be the aliens? I would gladly shoot my squad mates in the head.

I was ready for this game to be mediocre but this looks really solid to me. They nailed the look of that era and the combat sequences looked solid. Definitely worth picking up on sale from what I saw.

Why does the bank vault have a regular door that exits directly into an alley? This seems like poor security.

I focus tested this game early this year (maybe last year? I forget) and it seems like it's a lot less interesting now that there is real voice acting instead of the hi-larious mash up of intern voices swapping out for the same character every other sentence.

You can't run Physx on a single card comfortably. Not on a 670 at least. You'd need a dedicated card. That is what was probably causing the framerate issues.

I don't think that's true at all

Okay. Thanks for sharing.

@riboflavin: Jeff said on tumblr later that apparently one specific graphics option being on seemed to be the cause of most of the problem.