The Bureau: XCOM Declassified, free on Humble store

AKA, the XCOM spin-off with the fifties, black goo blob monsters, and tons of cigarette smoking.

Oh, and some aliens and shooting, too.

Jokes aside, I've got a soft spot for this game. It's no great all-time classic, but not borked trash-tier stuff either. Decent shooting, decent characters, decent twists, decent enemies, decent guns, decent powers...

Think you see both the theme and problem. Unless the 'fifties US fighting aliens' thing grabs you, the game can come of as kinda bland.

Still, you can't argue with free, and there's some interesting lore here between the shooting for the xcom fiends. Offer should be valid until tommorow, so nab the key while you can if interested.

Comments

[The Wind King]

I'm honestly of the opinion that this game would be better if it had a different title. Something like "The Roswell Bureau", nice and vague but still, somehow, invocative of alien invasions. The game being connected to the X-COM franchise sets some expectations that aren't answered, and their attempts to connect it are either patchwork at best, or terrible at worst.

It's not an X-COM game. It is however a good Mass Effect clone, with a hell of an atmosphere (sans some quirky graphical hiccups, the main character never blinking being one of them), and I don't regret buying it, but I don't go back to play it that much.

At least it's better than X-COM: Enforcer, the game that killed the series the first time around.

[Lord Of Dorkness]

4739475

Thought the idea of (spoiler) Earth having created the power vacuum the Ethearal's seized on kinda neat, actually. Not to mention the more obvious xcom connection, with remnants of The Bureau having gone on to form Exalt, with a possible but much vaguer Templar connection as well.

You know, that and the black mind-control goo.

So calling it not a xcom game I personally consider a stretch, but I won't deny it's quite the departure from the rest of the series, and that was probably not an insignificant part in the game's downfall in how it floundered to find an audience

It's not an X-COM game. It is however a good Mass Effect clone, with a hell of an atmosphere (sans some quirky graphical hiccups, the main character never blinking being one of them), and I don't regret buying it, but I don't go back to play it that much.

Think that's a hint about the big twist just what that package was and did to Carther, actually. Cool if that's the case, because I hadn't noticed it.