It's a fun game, but it is a very huge missed opportunity for something really unique and cool.
Graphics and Sound - 8
So... the good news it that the game looks great. It really sells the 1960's atmosphere. But it does suffer from a few choppy animations and questionable character "acting".
The voice overs on the whole are well done, but there is a lot of emotional disconnect in some of the more important characters because of the lack of strength in the story telling. The main character of William Carter sells it well, as he should, but you find that some of the supporting cast just doesn't deliver the goods. It's passable and never makes you think, "Wow! This is pretty terrible." But none of it is memorable.
The music is pretty awesome, though in certain parts... it really gets you pumped!
Story - 6
So, I am pretty disheartened about the story here, and it is entirely due to the fact that I was expecting a story that was similar to all the shadow-conspiracy videos the marketing department released over the past few months. I was expecting XFiles, but what I got was Independence Day.
While the story is alright in its own respect, I just can't help but find myself "not caring." I've saved the world from an alien invasion before. This game had an opportunity to do something different... and it simply did not.
Mostly, it is disappointing to see this game carry the XCOM name, and then break pretty much all of the existing lore that has already been established by its forebearers, namely Enemy Unknown. I will extrapolate on this more later on.
Gameplay - 7
The gameplay in the game is sufficient for the story. It works well, and as far as the combat is concerned... it is fun. Whatever reservations you have about the gameplay, like mine, will probably have more to do with the direction of the game - the point of gameplay.
Other parts of the game just kind of leave you scratching your head, however. There are some conversation bits in the game that are incredibly forced. You have a conversation wheel when talking to other people, but this isn't Mass Effect, folks. You aren't making choices. Your choices aren't being tallied for an overall alignment factor of being a good or bad character. You aren't changing the story based on your decisions. It's so basic, you really have to wonder why it was shoehorned into the game in the first place. It really holds no place in the grand scheme of things, because at the end of the day... this is just a simple Action Shooter. While I supposed it is convenient for future playthroughs... it feels like something that was thrown in for the purposes of making the game seem like it has more going on than it actually does.
In fact, a lot of the game feels like that. If you aren't in a mission blowing stuff away... you're probably doing something that doesn't really feel fleshed out, and in fact feels entirely arbitrary. Exploration is non-existent as each mission is more or less a linear path. There is no loot or economy that would give the game a sort of Bioshock vibe (which it desperately needs.) The agent recruitment is entirely underdesigned.
The game just feels like a bunch of really simply phone apps jumbled together in a tactical TPS. And... it just wreaks of missed opportunity. It's a good thing the shooting/tactical element is fun and rewarding... because that's literally all this game has going for it. The rest of it... isn't bad or broken... it's just way too basic to be interesting.
Value - 7
The game has good production value to it. It can be cool and exciting in certain areas, and you can tell they spent time making sure it runs well. But it isn't something I would say deserves a "Speical Edition" and it simply will never be GOTY material.
Tilt - 6
Ehhh... I don't hate this game. But I don't love it. Mostly... it's a disappointment for me... but not really because I didn't have huge expectations for it in the first place. However... it is nowhere near as bad as people make it out to be. It's a competent shooter and has some value to it. It just isn't what I would have preferred from an XCOM name.
Total - 6.8
I think what hurts this game the most is the story and it's approach to it. So let's take The Bureau into context.
1. The Bureau is supposed to function as the canonical story set-up to the XCOM Initiative in XCOM Enemy Unknown. But there are some problems here:
First, the XCOM Initiative in Enemy Unknown is basically treated as the first time Earth has officially had to deal with an Alien Incursion on any scale. Up to that point, the entire XCOM operation was merely a speculative combat scenario that may or may not happen, based on evidence gathered during investigations presumably made in the past. To put this another way, in XCOM Enemy Unknown, the XCOM initiative was purely an emergency protocol preparedness theory that was never put into action until the game started. It was a plan of action devised just in case something happened. It was a NATO initiative of which several major countries agreed to finance. And in the event that something were to happen... they would immediately initialize the project, which would utilize the entire world's resources, including the best technology, money, best combat theory, best personnel, etc.
It is assumed that when Enemy Unknown starts, the best technology available is entirely terrestrial, created purely off of our own understanding of sceientific, quantum mechanics. It is not until Enemy Unknown starts that Earth begins to understand things far greater than we could have ever concieved - like laser weapons, psi/molecular control, advanced propulsion, etc. That was the story point to the research and development trees. Also... all of this is presumed to be a modern/near future endeafor.
But The Bureau breaks all of that, instead insisting that we had access to all the same technology and awareness of alien existense and threat as far back as 1962 when the story of The Bureau begins. As a result... there is an immediate disconnect to an already established lore concerning XCOM. That's the biggest reason why I think most people are hating on this game. It isn't XCOM... because the story doesn't make any sense to the larger timeline.
2. The entire premise of the game was to give the player the feeling of XCOM's classic battlefield strategy element, but as an actual soldier on the field instead of a bodyless, omniscient commander that directs everything and everyone. That's fine. It's a cool thing to think about, and if done correctly, to play. But it doesn't make sense in context to the story.
Basically, the meat and potatoes of this thread is to state that The Bureau would have been a better game if it kept the story and gameplay in a better range of context.
Early on in The Bureau, the story stops being about a top-level, classified, shadow division of American military government that investigates activity of an unidentified paranormal or xeno origin, "The Bureau", and starts being more about stopping an alien invasion as a wartime shooter. Basically, instead of sticking with XFiles, it took a nose dive into Independence Day. Why is this bad?
Because Enemy Unknown is supposed to be Independence Day, while The Bureau was supposed to be XFiles.
3. The opportunities missed with this game from a lore perspective have been totally and completely wasted, especially given the incredibly deep reservior of atmosphere the setting of a 1960's cold war provides. So how could this have been better?
Basically, The Bureau should have been a true horror, xeno-conspiracy version of Ghostbusters. You have your main agent (you) William Carter who is demoted to a closet sector of the FBI because he can't handle the pressure of "real" field work, given that he experienced an emotional, nervous breakdown due to his family's demise. He's a perfect agent in all other respects, however, and someone higher up didn't want to retire him. So they gave him the most boring desk job ever - investigating the assumed "crazy-town" cases that are never expected to provide evidence of fowl-play.... Basically, William Carter is 1960's version of Mulder from the XFiles.
But because Carter is such an excellent agent, he starts doing proper field work into these cases. He starts experiencing some pretty wacky stuff that cannot be explained by any means other than to assume that there is some sort of extra-terrestrial agenda. He's sent to remote areas: farms, small towns in the middle of nowhere, and other places where alien activity could be taking place without fear of being "outed."
Anyway, over time, Carter starts to build real cases in argument of their existense and is in constant turmoil with his higher ups to produce actual results and evidence. His ability to do so afford his department more resources - this is where agent recruiting and level building comes in. Technology improvement should come into place by allowing the player to develop technologies we already have today. Maybe because of some alien communication devise that was recovered, we now have The Internet and Cell Phones - stuff like that.
To manage the idea of combat - it would have been completely and totally plausible that Carter was battling against humans who were under molecular/psi control. Only in rare "boss" encounters would Carter ever actually have to fight against real aliens. However, at not point in time should any content or part of the story extend itself to the idea of a full-scale invasion.... which is what The Bureau actually does. The whole thing should have been about uncovering evidence that aliens actually exist in the first place. You know - play off the conspiracy enterprise of the time: The Bureau should have been about searching for the explanation of once thought paranormal activity, but ends up being extra-terrestrial activity. It should have been about the revelation of a much greater threat that may one day come knocking on our door, giving us a perfect set up and explanation for XCOM Enemy Unknown.
Understand, this isn't a fully realised design document, but I think you can see where I am going with this. This is what I think The Bureau should have done, and it would have been a far better game for it. It would have provided a unique experience that could have carried the XCOM name, without pissing everyone off of it "not being XCOM."