Brogue Agents: The Bureau: XCOM Declassified Footage
I'm really sorry about this. I'm about to ruin XCOM for you. Are you ready? To the tune of Sex Bomb, by Tom Jones:
XCOM, XCOM, you're my XCOM
And baby you can turn me on
There, now you can all share in the pain. I've had that in my head for the past half-hour, after watching VG247's sneakily snuck video of The Bureau: XCOM Declassified. What was once simply known as XCOM and was an FPS is now a third-person cover-based shooter that looks a whole lot more like an XCOM game of yore.
They really gutted it, but in autopsying it they've got to the heart of what XCOM was. You're now a leader of a three-man squad, fighting aliens in arenas. Aside from firing from cover, there's a tactical wheel that drops the game into super-slowmo and gives you access to a suite of powers and orders: it's here you make the decisions of where to move your squad members and what they should do when they get there, all in glorious real-time. It plays out like, well, an XCOM game: there's a lot of flanking and drawing fire, and you can name your squad with silly names.
Do you have eyes? Prove it by watching this video.
I'm actually a bit sad the other version is now locked up in a crate in Area 51. I appreciated the aesthetics and the tone, though some of the action seemed a bit stale. I wish it was a game they could have properly got to grips with, as the alien design really sung to me. I can still hear it when I close my eyes, and it sounds like Tom Jones. What fueled those changes? IGN have some answers.
Thanks, VeeGeeTwentyFourSeven. And IGN. And Tom Jones, I guess. Wipe Tom from your mind with some Bacon Pancakes.