Brogue Agents: The Bureau: XCOM Declassified Footage

News by Craig Pearson Contributor

Published on May 13, 2013

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.