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Comment by gspetr | Hacker News Reader

Funny how the article mentions Bureau as the point where it all came crashing down.

I actually quite liked the game. The problem I think is that there was a market mismatch with that title.

XCOM 2012 caught a lot of flak for it being too different from the 1994 original. Only brilliant execution made it possible for it to succeed.

An XCOM TPS (Which is what Bureau is, to a degree) is just too much of a stretch, most of XCOM's audience are not that open minded unfortunately.

I believe that ultimately the aforementioned market mismatch was too difficult to overcome, even without the publisher's interference and micromanagement.

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> XCOM 2012 caught a lot of flak for it being too different from the 1994 original. Only brilliant execution made it possible for it to succeed.

I believe XCOM 2012 got a lot of flak prior to its release because 2K at first announced an FPS game called "XCOM". After lots of delays and a pretty cool reception from gaming press and fans, there was an announcement from Firaxis that they were also making an XCOM game, this time a TBS. The TBS, when released, got almost universal praise, and sports a heft awards list.

I grew up with the original x-com and terror from the deep, and regularly play them to this day. I personally didn't mind the FPS/third person shooter bit, and I think it even felt a lot more "under invasion" and scary than the x-com remakes.

So I actually liked it, but because it was so poorly made technically I never bothered to Finnish it. Maybe I'll force my way through it one day, because of the story and atmosphere, but it's frankly one of the worst pieces of gameplay I've ever tried.

The latter part of the game is tedious but in the end I think it was worth it as I was pleasantly surprised by the ending. Did not see that one coming.

> So I actually liked it, but because it was so poorly made technically I never bothered to Finnish it. Maybe I'll force my way through it one day, because of the story and atmosphere, but it's frankly one of the worst pieces of gameplay I've ever tried.

I'm a bit late to the party here, but this is where "Let's Play" videos on YouTube are really great. You can get all the bits you want without any of the frustrating gameplay. The trick is just to find a YouTuber you can stand for the duration of the video (Nerd Cubed is one of my favourites, but he would be an acquired taste).

I also liked the Bureau, but it took a while to do so. The start was a little bit slow and hard, so I guess if you didn't forced yourself to keep on playing it might have made a far worse impression than it actually was.

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