The Bureau: XCOM Declassified is a game caught between two worlds, and it shows. From the very beginning, it presents a concept with undeniable intrigue: a tactical third-person shooter set during the height of Cold War paranoia, reimagining the origins of the XCOM organization amid a secret alien invasion in 1962. This backdrop is more than just aesthetic dressing—it becomes the game's strongest asset. The art direction leans heavily into period authenticity, with diners, government bunkers, small-town suburbs, and military installations painted in saturated mid-century tones. Radios hum with era-specific broadcasts, typewriters clack in dimly lit offices, and the early stages of America’s technological and political anxiety are palpable in every scene. This grounding in retro Americana infused with science fiction lends the game a unique identity that helps it stand apart visually, even when the mechanics struggle to match the same level of polish.
Where The Bureau starts to show cracks is in its gameplay. The core experience is a third-person shooter with tactical elements—essentially, a hybrid between Mass Effect's squad control and XCOM’s high-level strategy, but without the refinement of either. The game encourages you to pause combat using a radial menu called “Battle Focus,” from which you issue commands to your two AI-controlled teammates. These squadmates come in various classes—engineer, recon, support, and commando—each with its own skill tree and battlefield abilities. The idea is solid in theory: combine real-time shooting with tactical decision-making. In practice, though, the system is bogged down by AI inconsistencies, clunky interface design, and the constant need to micromanage underperforming allies. Instead of feeling like a capable field commander, you often feel like a babysitter, struggling to keep your squad alive rather than orchestrating complex strategies.
The combat encounters themselves are uneven. Early missions tease the potential of the system with some tense engagements and decent pacing. However, the repetitive enemy types, predictable patterns, and limited tactical variety eventually cause battles to blur together. There’s a loop that grows stale far too quickly: enter an area, set up cover, deploy a turret, issue a few commands, repeat. It doesn’t help that the enemy AI behaves erratically—sometimes overly aggressive, other times passively waiting for you to dispatch them one by one. As a result, firefights lack the kind of urgency or creativity that games like XCOM: Enemy Unknown or Mass Effect 2 handled so well. The lack of permanent death for agents (outside of optional difficulty settings) further removes any tension that might have made you care about your squadmates. They’re disposable in more ways than one—not just in gameplay, but narratively too.
The story, despite its strong setting, is a missed opportunity. You play as Agent William Carter, a brooding, emotionally wounded operative burdened with a mysterious past and a knack for yelling at subordinates. Unfortunately, Carter lacks the charisma or emotional complexity to carry the narrative, and most of the supporting cast is similarly underdeveloped. The dialogue system offers choices that occasionally affect the outcome of missions, but these moments feel superficial and rarely influence the overarching plot in meaningful ways. While there’s an attempt to weave in mystery and intrigue—complete with a twist involving consciousness transfer and alien manipulation—the game never fully earns its more ambitious narrative beats. The emotional stakes feel hollow, not because the story lacks big ideas, but because it fails to ground them in characters we care about.
That said, The Bureau does manage to deliver occasional moments of genuine atmosphere. The base hub—XCOM’s early command center—is dense with period detail, and wandering through its halls, eavesdropping on scientists and military personnel, can be surprisingly immersive. There's a sense of mounting dread as the alien threat escalates, and the game’s use of environmental storytelling does a decent job of reinforcing that feeling. Audio logs, newspaper clippings, and overheard conversations help flesh out the world in ways the main story fails to do. These quieter moments, oddly enough, often feel more engaging than the action sequences themselves.
Technically, the game runs smoothly on modern systems, though its visual fidelity has not aged particularly well. Character animations are stiff, facial expressions are wooden, and some textures are noticeably flat. The voice acting is serviceable, but rarely exceptional, and the soundtrack—while fitting for the tone—fails to leave much of a lasting impression. There are also a handful of bugs and glitches, though nothing game-breaking. It’s clear that this was a game with an ambitious scope but perhaps not the time, resources, or clarity of vision to fully realize its potential.
In the end, The Bureau: XCOM Declassified is a flawed but fascinating experiment. It tries to reimagine XCOM through the lens of a story-driven shooter while still holding onto its tactical roots, and in doing so, ends up pleasing few. For fans of the XCOM franchise, it lacks the strategic depth and emergent storytelling that defines the series. For shooter fans, the gunplay and squad mechanics feel sluggish and constrained. And for those drawn by the premise and setting, the thin character work and uneven pacing may prove disappointing. Yet for all its shortcomings, there is something admirable about its ambition. The Bureau doesn’t quite succeed in what it sets out to do, but it’s hard to ignore the charm in what it tries. It's the kind of game that some players might love in spite of itself—a misfire, yes, but an interesting one.
Rating: 7/10
