The Bureau: XCOM Declassified is an interesting hybrid between a traditional third-person shooter and a strategic game, with elements of role-playing game; but the impression is a game crippled by a troubled production. If you are in search of a different action videogame, maybe The Bureau is the game are you searching for.

Paradoxically, The Bureau: XCOM Declassified feels immediate and inclusive as a strategy game, relying more closely on your rapid-fire commands than the bursts of your rifle. The odd hybrid is far from being fully evolved, but it's well suited to further study.

Developer 2K Marin has put everything into creating the best tactical fights possible. Because of this the third person alien shooter is at its best when taking on enemies in combat. Unfortunately everything else is less refined, but despite this The Bureau is still a great addition to the series.

2K Marin has done their best with the almost impossible task to create a narrative rich, tactic driven TPS that justifies the name of "XCOM". The result is a decent and professional effort from a team that could have done better without being tied to that name.

The Bureau: XCOM Declassified feels confused and half-finished, a hollow but beautiful slog through XCOM’s early years.

Like the redacted CIA documents featured so heavily in the game’s marketing, The Bureau comes across as disjointed, baffling and inconsistent. But moments of clarity may well keep you interested in what lies beneath that faltering surface.

The Bureau: XCOM Declassified desperately wants to be liked, but by failing to satisfy in any direction, all it succeeds in being is a disappointment. It wants to be a strategy game without being a strategy game, it wants to be a shooter without being a shooter, and it wants to be XCOM without being XCOM. As such, it is nothing. It's an inconsequential waste of time that does nothing for anybody, and saying that makes me feel guilty because its cloying pleas to not be hated are worthy of pity.