It has been a decade since I last played this game, even though I'm a die-hard XCOM fan with thousands and thousands of hours in almost all of the games in the franchise - even Enforcer. When The Bureau was released back then, it did not hit the right spot with me. The community was eager for a new XCOM game and should get one, but it was not what the majority wanted or expected. I still bought it at release, played it once, couldn't remember a thing of it a week later and moved on. All my attention switched the XCOM:EU - the XCOM game meeting expectations.

Fast forward, we now have XCOM:EU/EW, XCOM2 and - whyever - Chimera Squad and the XCOM Universe has grown significantly. And after all this time, I gave The Bureau another chance. I dont know what happened, be it age or knowledge from later games that gets actually hinted at in The Bureau (a lot), but this time it cought my attention.

While being slow paced compared to more recent games, it still did age well and plays perfectly fine on recent hardware and 3440x1440. If given the chance, the special flair of the very early start of XCOM as an organization is actually quite intriguing. The characters are written well and mostly act plausible, the combat system is pretty fluent for a tactical squad 3rd person shooter. This time, I had a lot of fun and still have the DLC campaign to explore.

If you played XCOM:EU/EW and XCOM2, you might even recognize many things, see connections that you did not see earlier and draw some new conclusions. The Bureau adds a lot to the backstory of both the invaders and XCOM.

Give it a shot! And maybe I'll find a soft spot for Chimera Squad in ten years from now and then can recommend that one as well... :)

This game is surprisingly good and yes I'm an Xcom fan since terrors from the deep