The Bureau: XCOM Declassified

The Bureau is a 2013 tactical shooter set in 1962, during the first alien invasion and the founding of the organisation that becomes XCOM. You play as Special Agent William Carter, seen from behind his shoulder, and lead two other agents through missions in small-town America and secret bases.

Its squad control is called Battle Focus. Pressing a button slows time almost to a stop and opens a menu from which you order each agent to move, take cover, or use an ability. Agents level up and belong to classes, and agents who die in the field stay dead.

Its 1960s setting is well made, with the look of a period spy film, and Battle Focus is a sound idea: real-time shooting with a near-pause to give orders. Players who like ordering a squad around while still aiming their own gun will find something here.

Its development was long and troubled. It was first announced in 2010 as a first-person shooter and redesigned more than once, and the finished game reads as a compromise. Reviews were mixed, and fans of the series largely ignored it.

The Bureau shares X-COM's name, its aliens and its permanent deaths, and almost nothing else. There is no strategic layer of the X-COM kind and the fight is a shooter, not a turn-based game. Its interest is in Battle Focus, which is close to real time with pause seen from the shoulder of one soldier.