Recent reviews by rogan

Fun, funny and rule of cool but has some MAJOR drawbacks.

VERY frustrating camera wrestling. I've never played a game with a worse camera. It constantly rips the view from what you're trying to look at or fight and makes you look at a random wall instead. It is the main boss of the game.
Also needed third-party mods to run higher than 24 fps for me.

Cute and nice.

Chaotic with friends but in a good way.

They readded modding integration.

I still don't like the launcher having ads but at least that's only a temporary pain.

The SPARK units seem kind of a waste of time and resources. They aren't really interesting or useful enough to even build, let alone buy on steam imo.

The mission is interesting, but pops up far too early in the campaign with no warning that it will be full of 3 armour enemies and a 7 armour + 100 hp sectopod.

Unless left alone for nearly half the campaign, it will softlock your campaign on ironman as there is no evac and is not remotely possible when it turns up without extreme amounts of save scumming.

Good, chill game. Fun with or without friends.

Can be ruined slightly if your friends have anger issues and compulsively need everything to be a certain way.

An enormous improvement over the first Portal in every dimension. It's longer, has a more engaging story, looks a lot better and has much more interesting and varied spaces, which definitely helps it avoid becoming monotonous like the original could.

In both modes, the story's fun and the later (particularly co-op) puzzles can confuse you for a little bit, but aren't too hard to be frustrating.

There's quite a bit of good content here to keep you entertained for a while in both single player and 2-player co-op.

Runs well and looks pretty good too.

The new enemy types are terrific and add more variety to encounters, while not feeling too strong or weak compared to the original roster. Lost swarms can be a lot of fun too- I just wish the ultrasonic beacon (lost lure) worked a little better.

The chosen make for a challenging break from what can be monotonous mission-running. They add a bit more pressure to you than the easily-countered avatar project clock, too. Getting their guns as loot is neat too.

The heroes are generally a lot of fun to use. The templars can go crazy with huge melees and wacky psi attacks and skirmishers are gods of war with the potential to output a looot of attacks in a turn. Reapers are a little more underwhelming- with weak damage output and a heavy focus on concealed scouting.

(Kinda?) spoilers- story aspect of expac felt like a letdown.
The story of the expansion felt very weak and inconsequential to the main story.

There's little explanation to how the factions came about and what they actually do outside of working with xcom. Their personalities can be a bit 2-dimensional too- the reapers hate the skirmishers just because the skirmishers used to be advent?? Never mind that they defected and now fight advent?

I wish the chosen storyline went somewhere after their demise. It felt like a real letdown that the only consequence to taking them out is that they stop harrassing you. There's little reaction from the elders and no impact on story.

Overall though, thoroughly enjoyed the expac and the variety it adds to the playthrough, despite weak story.

I think age of empires 2 is better, but this title still definitely holds up.

Even after all the years, it's still a game I'm happy to go back to and play every now and then.
The forced homecity progression and fairly weak ai can be drawbacks, but can be counteracted by playing local multiplayer and just editing the homecity files on your pc.

I don't particularly like the online multiplayer service, but never ventured too far into it so take my opinion on that with a grain of salt.

If I want to have a good time shooting waves of mindless enemies I'll play killing floor instead.

I mean, it can be fun with friends, but I find myself bored rather quickly on this game.

Also it's kind of insulting when the game is so in-your-face with the completely obscene number of DLCs it wants you to buy.

Infinitely stunning your coop partner with fire SMGs is pretty fun.
Would recommend.