Recent reviews by Matt

I am having a ton of fun with the expansion. The chosen are the alien ruler DLC done right -- or rather, done excellently. They present a tough challenge without being cheap or violating fundamental game rules. Reworking at the strategy layer has made far more paths viable. While you can still start with the guerilla tactics school, the resistance ring and laboratory are also both great starts even on legendary difficulty if you make the best use of their strengths. The new resistance faction units are fun to use, each with their own strengths, although the Templar faction unit has limited use on legendary difficulty due to its strengths relying on melee range. The expansion has made XCOM 2 an even better game, and I cannot get enough of it.

Morrowind is a phenomenal game, but it is hard to put a finger on why. It is not nostalgia -- I played Morrowind after Oblivion and Skyrim, so I had no nostalgia to look back on. Part of it is the feeling of being in a strange world, with unique buildings, creatures, and cultures; a world very different from ours. Part of it is the real sense of progression. Your character starts out often struggling to kill a mudcrab or a rat, but one hundred hours of gameplay later hovers effortlessly above the landscape, easily destroying any creature foolish enough to cross you. Part of it is the sheer variety of quests offered by the sheer variety of factions you can join, so there is always something interesting to do. But it is hard to put into words exactly why you will set out in this dated game with a clunky UI and not want to stop for hours.

The White March DLCs, particularly part 2, fix many of the problems with the original Pillars of Eternity release, making it into a great game that is a must buy for RPG lovers. The addition of the story mode allows people to enjoy the great storytelling and roleplaying without having to worry about combat mechanics, but additionally many issues with combat have been fixed so that combat is actually both challenging and fun. My second playthrough with the expansions was enjoyable all the way through, and I am already thinking about what I want to do for my third playthrough.

Clunky, unresponsive controls reminiscent of many 90's era Nintendo games. Does not hold a candle to Witcher 1 or 3.

This DLC is a complete trap the first time you play it and will ruin the first campaign you try with the DLC installed unless you read extensively ahead of time about the alien rulers, what triggers them to spawn, and how to fight them. If you are not carefully prepared when you encounter your first alien ruler, they will likely kill several soldiers and soon after make your campaign unwinnable.

Once you understand their mechanics and how to delay them from spawning, they are beatable, but can still ruin a campaign if they spawn at the wrong moment. That's right -- a single RNG roll can end your campaign. Even when you encounter them in a beatable situation, they just are not that fun to fight. There is only a single strategy that works against them, so every encounter with the alien rulers is exactly the same.

In short, this DLC takes an exceptional game and makes it much, much worse. Do not buy.

XCOM 2 is an exceptional game. Even after 100 hours, I am still giddy about playing it more.

The biggest criticism that might be levied against this game is that it is too similar to XCOM: Enemy Unknown. While the mechanics of the game will be familiar to players of the previous game in this series, XCOM 2 is a huge step forward. I have already enjoyed it more than its predecessor and will likely end up playing it much more.

Perhaps the biggest addition to the game is the procedurally generated maps. XCOM EU had a static set of maps, and after one playthrough the player almost certainly will start seeing the same maps again. This reduced the challenge and suspense of future playthroughs. In XCOM 2, each map is a new place with its own challenges. The map generation is surprisingly good, and the maps look professionally designed even though they are procedurally generated.

The other big thing that makes this game so engaging is the increased variety of mission types. Among the new mission types are timed missions, where your squad must evac before the timer runs out or they are captured by alien forces. This has caught some flack among lovers of the series because it cannot be approached with the excessively careful style that was successful in previous games in the series, but that's what I love about these missions. The squad composition, equipment, and choice of tactics must be adjusted for these missions to be successful, and spamming overwatch on every turn is no longer the opitmal strategy.

There is definitely some room for improvement. The late game is a bit too much of a cakewalk, even on the hardest difficulty level. This is not a new concept for the series -- even back to the pre-Firaxis XCOM games, the first few months were always the hardest -- but it is a bit too easy. Late game enemies do not feel particularly scary except for the first playthrough; they can be wiped out in one turn without much trouble. Also, the research and story seems to progress really fast in comparison to XCOM EU and especially the Enemy Within expansion. My last magnetic weapons (second tier weapons) had barely come out of engineering when my first plasma weapons (third tier weapons) were built. Neither of these issues prevent the game from being fun, however. Also, mods and expansions may alleviate these weaknesses in the future.

This game has things going for it -- an innovative combat system, the choice to kill or spare every monster you encounter, and a meta-game that has a suprising and interesting effect on the game.

The problem with the game is that it is BORING.

The "puzzles" are trivial and just tedious to get through. The boss fights start out fun, but quickly get boring and repetitive because it can take 10-20 rounds to win. There is very little variety to the boss fight mechanics, either spam fight or spam spare until you win. The first time you figure out how to spare a new monster is fun, but then each subsequent encounter is tedious.

With all of the glowing positive reviews, I was expecting this game to be one of those that I will want to stay up late or skip work to play. Just the opposite, however; I cannot bring myself to play this game more even if I have nothing else to do. Most of the time, it is just not fun.

I am giving this game a very cautious recommendation.

The storytelling and roleplaying elements are great. The companions that join your party are deep and interesting. I always wanted to know what was going to happen next, and the way I created and roleplayed my character had impact on my choices and results throughout the game. The reputation system actually gives an in-game incentive for you to roleplay your character consistently, rather than choose the option that is most beneficial for a given situation. I enjoyed those aspects of the game thoroughly.

Unfortunately, the combat is completely botched. The mechanical aspects of combat do not work very well -- I will click on a character and move them, only to find a few second later that the click to select did not actually register and I just moved my wizard right into the middle of a melee. I found myself frequently pausing the game, very carefully clicking several times on a charcters portrait to make sure they are selected, and then moving them. The box select tool is very inaccurate and useless except for selecting the entire party. The pathfinding is terrible, and party members often end up stuck on the corner of a tree, or wall, or behind another party member, rather than actually heading to their destination.

There are three categories of encounters in this game -- trivally easy, obnoxiously annoying, and brutally hard -- with very little in between. The difficulty also has very little to do with the monsters' level versus the party's level. Most encounters require very little effort to win, just attack one creature at a time and hack them down. An example of an obnoxiously annoying encounter is a group of ghost-type creatures that spam an area-of-effect paralyze spell and have high stats for avoiding attacks. The pose very little danger to the party, but most of the five minute battle will be spent watching your party members stand there paralyzed or whiffing attacks against them. Brutally hard encounters involve incredibly powerful enemy abilities that require either luck or cheesy play (often both) to win against. This includes groups of enemies with domination attacks, where multiple monsters in the group have the ability to take control of one of your party members, with no cast time and very little ability to resist. There are also a couple creatures that have area of affect damaging attacks that will wipe your party in one attack, with no ability to resist.

The truly unfortunate thing is that the difficulty level has very little effect on these encounters. The trivially easy encounters are still very easy even on the highest difficulty level, and the brutally hard encounters are still brutally hard even on the easiest difficulty level. This game could be great by making each encounter a cakewalk and just enjoying the story and roleplay, but that is not an option. You might as well play on the highest difficulty level and look up the way to cheese the several very brutal encounters in the game. (Generally, the petrification spell turns any encounter into a trivial one).

There were times when playing that I was really looking forward to rolling another character and playing through the story again from a different perspective, but now I do not think I will. Its worth experiencing the game for the first time, but the combat is just too frustrating to make another play through enticing. If you enjoy good storytelling and roleplay and are willing to deal with a botched combat system, this game is worth buying.

Fallout 4 is tons of fun and well worth the money.

You may have seen negative user reviews on Steam or metacritic making you skeptical of the game. I was skeptical myself at first. There are legitimate gripes with the game -- the graphics are not particularly amazing, there are many bugs as is typical with Bethesda games, and a lot of the more in depth RPG elements of the Fallout series have been removed. To be honest, I am still bummed that many of the deeper RPG elements are missing, but that does not stop the game from being fun and addicting. If you enjoyed Fallout 3 even though it lacked some of the in depth RPG elements of the earlier Fallouts or New Vegas, then you will enjoy Fallout 4.

There has been criticism that the map is smaller than previous Bethesda games, but I have not found that criticism to be legitimate. Perhaps by walking end to end along one particular axis it may be smaller, but the map is chock full of locations to explore. If you played Fallout 3, imagine if half the map was as dense as the downtown DC ruins -- that is what Fallout 4 is like.

There are tons of fun quests to enjoy, from assassination missions to helping an Shakespeare-loving super mutant escape from a tower chock full of hostile super mutants. The combat is smooth, challenging, and enjoyable. Though I did not get too much involved in settlement building, I did enjoy making a few fortresses out in the wasteland. I liked that only a little settlement building was actually required by the story, but the option for making a complex, aesthetically pleasing settlment was there as well. The gun, armor, and chem crafting is fun as well and adds a lot to the experience, since you will find yourself scrounging for items that would be invaluable in a post-apocalytpic world.

This is a great game. You will enjoy it. You may notice its flaws and hope that they will be addressed by the developer over time, but that will not stop you from having tons of fun playing it.

I feel like this game is getting a bad rap due to the expectations that it would be a revolutionary game like Alpha Centauri. This game is not as engrossing as Alpha Centauri and does not really scratch that Alpha Centauri itch for those who have been waiting for a sequel, but it is a plenty fun game in its own right.

The aliens provide an interesting mechanic; they are not just a hostile force to be wiped out. You can certainly kill all of the aliens for fun and profit (and science by choosing the right virtue), but it is also possible to remain neutral and even befriend the aliens. The unfortunate thing is that aliens become largely irrelevant after about 100 turns into the game. They do not get any stronger, so they become easy to destroy. This makes it useless to have the aliens as either friends or enemies.

The tech web is a great new take on the classic tech tree that has been in 4X-type games for decades. Each main technology can unlock a couple of other main technologies, but also unlocks a couple of leaf technologies. This opens up a wide variety of strategies, where at each tech juncture you can choose to go broad or go deep. I have had successful games with both approaches, so there is not just one viable path through the tech web -- though the first few technology choices tend to be no-brainers.

The virtue system will be pretty familar to those who are used to the Civ 5 culture system, but it also has a new take. Like the tech web, you can choose to go broad or go deep with the four different virtues (military, prosperity, knowledge, and industry). Unfortunately, the difficulty of raising health means that going deep into the prosperity tree is pretty key to winning on higher difficulty levels; I am not convinced that going broad or even focusing on another tree is even viable right now. Once you have gotten some key prosperity virtues, there are a bunch of different approaches each with their own value. With some tweaks to the game, this could be as interesting as the tech web.

The military system has caught a lot of flak from what I have read, but I actually really like it. Gone are the dozens of similar, slightly different units of which you will only build a few -- there is one unit type for each role, and as you gain "affinity points" through technology or quests you can upgrade your units to a stronger version of that type. When you upgrade a unit, you choose from one of two benefits and all of your existing units get immediately upgraded. The one thing I did miss from Alpha Centauri was the opportunity to create custom troops by combining together various, weapons, armors, and special abilities; the upgrade choices tend to be modest boosts that do not necessarily specialize the unit in any particular way.

The victory conditions are great and another thing I got tons of enjoyment out of in this title. Each affinity has its own victory condition, as well as a generic victory condition open to any affinity and of course the ever-present domination victory. The most interesting victory condition is the purity victory condition; you build a warp gate to bring in settlers from earth and have to find space for them to settle on your new planet. This may involve going to war, since at this point in the game much of the world tends to be already settled. It realy spices up the end game when you cannot just click a button to win. The supremacy victory condition has you send troops back to earth to establish 'peace' there, which makes you choose between weakining your military and winning the game faster. The harmony victory is unfortunately boring in comparison to the other two; just build the winning wonder structure, build some of the supporting buildings, and then wait. The only thing I did not like about the victory conditions is that they come much earlier than I would like. I am often only halfway done with the tech tree when I achieve victory. There are some techs I have never researched because I can always win before I have a chance to grab them.

Many have said that Beyond Earth lacks 'personality,' and that is too true. The leaders of the different factions have no real personality of their own, and the faction bonuses are small and rather bland. This contrasts with the very well defined characters of Alpha Centauri, and the powerful and varied faction bonuses. Wonders in Beyond Earth are almost all similarly bland, with one late game wonder seriously giving 4 culture per turn. That's it -- 4 culture. There is a regular building that gives 4 culture. The game remains fun nonetheless. I am hopeful that balance patches and expansions will make the factions and wonders more interesting, but unfortunately I do not think leader personalities will ever be patched in.

All in all, Beyond Earth is well worth playing. It just is not a replacement for Alpha Centauri.