Recent reviews by Steve

It's definitely worth $20. Impressive indie effort that feels a bit like Freelancer, or Star Citizen if Star Citizen had just gone ahead and used UE4 instead of whatever monstrosity they're using. It's rough around the edges still, but that's Early Access small-team work for you. The AI voices remind me of when my friends and I would sit around giving voices to voiceless lines on RPGs.

This is not for the Gen Z/Alpha raised on a steady diet of "AAAA" devs' overpriced and underwhelming cash cows on rails.

This game pushed Unreal 4 to its limits, and it shows in a few of the more intense areas, but for the most part it was a solid experience that felt more lifelike and challenging than SW: Outlaws. (You know, the "first" open-world SW title.) Fast-travel system makes 100%ing planets much less tedious than J:FO, and the additional content's worth chasing down. Good boss fights (and the return of one certain frog menace) and excellent lip syncing for English (made immersion much easier than Outlaws, which had terrible lip sync).

If Outlaws was too easy or too boring, get this on sale instead. It's hard to do Star Wars without lightsabers anyway. (Base title was never worth $70 and never will be, and the cosmetics for $20 extra are a joke when you can mod in your own cosmetics -- it's Unreal Engine, after all.)

The only must-have DLC storywise. Wild Card is a proper continuation of the adventures of Kay Vess, using the skills and wisdom she has gained from her travels to take on much more high-profile jobs, all while holding her friends above all else. Excellent writing throughout.

The start of this story is GARBAGE. I have no idea who this version of Kay Vess is. She's not the Kay Vess who grew through the main story and furthered her growth with Wild Card.

This version of Kay Vess is a jerkass sellout who learned nothing from her previous adventures -- a total reset of the character's personality. It's so offputting that I am in absolutely no rush to finish it. This does not grab me like Wild Card did. If it wasn't free with season pass, I'd have refunded it.

That's the best I can do without spoilers. If you wanna see it for yourself, feel free. But I wish I hadn't. I hate this version of Kay Vess. She sucks.

I mean, the game itself is decent -- if you can get it to run properly. EA's kruft app, however, does its level best to deny you that basic privilege on every startup.

Don't buy this until it's 90% off or better.

It's Overwatch 1, but with butts and Jeff.

It's a pretty run-of-the-mill survival title that inexplicably follows the grand strategy genre's predatory DLC delivery scams. I regret purchasing it, since purchasing a product like this supports and enables the kind of pricing that grossly inflates the cost of a given game.

"Just buy it on sale"? No. Don't even do that. This kind of manipulative profiteering needs to go the way of the dodo.

Don't play Beyond Earth without this expansion. BE is lacking in content without it. So, get it all bundled on sale.

Add the Vox Populi mod to fix the NPC behavior (this is the first game in the series that has the one-unit-per-tile ruleset and, out of the box, this game still thinks in stacks o' doom) and you have the best entry in the series so far. Crisp, detailed graphics, clean gameplay, classic Civ action (no Switch-A-Civ™ bull♥♥♥♥).

I will never, ever recommend VI and VII at full eye-watering price. This? I'll recommend Civ V at full price all day.

This content was only procured as part of the platinum bundle, which itself was 90% off. That is the only way I would ever recommend getting 2K's DLC for this game -- 90% off, as part of an all-inclusive bundle.

That's what it's worth.