Scala way to program bunch of if's

Question

I\'m starting out with scala, and trying to apply the functional way to it, but I came out with bunch of nested if\\else constructions which is hard to read, and I wonder is

Answer 1

var parens :List[Char] =  Nil
def matcher(chrs: List[Char]): Boolean = {
     if (chrs.isEmpty) {
        return parens.isEmpty
     }
     else {
         chrs.head match {
           case '(' =>  parens = '(' :: parens ;matcher(chrs.tail)
           case ')' =>  if (parens.isEmpty) return false 
                            else if (parens.apply(0) ==  '(') parens = parens.drop(1) 
                            else return false;  
                            matcher(chrs.tail);
           case _ => matcher(chrs.tail)
         }
     }
}

As you can see I didn't use count because count won't work on ())(