Grey Goo

I remember wanting to play this game back when it released, but didn't have a good enough computer at the time. Came back recently having remembered it and bought it on sale, despite the "Mixed" review score, which I was slightly nonplussed by, given the pedigree of the developers (Petroglyph is a studio made up largely of the original developers of Command and Conquer) and apparent high production values. Now, having played the campaign to completion, my feelings are pretty mixed as well. The game's main strength is its most distinctive selling point, its three distinct races. The story's based around a three-way clash first-contact type scenario on an alien planet. All three races use the same resource, catalyst, that accumulates in pools around the map, but otherwise play very differently. The first and most basic are the Beta, a race of four-armed aliens with South African accents who have settled on the story's planet and are refugees from some nameless cosmic horror. Gameplay-wise, they're probably the most simple faction. Their mechanics are pretty straightforward, with the gimmicks being limited to having to attach their primary structures to hubs, and using units garrisoned into the main pillars of their defensive walls for base defence. Their units are a roster of soldiers, mechs and aircraft that function pretty straightforwardly, with their most exotic option being their super unit, the Hand of Ruk, which is a kind of hovering fortress that can manufacture units by itself, features six garrison slots for your defensive units, and has a massive artillery cannon with huge damage, blast radius and maximum range, but a fairly long minimum range as well. They're the first faction you play in the campaign and probably the most beginner-friendly too. Eventually it turns out that the enemies the Beta are fighting aren't the cosmic horror they've been running from, but instead an different strange alien race called "humans." Grey Goo's vision of humanity's future is one in which humanity has united and built a utopian and technologically advenced society, though it seems like this has come at the cost of everyone speaking with a British accent now. Unlike the Beta, who can build anywhere they have vision, all human structures have to be connected by a series of power conduits to the main headquarters building to function. This essentially means that the humans have one large base, though the inability to expand is made up for by harvesters gathering a consistent amount of resources irrespective of the distance of catalyst deposits from refineries, a structure that lets you teleport ground units anywhere you have vision, and strong base defences, with teleporting turrets and walls that let your units move and shoot through them freely while blocking the enemy. All their units are drones, save for their epic unit, the Alpha, a mech with a human pilot which fires off a shockwave that damages enemy units once it has taken a certain amount of damage and fires a highly damaging laser in a straight line along the ground. The final faction is the Goo that gives the game its odd name, being a swarm of self-replicating nanobots that seek only to consume, grow and expand. Though their unit voices are just a series of beeps and bloops, meaning they're the one faction that don't speak with a funny accent, they make up for this by being the most fun and interesting faction by far. The goo don't build bases, nor do they gather resources the same way. Unlike humans and Beta which gather resources into a global total in a manner similar to most other RTS games, you instead park huge globs of goo called Mothers on top of catalyst vents, which gradually causes them to grow in size and health. You can then spend the Mother Goo's health to spawn off either a new mother goo, or a small or large Protean, which is a mass of formless goo that can be morphed into a group of specialised units. It's a very different and very fun way to play, with you gradually devouring resources, growing in size and numbers and overrunning the map. The goo's traditional units are again quite basic, but the use of Mother Goos and Proteans adds a whole new dimension to the game - formless goo can be used as an offensive force in its own right, if it comes into contact with enemy units or structures it'll do damage, and if it does enough it'll melt the enemy units down and absorb them. Formless goo can travel unrestricted up and down cliffs and over mountains, allowing you to bypass enemy defenses and morph into a powerful force behind enemy lines. Their most powerful unit is a kind of formless goo as well, called the Purger, which you create by transforming a max size mother goo and then feeding more Mothers and Proteans to it. All of this mobility and ability to act in unexpected ways makes up for the Goo's lack of air units or static defense. With these three distinct factions, the game should have had everything it needed to be a compelling RTS, especially when you take into account that the game looks pretty damn good and has an incredible soundtrack. However, it also has a lot holding it back. The game has interesting lore and really well-made CG cutscenes, but its story kind of falls flat in the end. It doesn't help that the campaign is pretty short with only a few missions for each faction, with a narrative that doesn't really connect well. They subsequently released a short DLC campaign that plugs up some of the narrative holes but even with everything in the final product the story doesn't have a satisfying resolution, and probably never will because this game didn't sell well. The game actually added a 4th faction, the Shroud, who were probably meant to be game's final big bad challenge that would have tied everything together, but bafflingly they're totally restricted to Skirmish and multiplayer and don't feature in the game's singleplayer campaign content at all. It also doesn't help that the campaign ends up not being very satisfying on a gameplay level either. The short length of each faction's campaign works against it, given the distinctive nature of each faction. Each one gets a softball first mission to ease the player into the fundamental basics of each faction, which is perfectly fine, but the difficulty often ratchets up straight after, while I was still grappling with the faction mechanics and their unit roster. It also doesn't help that there's an overabundance of annoying mission gimmicks, typically time limits or needing to keep some specific unit or structure safe. Often the difficulty feels annoyingly random, with the AI feeling inconsistent in its level of aggression. I had to restart missions many times because the AI jumped me or a mission-crucial objective before I had the chance to build up, only for them to be passive on the next retry. Eventually enough little annoyances built up that the game's fundamental flaws really stand out. When you're getting jumped on early, or having to defend multiple points on the map, it becomes very easy to notice how much the game's sluggish pace works against it, whether it's the slow movement speed of most units, how long they take to build, how annoying and fiddly building human and Beta bases can be, how restrictively designed most maps are or how long it takes for you to get a decent economy going without resource stalling. Part of the reason why the Goo feels the most fun is because they struggle with these issues the least. Having battled with all that in the campaign it made me not even want to try skirmish. Ultimately I understand the game's rating better now. The uniqueness of its factions, especially goo, can't really overcome the fundamental flaws in the game's design. I still think it might be worth picking it up heavily discounted like I did for the novelty of playing Goo if nothing else, but definitely not at full price.

"Grey Goo" пытается выглядеть как возвращение к старой школе RTS. Строите базу, собираете ресурсы, громите врага и т.д. И поначалу это даже цепляет. Кажется, что перед вами добротная стратегия с самобытными расами, у каждой из которых есть свои сильные и слабые стороны. Но уже через пару миссий иллюзия рассыпается. Вместо тактической глубины получаете однокнопочный геймплей и сомнительный баланс. Разнообразие юнитов в игре есть, но оно абсолютно бессмысленно. Никакой глубины в их применении нет, а сражения сводятся к одному сценарию, накопить силы и пойти в лобовую атаку. Никакой необходимости в тактических или масштабных решениях. Ни хитрых манёвров, ни обходов, ни грамотной расстановки сил. В итоге игра ощущается не как стратегия, а как жалкое подобие таковой. При этом баланс откровенно нарушен. Одни юниты явно сильнее других, и это делает выбор стороны почти формальностью. Экономика здесь оставляет желать лучшего. Система ресурсов примитивна, а исследований нет вообще. Вы не чувствуете прогресса, не открываете новые возможности. Просто собираешь ресурс и покупаешь юнитов. Из‑за этого игра быстро становится однообразной. Нет ощущения, что вы развиваетесь или находите новые пути к победе. Кампания разочаровывает своей короткой продолжительностью и слабой проработкой боёв. Стычки выглядят жиденькими, а миссии не дают никакого вызова. Динамика в игре невероятно тягомотная. Долгие периоды накопления ресурсов сменяются быстрыми, но неинтересными стычками, где исход решает не тактика, а количество юнитов. Интерфейс откровенно вырвиглазный. Элементы расположены неудачно, а раскладка строительства только усложняет и без того не самый приятный опыт. Переизбыток юнитов и отсутствие понятной структуры меню делают управление громоздким и неудобным. Оптимизация у "Grey Goo" крайне убогая. Игра подтормаживает, а вылеты случаются регулярно. Вместо того чтобы сосредоточиться на стратегии, вы постоянно отвлекаетесь на технические проблемы. ИИ при этом ведёт себя откровенно глупо. Никакой угрозы, никакой хитрости, он будто специально делает ошибки, чтобы ты мог его победить. В общем, "Grey Goo" это слабый представитель RTS, которая пытается играть на ностальгии по классическим стратегиям, но делает это крайне аляповато. Одногранный геймплей, нарушенный баланс, убогая экономика, слабая кампания и технические проблемы перечёркивают все плюсы. Если вы ищете стратегию с настоящей тактической глубиной и продуманной прогрессией (вроде классических "Command & Conquer" или более современных проектов с вариативными подходами к бою), лучше пройдите мимо. Игра лучше раскрывается в сетевом формате за счёт трёх совершенно разных рас. Но онлайн, ожидаемо, мёртв.

In an era where RTS is basically dead, Grey Goo was a valiant effort to revitalize the genre. It had it's issues at launch and the multiplayer scene never really took off, but the campaign is what really shines. It's not terribly long, 10 or so hours, but it manages to tell a compelling, original story with several unforgettable characters in that short time. Every year or two I play through the whole thing from start to finish like I'd rewatch a favorite movie. I would say it's worth buying for the campaign alone, especially if you're a fan of old school RTS games.

Grey Goo does not deserve the mixed reactions it has now on steam, absolutely not. If you like games on steam like C&C3 Tiberium Wars, Halo Wars, or the first Dawn of War games (the linear story ones), then this should feel like that, if you want more of that and feel like there isn't much on the market for a retro RTS fix then this is a great option. This isn't aiming to be the next Starcraft 2 killer, if you're looking for that then you're in the wrong place, like if you'd go negatively review any of the retro FPS games out now saying how they're uninspired and generic and nothing we haven't seen before and won't be the next CSGO or PUBG or COD killers. Also overall length can easily be over 10 hours, for me as a slow turtler it took 20 to beat the main campaign. This is a nice polished AA title with an engaging long enough singleplayer story where you get to play multiple unique factions with neat mechanics and a fun story to keep you going. You'll probably buy this cheap on sale anyway and still enjoy it, just like you'd buy some other years old AA shooter that you'd enjoy for reminding you of some other shooters while still feeling solid enough (recently played Singularity after wanting more HL2 style games like Prey 2006 or G String, and that was exactly what I wanted & got and many players seem to agree, they went in with expectations of a solid shooter in that vein). So just don't come in here expecting the next highly competitive obscenely focus tested and meticulously balanced 4X title, and just treat it like a classic C&C RTS, and you should be fine. This is why we can't get a retro RTS revival like we have gotten with CRPGs & FPS titles in the past years, I've got plenty enough retro FPS games coming out of the seams that are not reinventing the formula (Wrath, Ion Fury, Amid Evil, Dusk, Overload, Ultrakill, Prodeus, G String) and they're fine and everyone understands what they are and are not whining about them not trying to be the next CSGO or COD killer. So where the F**k are the RTS players who understand what this is and treat it that way? They clearly exist because C&C3 & Remastered and Halo Wars are pretty highly rated here on steam. I found myself surprisingly engaged by the story, it's well told, flows nicely and builds up in a rewarding fashion. When the credits rolled I was looking forward to the DLC, I guess I should have read the DLC store page to realize it wouldn't follow the events immediately after the main campaign (got my hopes up for seeing that a 4th faction does exist in skirmish & multiplayer), but still, doesn't change the fact that I got almost 20 hours worth of a fun ride with some neat missions where I played around in. Shame that with this kind of reception, we clearly won't be getting any kind of sequel. One big criticism I have is that one single time, in I think the third human mission, the game paused (luckily after I had just saved) with a screen saying it was trying to reconnect to the servers, and then booted me to the main menu saying it lost the connection. In a Singleplayer mission. That is unacceptable and tells me that at some point this game is going to be dead with no servers to connect. Even in your offline singleplayer! And maybe the difficulty was a bit hard (initially, the Beta story) for me, but I'm an amateur turtling enjoyer of RTS games and many of the timepressured missions had me stressed out. Also no modding support, that's a shame. VAC seems useless or even counterproductive to have since the main draw these days is the singleplayer. But other than that, this game does a great job of being a fun ride with a well told story, mission variety mostly comes from getting in 5 missions per faction a solid progression of tech unlocks and then straight to the next faction and then the next telling the story still in 95% linearly clear fashion, music is neat, cutscenes are well done, it's pretty, runs okay, works pretty well, no game breaking stuff (some minor issues like never starting in fullscreen but Alt+Enter fixes that, and resolution options are a bit clunky, and saving and loading can take an oddly long period, but again, I compare this to my experience with Singularity, people are fine with jank in certain contextes, so be prepared for that). Listen to a critic like [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4ELug2mPc0]Total Biscuit[/url] rather than players who seem to be the wrong target audience anyway.

Boy howdy is this a game of odd priorities. Beautiful cutscenes. Reminds me of some of the blizzard cinematics. Gameplay.... 1. There is a lot of hurry up and wait. You start every match needing to build a refinery which takes like 20 seconds to build. so you que up the refinery and then stare at it while it gets built. The way the tech tree works you have to build that in order to unlock anything. Next up you can either A) build a factory with which takes 15 seconds to build or B) build another refinery this one will take longer to build however because you don't have the income to keep up with it. from here you have to build a tech factory to unlock something else and if you didn't build that second refinery then you don't have the income to support the tech factory and unit production so if you are building both they will take much longer. In the first five min of the game you make about 3 clicks. 2. The games campaign AI is so weird/bad. I have played a few scenarios where I had to turn down the difficulty because the ai was attacking me before I even had a refinery finished. Another scenario where I had to protect civilians the AI didn't attack me or the civilians. I spent the entire game building up a force ready to send them where they needed to defend the civilians and they just sat in base cause the civilians where never attacked. 3. Unit match up is frustrating. You build a force to breech an enemies fortified wall. First wave of tanks and artillery get wiped out. Cool. I must need siege units. Build up a force of siege units they get wiped out. Okay, maybe I can bomb an opening (as aircraft require hangers it is takes several new buildings to get 4+ up and running) send those over. They fire two shots at the wall do about 2% damage total and then need to come back and land. The solution: A metric ton of the tier one cheap units to overwhelm the wall. 4. The epic units are all incredibly frustrating. Human unit as an example: giant robot that attacks by shooting a giant beam at its feet and then drawing a line to/through the enemy kind of neat. Except that is all it does 10-15 min of build time and that's its and, more importantly, the unit always attacks at its max range. The beam does more damage the more of a line it draws though an enemy, the unit defaults to max range attack. This means if you order your giant robot to attack a group of enemies or a building it will move up just enough to attack something with the very tip of its beam doing little to no damage to the target. You need to order the robot to walk up the correct distance then attack which is a frustrating micro guessing game. 5. Economy management is frustrating and punishing. You will start off with 1-2 wells near you that you can use for your economy. As with other games it plays around a maximum resource/resource income and the ability to go negative which slows down or pauses your work. Here is the frustrating thing. If you get to max supply your harvesters don't stop harvesting. They keep collecting resources that effectively evaporates. You are busy managing an attack and only to realize that your income is about to dry up and you only have enough to build an extra unit. Some of the factions can expand refineries easy. Others have a really hard time. 6. Finally what makes each faction different from the other is not unit or tech types but rather the unique aggravations that each one brings . The Goo just run away. Every match becomes a game of hide and seek to find the last random Goo somewhere on the map. The beta have a very frustrating build order that requires the building of random and sometimes useless structures just to get to build what you actually want. Humans require you to build power lines from your base to build structures which makes expanding to refineries a pain in the ass and can enable you to box your self in. Never got to the shroud maybe they are cool but I doubt it. Every faction has the same unit type and none feel better/weaker then the others. The only unique type is the hero units or the goo buildings. If its on sale for 10 bucks give it a go.

This game would deserve a neutral rating. The last update was in 2016. I’m writing this review in 2026. It’s a functional game that built its existence on combining retro gameplay from the CRT monitor era at 800×600 resolution with the modern era, where, at the expense of gameplay, you create an environment filled with every possible and impossible effect so that even the top graphics hardware of the time can barely handle it. The result is a functional (everything works, it never crashed once) but uninteresting game, where you don’t have a strategic view; even the maximum zoom-out doesn’t show your entire base, and the zoom-in is so close that if it weren’t a top-down view, you’d be looking straight into the units’ anal cavities. Three uninteresting to outright repulsive factions, a cluttered, overwhelming environment — a jungle. I gave this game many chances, and always ended up at the same point. Who plays on a 14" monitor today? Not me. Today, 27" and larger monitors are common, with QHD resolution and higher. If you have a standard desk, you’re looking at the monitor from a distance of 60 to 80 cm. Instead of implementing a strategic zoom so you could view the entire map — something that has been standard for many years — you’re staring at something like the face of a cat that came to rub against your nose. You try playing in windowed mode, but you’re still constantly zooming, and it just doesn’t work. I tried a laptop. A 15.6" screen. Here’s the other extreme. You have an Intel Core 5 Ultra processor with integrated Arc graphics versus a 10-year-old game. You have to turn off almost all effects to get above 30 FPS. You have a base, nothing is happening, just jungle — yet the GPU runs at 2200 MHz and nearly 100%. And it all looks blurry. I tried the campaign several times. Why force yourself to play a game that its own creators abandoned after a year, that almost nobody plays in 2026, with ugly environments and factions, when there are both old and new RTS games — many of them free — that are alive, clear, undemanding, and fun? Why spend time on the dead Grey Goo, which preserves gameplay built for the 800×600 past, when there are things like cncnet.org with C&C and Red Alert (or the original bundle of all C&C, Command & Conquer The Ultimate Collection)? When there’s Supreme Commander? When there’s Zero-K, Beyond All Reason, and many other truly high-quality RTS games that weren’t made just as technological demos to show how many graphical effects can be used at the expense of gameplay? Grey Goo could have been a good game. But that strategic zoom that Supreme Commander has had for 20 years — Grey Goo instead used 30-year-old limitations and layered ultra-demanding, unnecessary graphical effects on top, giving the impression that 90% of the time was spent only on making the environment more complex and more demanding. The result is a boring, blurry-looking, unremarkable, dead RTS game with a dull story, created in the same era as Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation — a game whose developers still support it, and which, if nothing else, was used as a benchmark in its time. So I don’t end on a negative note: The most satisfying feeling Grey Goo can give you — and it truly is an almost uplifting feeling — is confirming the uninstall and watching even the last remnants of this “gem” disappear from your system. That feeling of cleansing is priceless.

I saw someone on Discord put it perfectly: You have to play Grey Goo for more than 10 hours to realize it's actually very good. Until then, you think it's ♥♥♥♥. I bought Grey Goo on day one back when it came out, and my first impressions weren't amazing. Then the Shroud update came, and I actually enjoyed the new faction a lot, but not enough to keep playing. Fast forward to now, when I was browsing through my Steam library looking for an RTS to play and decided to reinstall Grey Goo. And...I dunno man, something clicked this time. Maybe it was trying the new units that changed up the similarities between the Humans and Beta. Maybe it was really digging into the Shroud and realizing what a really ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ cool faction it was. Maybe it was returning to the simple pleasure of launching death missiles with the Hand of Ruk, or massing Howlers and watching their upgraded electrical attack shred through enemies, or drowning a ton of massed infantry in endless Goo. Grey Goo is a legitimately good game, and I can't recommend it enough. The campaign is alright, but multiplayer and skirmish are great fun. Don't mistake the lack of unit abilities or relatively small upgrade tree for simplicity: there is nothing extra in Grey Goo, and you'll constantly find new unit configurations that surprise you. It might not scratch the itch for those of you looking to get your APM to sky-high levels, but as a slower, more laid-back RTS it's a ton of fun. Plus, a killer score from Frank Klepacki.

[h1]“You and I interpret this 'fun' very differently.” [i]~Zeratul[/i][/h1] Ah, the [b]Westwood Studios[/b]... Back in the days? The guys were, like, kings of the world. There was nothing they were unable to do. Everything they've touched used to turn into gold. From Point-and-Click adventures ([b]The Legend of Kyrandia[/b] and [b]Blade Runner[/b]) to dungeon crawlers ([b]Eye of Beholder[/b] and [b]Lands of Lore: Throne of Chaos[/b]), open world [b]RPGs[/b] ([b]Lands of Lore: Guardians of Destiny[/b] and [b]Lands of Lore III[/b]), platformers ([b]Lion King[/b]) and even [b]Diablo[/b] variants ([b]NOX[/b]). Most importantly, though, the guys ended up forming what we know as the Real-Time Strategy genre nowadays. Sure, Real-Time Strategies existed even before them, but it was their [b]Dune II[/b] that gave the genre its iconic shape. And when [b]Command & Conquer[/b] arrived with all of it fast pace, [b]FMV[/b] and multiplayer glory? Boy, oh, boy... Unfortunately to us all, [b]Electronic Arts[/b] happened and... yeah, yeah, we all know that [b]EA[/b] is, like, source of all evil. Like [b]The Blob[/b] from [b]Irvin Yeaworth[/b]'s movie, it consumes everything that is good and turns it into some ugly mess which is always hungry for more. It's kinda awesome just how many great things they've killed. Who would have thought that there'll be a company evil enough to destroy [b]Ultima[/b], [b]Populous[/b] and [b]Command & Conquer[/b] at the same time? Today, though, I won't be talking about that evil mass of pure ugliness and greed. Today I will be talking about those who tried to escape. About those daring ex-[b]Westwood[/b] individuals who tried to save what was still sacred and form a new company. A company called [b]Petroglyph Games[/b]. [b]Joseph Bostic[/b] ([b]Dune II[/b] designer and coder), [b]Michael Legg[/b] (designer and coder of [b]The Legend of Kyrandia[/b]) and [b]Steve Tall[/b] (the lead programmer of [b]Command & Conquer[/b]) decided that there's still enough power in them to start from scratch. Some others followed their lead. One of which was legendary composer [b]Frank Klepacki[/b] who created all of those iconic songs from [b]Westwood[/b]'s titles. And you know what? [b]Petroglyph[/b]'s first game, [b]Star Wars: Empire at War[/b], was actually pretty cool. Unfortunately, soon after it, they started to go down the drain and pretty soon ended up making crappy mobile games and [b]f2p[/b] nonsense. And that's where [b]Grey Goo[/b] came in. In a way, it was [b]Petroglyph[/b]'s last hope. Last hope to return to the big game. You can clearly see that it was all or nothing for them here. They've ordered some expensive cutscenes from [b]Axis Animation[/b] (the guys who worked on cutscenes for games like [b]HALO 5[/b] and [b]TV[/b] shows like [b]Doctor Who[/b]), they've put as much money in it as they were able to afford and so on. It was a project with a single goal – to make people see [b]Petroglyph[/b] as the guys who made [b]Empire at War[/b] (and before that - [b]Command & Conquer[/b]), not the guys who created [b]Guardians of Graxia[/b] and [b]Coin a Phrase[/b]. So... did they succeed? Were they able to redeem themselves? Well, let's just say that soon after [b]Grey Goo[/b] release, they've returned to [b]f2p[/b] and copy-pasted stuff. And you can easily see why. The problems with [b]Grey Goo[/b] begin right in the design documents. Because, even though back in nineties, it was [b]BLIZZARD[/b] who used to copy their stuff (while also shamelessly stealing from [b]Games Workshop[/b]), this time? It was [b]Petroglyph[/b] who copied [b]StarCraft[/b]. And yes, I'm well aware of how one thing can influence another, but honestly, what we have here? It's a [b]StarCraft[/b] rip-off. Think 'bout it. There are three factions here. Humans, some sort of strong alien humanoids and so-called [b]Goo[/b] that spawns the new units from what's called [b]Mother Goo[/b]. Everybody fight each other, [b]Zerg[/b] wins. I mean, [b]Goo[/b]. Yea-a-ah... it's a f*cking [b]StarCraft[/b]. No matter how you look at it, the source material is painfully obvious and looking at some godlike design we used to have in [b]Westwood[/b] times? The only thing I want to ask here – where all the talent went to? Are those even the same people? Well, to be honest, no. Not entirely. [b]Joseph Bostic[/b] is still here, but the lead designer here is [b]Andrew Zoboki[/b], whose biggest work was [b]Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine[/b], in which he dealt with [b]Games Workshop[/b]'s design, while the story was done by [b]Andrew S. Walsh[/b], who's best known for his work on [b]X³: Reunion[/b]. So... yeah. Not the best choices. Unfortunately, I must say the same thing about the gameplay. First of all – this game is short. Like... [i]really[/i] short. Seriously, it comes with only [b]15[/b] missions. Like... what the heck? [b]Command & Conquer[/b] had something like that for every side of the conflict. And it was back in [b]1995[/b]. Now [b]Grey Goo[/b]? It offers us only five missions for each side and calls it a day. Like... seriously, guys? [i]Seriously?[/i] And guess just how many missions in that shiny new [b]DLC[/b] you can buy? Three. Three painfully dumb missions. Good grief... It's not like you'll want more, though. Because this game? It's laughably unbalanced. Like seriously, what were they even thinking? There's a single OP faction here (yes, it's [b]Goo[/b]), while the others just suck dirt. Even when controlled by people who know their stuff. And it's really, [i]really[/i] sad because clearly, the main thing this time is multiplayer. Heck, they even added [b]VAC[/b] to it. Except... with no balance at all, there's literally no reason for that. And the single player? Not only it's short, it's also painfully slow and limited. I'm not kidding, even though [b]C&C[/b] had speed settings since the very first game, in [b]Grey Goo[/b]? You're supposed to take things slowly. Every bloody unit here is as slow as [b]Mammoth Tank[/b] on slowest settings. And as a person who usually plays [b]C&C[/b] on highest speed? I found this unbearable. Sure, there's always a speedhack to save the day, but still, it's hardly an excuse. Also, don't forget to disable it before trying the multiplayer. Otherwise you'll get one of them [b]VAC[/b] bans. And we don't want that, aren't we? Node-based base building (for everybody except [b]Goo[/b], because f*ck 'em!) may look promising at the beginning, but in reality it is not. The actual missions aren't nearly as interesting as you may hope (not a single interesting goal or condition here). The [b]AI[/b] is dumb. And so on. Even [b]Frank Klepacki[/b]'s score for this game feels uninspired. As the result, even though the final cutscene in this game suggests that originally, [b]Petroglyph[/b] had plans for the same exact thing [b]BLIZZARD[/b] did with [b]StarCraft II[/b], let's just say that it's easy to see why it never happened. I mean, [b]Grey Goo[/b]? I can't even call it “[b]StarCraft[/b] for poor people”. In a period since early nineties and until the late [b]2000[/b]s? Something like that would have go completely unnoticed. Just because there were so many [b]RTS[/b] games on market and most of them were way, [i]way[/i] better than this. Up to this day you can just open [b]MobyGames[/b] and start making a list of what you've missed back then. With much better results. [b]Battle Realms[/b], [b]The Lord of the Rings: War of the Ring[/b], [b]Armies of Exigo[/b], [b]Rising Kingdoms[/b], [b]Dungeons & Dragons: Dragonshard[/b], [b]Lords of the EverQuest[/b], [b]The Golden Horde[/b]... Even though all of those above were flawed in one way or another, I still had more fun with them than I had with [b]Grey Goo[/b]. So, here's the question – what's the point of seeing something like that in [b]2015[/b]? With so many third-party [b]StarCraft II[/b] campaigns around? I guess, some questions in this world just can't be answered.

[h1]江郎才尽[/h1] [h2]天音的RTS巡礼之路——第一站：灰蛊[/h2] [i] 在此感谢老刘几年前送的礼物 [/i] [i] 《灰蛊》 充分地证明了岩石壁画已经完全失去了设计RTS战役关卡的能力。纵使阵营设计充满新意，但是无法掩盖粗糙的本质。整个游戏就是一个滑稽的烂尾半成品。如果我当初花了50美刀，买了这么个垃圾游戏，想必我会骂的更加难听。 [/i] 灰蛊的派系设定确实新颖，但是科技树太短，单位设计缺乏深度，每个阵营的单位都大差不差。单位生产速度缓慢，移动速度更慢，ttk时间却很短，赶路三分钟，集结部队只需要半分钟。每个阵营的史诗单位的建造时间更是以分钟计，蛊族的史诗需要漫长的5分钟才能建造完成，放在快节奏的RTS里，五分钟甚至已经运营出一个完整的生产流程，开始疯狂暴兵准备推进了。在红警3中，五分钟甚至足够玩家在困难难度下的月亮永远无法到手任务中推掉第一个甚至第二个铁幕了。五个可选科技看上去花里胡哨，事实上就几个能够自动维修，加血，增加单位对抗属性的升级有用，其他的全是花瓶。 本作最令我感到愤怒的，是毫无设计可言的关卡设计，说难听点这些关卡就是加了一点点机制的遭遇战。每一关的任务流程都大差不差：建造基地，推平对面的基地。至于支线设计怎么办呢？这样好了，让玩家拼死命送光单位才能救出的目标（人类第二关）；要么弄点让玩家找不到的东西，让玩家锻炼视力（人类第三关）。欸，可是灰蛊明明就有非推平敌人基地，要完成地图目标才能通关的关卡啊（人类第四关：保护平民，但是这关有超时空传送仪，完全没有难度，DLC第二关），这就更简单了，设计师直接在地图上平白无故刷出敌人的单位，这在蛊族第五关，DLC第三关中表现得淋漓尽致——甚至连敌人的史诗单位都是刷出来的你敢信？这种设计简直就是把玩家当猴耍，是极其低级的设计。你在我地图上平白无故地刷兵，那我给你差评，天经地义。 剧情也没啥意思，全英文也就算了，四级水平就能看懂，Beta族和人类语言交流障碍，动不动打起来情有可原，你Singleton明明都夺舍了蛊的控制权，不和你指挥官直接交流，反倒谜语人，还要打一架，剧情水平堪比幼儿园小孩写的科幻。整个游戏铺垫的Shroud族，最后就来了五根柱子，然后直接烂尾。 很难想象吧，灰蛊的创作者曾经创造了命令与征服这一RTS传奇IP。玩家不难看出灰蛊的野心，岩石壁画希望用灰蛊狙击星际争霸2，尝试从当时尚未衰落的RTS市场里舀一勺羹。但结果大家都知道了，灰蛊商业上取得了巨大的失败，烂尾，进了一刀包，此后岩石壁画一蹶不振，再也没有3A级别的投资让他们挥霍。直到EA让他们复刻命令与征服1和红色警戒1，再然后嘛，他们接了个一战的RTS的项目，然后果不其然，又一次的搞砸了。在如今这个RTS开始有点复兴的年代，岩石壁画却总能掉进一个个莫名其妙的坑里。也许岩石壁画需要Brett Sperry，Louis Castle这样的大佬，才能够做好自己的IP吧。