Grey Goo

Years after I first bought Grey Goo, I remain ... undecided about it. It has a fun, almost schlocky feeling to it, and it is not afraid of experimenting with its faction design. The faction design is, frankly, one of the best things about the game. The Beta are fairly standard RTS fare - but the Goo and Humans are fascinating and a joy to play as. The Goo are essentially nomadic, and manage to capture a fascinating play style - where running away and regrouping is perfectly acceptable and even rewarded. Meanwhile, humans have a focus on teleporting - and it makes base building very interesting. They almost feel a bit like a tower defence minigame. You are rearranging your base regularly, and it is quite satisfying to shift your defences around to respond to emerging threats. Each faction has a fun epic unit - and there is very little more satisfying than completing your epic unit and just blasting the crap out of the map. Unfortunately, the game falls flat. The campaign (as many others have pointed out) feels slightly unfinished. The concepts behind it are fascinating. The all consuming goo are scared of something. The humans are robot pacifists who retreated back to Earth and became utopian hermits. And the Beta are ... your standard 'survivors of unspecificed galactic disaster' and probably the least interesting among them all. Unfortunately, even their cookie cutter concept doesn't feel filled out. Who is the goo scared of and what is their plan to survive? That isn't really explained. Why do the utopian pacifist humans happily blast the crap out of the Beta for breaking some robots? Um, because.... reasons. There is some consideration to a subplot about AI rights and how the humans exploit their intelligent androids, but it goes nowhere. The Beta start to feel ... problematic after a while. They all have south african accents, for some reason and they're vaguely racially stereotyped. The Shroud, the fourth race, added later feel... exactly like a later addition. Your classic interdimensional aliens who want to either drain our dimension of energy or terraform everything to match their dimension (it is never clear which) - and everything about them is fairly unoriginal, from their designs to their role in the story to their name itself. They're Species 8472 from Star Trek, the Draj from Titan A.E, the Riftborn from Endless Space, the Unbidden from Stellaris. Their blatant use of a stock sci-fi stereotype isn't inherently a problem, but they don't do anything interesting with it. They don't feel like they were initially conceived at the same time as the other factions. They're the villains who the Goo are fleeing, apparently, but this never feels convincing because they're not particularly intimidating. Gameplay is fine, but doesn't feel extremely well balanced. The campaign is short, extremely short, and for single player, the game lacks some of the features of other RTS (in-depth scenario customisation, etc) that might've given it more replayability. Multiplayer might as well not exist because this game never sold well even on release and years later its dead (there are usually less than 20 players worldwide). Back when it was new, I did manage to get a few games and while interesting to play it generally felt like matches were over quickly and got repetitive. The grey goo by their nature also have a tendency to create a frustrating wild goose chase to kill that final mother. If you have RL friends who are also willing to spend $40 on this game, maybe you'll have fun with it for a bit. Unfortunately, when Grey Goo didn't sell well, the devs generally dropped support (the last patch was March 2016, about a year after its release). Very little was done with this game after release - it landed with a resounding splat. The marketing was not where it needed to be, and except for a lackluster DLC that feels like it was birthed early when they realised they wouldn't make their money back by spending any more time on it, Grey Goo slipped away into RTS obscurity. If they had refined this game, I think they really could've polished it into gem. If you're a hardcore RTS fan, you'll appreciate what it was trying to do, but mostly just feel disappointed by missed opportunity and wasted potentially.

As much as I wanted to love this game I just cannot recommend it due to the very buggy AI. This is a problem in both the campaign and skirmish with skirmish being the biggest offender. The AI seems to randomly choose the difficulty level and strategy that it will play as. For instance I have done a 2 v 2 with all AI, my ally was set to normal balanced and both the enemies were set to easy econ. The enemy AI wiped us out within a couple of minutes of rushing. My ally did very little and seemed to mostly sit idle. For people who like a challenge this might be a perk but sometimes I just want to sit around build up a big force and have fun smashing through the enemy defenses. The campaign was very similar, some levels the enemy AI literally just sat there and did nothing, other levels the enemy seemed to be capable of cheating and build epic units even after their base was destroyed. Overall I just cannot recommend this title.

Apparently this has mixed reviews but this is one of the last real-ass RTS's you or I have played. Is there jank? Yeah, some Does it rip farts? You ♥♥♥♥♥♥ betcha

While almost 6 years late, I suppose this game deserves at least a (relatively) short review. After all - who knows who’s gonna be compelled to give it a try, after all these years? Grey Goo is yet another experiment from Petroglyph - the “descendants” of the founders of the RTS genre - Westwood Studios. Much like it’s predecessor - Universe at War - it attempts to polish and diversify the classic gameplay formula, with a few interesting innovations. Does it succeed, though? - I’m afraid not. The story is pretty short and simplistic. Disappointing even. It misleads you into thinking there’s more to what’s going on, and makes you think that more complex topics and morals are going to be covered. But in the end it all comes down to AI simply doing their job and evil aliens wanting to consume all. Three available campaigns are incredibly short (5 missions each) and resemble one another in mission design. The gameplay is… okay-ish. The available factions are diverse; each having some tricks up their sleeve. The HUD changes according to the selected faction, and it’s designed to be best suited for each and easy to get used to. Sadly, the maps are pretty small and uninspired; there is only one type of resource and while the factions have rather different mechanics and strats, their units feel largely the same; mirrored even. And the worst part is that it all feels… boring. It is obvious that the game had pretty great ideas at its core, but their potential was never realized. It lacks the pace and refinement of CnC, not to mention their atmosphere. Speaking of atmosphere - both the graphics and the soundtrack are pretty great. I don’t have anything to complain about here. But the problem is - with lackluster gameplay, story and lore there’s just no way to fall in love with the game’s universe the same way fans did with games like CnC or Starcraft. [h1]Conclusion:[/h1] 6/10. It’s definitely great to see that at least some of the minds responsible for the CnC universe are still trying to create something great. Sadly, so far they seem to be out of luck.

came so close to being good... Just needed less of the budget spent on acting and more on levels units and maps... But its a classic style rts so that's something

I hate timer routines in games! If I wanted to watch a clock I'd stare at that for non-enjoyment. Games with clocking down routine are not fun. Whomever included that in the development of this clearly had Grey Goo on the mind its annoyingly frustrating. If there were the option to remove it from the game I'd be welcome to come back to play it but count down timers just don't do it for me. Also need to clarify what the goal is in confrontations I had to guess whenever coming across an enemy that was a non-kill routine with no clue how to get rid of it so after several attempts I gave up! Its a fine looking game but the frustration clearly would have wanted a refund REGRETFULLY I CAN'T DO THAT! I don't know maybe it was that particular level in the game but I'm not trying to put the effort into anymore.

I was skeptical at first, but after playing for a few hours: this game deserves better than a mixed review.