Grey Goo is something worse than bad; it is mundane. Not so much a throwback as a bland crust, the heel of a loaf of bread left on a cutting board. It is a competent husk missing any vital organs. You can practically smell the Westwood coming off the feature list, which is hardly surprising given that developer Petroglyph includes a bunch of former Westwooders. Grey Goo has a lot of the trappings of those Westwood classics: simplicity, speed, streamlining, individual soldiers and tanks jostling each other as they swarm around in a big blob. But what you can’t smell is any sense of personality or joy. In their prime, Westwood games reeked of giddy pleasure. Even when the games weren’t good, they were overflowing with an ebullient affection for the act of throwing armies into each other and watching them blow up. Polish? Pah. Watch these bazooka dudes break up this tank rush!
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at http://www.quartertothree.com/fp/2015/01/26/grey-goo-nuance-streamlining-little-reason-play-instead-rtss
Does anyone else hear grey goo and think of elderly people ejaculating?
aeneas
3
Well I hadn't till you put that image in my mind. Well played good sir.
KVFinn
5
It really is so run of the mill.
If you're looking for a modern high quality RTS, Company of Heroes: Ardennes Assault is fantastic. Or one of the WarGame release (AirLand Battle).
The re-release of Rise of Nations HD on Steam also holds up incredibly well.
BLAM1
6
Ah, Petroglyph. The company that keeps churning out RTS games with one tiny speck of promising innovation (the walkers in Universe at War, the space combat in Empire at War) buried under mounds of mundane and broken (everything else in Universe/Empire at War).
I like how the one faction they attempted to make original and unique, and they turned all their units into the most generic video game enemy of all time. Nothing quite announces you're out of ideas quite like spiders.
"What I really like about these tech upgrades is that a whole mess of them are mutually exclusive."
I like this feature too. Rather than try to upgrade everything with no real strategy in mind, the exclusivity forces me to pick a strategy and stick to it.
Correction:
"Petroglyph didn’t invent [the] term “grey goo”."
basha
8
One minute you condescendingly call them "space tanks" & "spider tanks" - the next minute you praise the asymmetry. Its fine if you don't the game Tom but at least avoid directly contradicting yourself.
I think its obvious you have not given the game a proper chance. If you had you'd be able to outline the actual problems it has, like late game balance issues or the way you can cheaply build row after row of walls to easily cut off and buy yourself a ton of time, or the online connectivity issues (connection lost).
All your complaints are just surface issues, and this games paint job is quite polished, so I'm really struggling to understand your complaints. The graphics are slick and the audio and soundtrack are top notch. The game oozes quality and polish.
In its current state the game is quite fun in multiplayer, with a patch or two I think it could be greatly improved. I think they delivered exactly what the said they were going to - an old school, command & conquer esque game.
I have not really played single player so I cannot comment on that.
That said I don't really disagree with the score you've given. I'd probably give it a 3 out of 5. Again, with a patch or two I think they could elevate the game quite a lot.
anon37
9
This largely mirrors my own impressions, though I haven't played much. I like the soundtrack though.
I also find there are tons of small interface niggles, like using attack move on a specific target will NOT target it like right click will, or how pressing 1-2-1-2 quickly will refocus the camera like if you'd pressed 1-1 or 2-2. Seems amateurish.
What the hell is Quarter to Three and how did it make it onto Metacritic?
go fuck yourself Tom Chick, this is a great game. You are just downvoting it because EA isn't paying you to make a high rated review.
someone who works for EA most likely. EA is attempting to sabotage this game's ratings.
Vacenza
13
2 stars? Wow, that's harsh even for Tom Chick. It's a very solid; competent RTS. In this environment, that fact alone should garner at least 3 stars.
The author is quite right. This game is incredibly dull. There is no reason to play this game over StarCraft, except for the novelty factor, which lasts for about two hours. Not that I would recommend playing StarCraft, either - chances are you are as tired with it as everybody else. Maybe the expo will revive the game for a bit.
The problem with Grey Goo is that there is nothing to it. There is one resource, like 10 interchangeable units per side, and no unit special abilities. There are only 15 very dull missions. Aerial combat is horrible. Turrets 2-shot airplanes, and the heavy airplanes have to reload all the time.
You just build your refinery, set up a few turrets, make your deathball and roll'em'over. The AI is 100% retarded and just suicides against your turrets. The "epic" units are extremely underwhelming. I built the big human robot and told him to attack the enemy base. He spent 10 minutes trying to shoot random spiderlings who kited him without paying attention to him.
This game has nothing on the classic old RTS titles. The new HD versions of AoE2 and RoN are a million times more fun than this aptly named Goo. If they remake Tiberian Sun, try it out to see what a real Westwood RTS looks like. Grey Good is just weak.
this is just fucking Negative review and sucks gamerwebsite.
Slash
16
Wow a website noone has ever heard of downrateing a great game that just came out..... The reviewer was clearly paid to make the game aound bad and te fact that this is the ONLY bad review i have found anywhere is proof enough for me that this "author" has no intergrity and just write what he is paid to
Goober
17
Boring and mindless "blob strategy" with dumbed-down resource/base management.
And as usual, reading Tom Chick's review is more fun than the game itself.
Goober1
18
Tom, you must be rich by now with all that money you get paid for these bad reviews.
Because MOBAs are such glorious creative pinnacles of game design? I'm not against negative reviews but this one clearly sounds like outright irrational hostility.
It comes across as less that you personally didn't enjoy the game, but that you have some other motive. It's one thing to constructively criticise a game and another to basically tear into it with insults.
And that comes from someone who hasn't even played it. Hostile 'reviews' have nothing to offer. Don't waste your breath unless you can be objective and reasoned.
Hahaha, this is absurdity at the highest level. The worst review ever. This is basically the most viable options to a REAL OLD-SCHOOL RTS not being from Blizzard (SC2 anyone? And it isn't bad either).
Also you talk about playing with ONE DAMN HAND, where the fuck on Earth would someone take you seriously when you are writing a review of an RTS and throw things likes "A pain on ass playing one-handed"
Now you should make some review of real soccer with peolpe on wheel-chairs and tell it is a horrible sport.
Please, learn to play first, then talk about the game. Also, the best comments are the ones from Basha talking about balance issues mostly instead noobish things like you did
