Grey Goo

////////// STEAM DECK REVIEW //////////

Working nicely at 5W when lowering details.
I had quite a hard time figuring out the best hotkeys config for a handheld but once done, a very solid game.

The base three factions are really fun to play and I found the lore very interesting. Finally humans are technically advanced and aliens almost barbaric in comparison ! A fresh take on a century old formula. Betas are awesome by the way, walls are back commander.

Worst grip: no offline skirmish. Internet connection is mandatory, which is harsh for solo steam deck players.

Grey Goo originally came out ten years ago. I didn't play it back then, largely because the reception it received at the time was so poor. Coming back to it in 2025 is a truely confusing experience. Why didn't people like this game? It's great! I don't really get it.

Even loooking at it in the context of its original release the reception it got is still mystifying. In 2015 the RTS scene was suffering from a very bad case of the Starcraft bug and Grey Goo seems like the perfect antidote for that. It is much slower paced, allowing larger reaction windows. No unit has active abilities. Economy is largely automated and you can autonomate unit production as well.
So it's a fairly casual friendly game, but the large variety of gameplay styles of its - 3 at release, now 4 - factions still give it depth.

Presentation is top notch. Graphics still hold up incredibly well even a decade later. And the game is not short of spectacle: The earth visibly shaking under the stomps of your mech army. The bright light of an exploding nuclear missile. The grim sight of your units getting dissovled into grey goo ...
Music's even better, of course. Frank Klepacki is on board and he can do no wrong.

I also enjoyed the campaign quite a bit, finished it several times to get all the bonus objectives. Here you can definitely see that they were working on a budget though. Still, there are lot of cutscenes and the character work is quite nice. The missions are well designed, have variety and there are just enough of them that I don't feel like complaining. It does suffer a bit from a somewhat unconclusive ending, but eh, I'am a Command&Conquer fan, I have seen worse.

All in all a very enjoyable experience in a genre that didn't get a lot of those at the time. Maybe this review can help it get some of the late justice it deserves.

I like it.

Unresponsive, slow and unnecessarily complicated gameplay. Doesn't really feel like a RTS

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.

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

Bland and boring.

While it was not the easiest game to initially learn, once you get the hang of it, it can be pretty fun. I didn't enjoy the way it played as much compared to C&C games, but the story kept me going and was worth the price I paid for the game being on sale. Worth trying if you like RTS games.

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 fucken betcha

Way too unbalanced at harder difficulty. Although fan of Petro, this is not one of my favs. Units/buildings don't feel interesting, minus the goo, which is sorta a pain to micromanage. An okay RTS with good cut scenes.

Great traditional RTS game with a good deal of strategic depth and micro opportunities. The factions are well designed and each has a unique style of play and a different base building system. The game isn't overly complex, but it provides enough meaningful unit composition or tech choices to keep things interesting. Victory in multiplayer often comes down to map knowledge, particularly when a goo player is involved. The goo are especially interesting as a faction, and one of the few cases in any RTS game where resource collection itself could be considered truly exciting. The campaign was solid and multiplayer is great if you have players to match with.

Terrible experience.

The Devs spent all their money on acting, mo-cap and beautiful visuals. Forgot to make a game that's fun to play or has any actual variety and strategic depth. Runs badly. Takes ages to save or load.

Tiny campaign, 4~5 missions per faction.
Barely any units, ~10 per faction. 3 assaults, 3 artillery, 3 air units, 1 scout, and mostly identical or flat out made irelevant by other units. No tactical depth what so ever. AOE artillery ALWAYS wins.
Neat story idea, but it's all just a big misunderstanding between idiots.
Interesting base building but tedious.
Streaming Economy, which makes it very easy to overbuild without realising it.
They have some air units, that are totally and utterly useless. It's very sad.
Modular base building tech is a cool concept, but so few units and so cheap it barely matters.

Tech Upgrade Slots. Pick between 4 upgrades for your Artillery, Tank, Air, or Stealth tech that can drastically change the behaviour of one or two of your units. If only those drastic changes were at all useful or interesting. Stupid example; "Artillery Tech" doesn't contain ANY tech to improve artillery, instead relating to making AA units fire at ground, making some bomber have 8 bullets, or some such nonsense.

The Goo is the best part of this game, but their playability feels like an after thought.

Old school RTS game from the people who made Empire at War. Horribly underrated gem of a game. Deserves much more love than it got.

Incredibly shallow and uninspired, nothing like the RTSs that preceded it. Nice to have something new I guess, but as a long time Command and Conquer player this was incredibly boring and hard to get into. There are older and better games to play than this.

Really, really boring.
Unballanced.
Not worth my time.

Pros:
Great story and design.
I love the different factions that feels different.

Cons:
This game very obvious that it only wants to to win the game in one way. You don't do it, you will lose. You need to precisely build certain things at certain times. If you build too early, you will get build locked so nothing gets built, you build too late and the enemy will break what you build as it's built.
This game is insanely anti base building, from the tedium of needing to repair your paper structures (which I swear are buffed so you can't steamroll enemy bases), to the resources running out.
This game is antirush, enemies spawn in fully built bases and firebases to stop you from moving around. They also never run out of resources.

Overall:
This is difficult yes, but it's failing is that it is difficult in a tedious way. You are clearly meant to fail suddenly as the game is unforgiving to even slight mistakes. The problem is that when you fail (when not if), you will lose 30+ minutes of work. Alot of times you don't even find out you made a mistake until 5 minutes after you make it. This game fails despite being inspired designwise, cause it is unforgiving AND tedious.

game is fun to play alone and with others and its fun to spam drovers

Not sure the point in reviewing a 9 year old game, but I think this was a solid showing for the RTS genre. It did some things poorly - unit pathing, for example, always felt poor, but honestly everything Petroglyph does feels that way.

The factions are unique and well thought out. I love their diversity and interesting uniqueness. The units themselves, however, are a little less interesting, often falling into rather uninspired unit types. Even the Goo end up just creating a bunch of basic types that you spam when you need them. The humans are the worst, I think.

One guy was shitting on the campaign. Apparently he felt like the whole premise could be avoided if everyone clearly articulated their intentions. Well, no shit. Turns out, most wars could probably be avoided if people communicated clearly. But they don't. Often. Especially if they all speak different languages and look completely different.

And it just seems shitty to invalidate a premise because the protagonists "could've" acted differently. I mean. That's the story. They didn't act differently.

But people are pretty dumb.

Ultimately, the story has other problems, the largest of which is that it was simply never finished because the devs abandoned the game after it didn't make them the next Elon Musk. But the overall story was fine otherwise, though the individual missions were often obnoxious, grindy slog-fests that involve throwing yourself against the enemy or painfully exploring the map in search of the final Goo Mother.

Either way, this is not a perfect game, but every now and then I like to turn it on and dick around with it. It's a middling showing of the genre that was, overall, enjoyable.

Unless you have something against stories that are based on fallible characters who make basic mistakes like jumping to conclusions or failing to communicate.

Simple asymetric RTS. Didn't really get a fair shake in the greater culture. I'm guessing that's largely because of a notable lack of compelling music. The story is intriguing. It keeps the scale just right so that micro and macro strategies are both necessary.

It's one of those 'the notes they didn't play' type of things. The mechanics are great and asymetric but still balanced well. I love it.

I did not care for this. Just did not like the mechanics