I was playing Grey Goo, thinking that this game is pretty good—not great but very entertaining. Casually planning out my review, perhaps as a forgotten RTS gem… but then it happened. I reached part three of the campaign, when the game jumps from one group to another—to the actual Grey Goo faction. And oh boy. The game is separated by three factions, with two of the factions being fairly grounded in some kind of abstract sci-fi terms—the Grey Goo group, however. It’s like a meme coming alive, as you literally play as an undefined, boring gelatinous mass of sludge with horrible gameplay mechanics.
Cool, but…
I have to point out that this is not a review. It’s just a rant on how bad of a decision this was. Conceptually, it’s actually pretty cool, and horrifying, as having a grey goo event gaining sentience coming to devour everything makes for a fun catastrophe to stop. It actually fits the far future theme of the game with AI, and general super high-tech equipment, like independent drone armies replacing fleshies. One thing it reminds me of is the excellent CGI intro of Deus Ex: Invisible War—where a terrorist causes a grey goo event in Chicago, destroying the whole city by turning everything into itself. So the peril is there!
Now, up to part three of the campaign, I found the story fascinating, even if the stakes felt a little too small at times (on a localized level), and the pacing way too fast. You only get a few missions per faction, not getting to know them that deeply, not narratively, nor mechanically. Still, it worked, as it had me intrigued. The Beta aliens are fighting for survival while being hunted by an ancient enemy, with the human faction essentially being on a deep space expedition for resources—replacing messy fleshy armies with drone-tech and AI (very fitting going by current times).
Mechanics
I will not go into too much detail, but the Beta and the human faction play like a classic RTS with a few quirks—that, once again, fits the theme of the game. From a story perspective, you are presented the stakes, and you will understand the desperation from at least the Betas. The stakes for the humans are still there, but it’s more of a redemption arc than pure survival. Technically, the Grey Goo faction is also out for survival, but I found it incredibly hard to care, since you are basically playing the evil Blob from the 1988 movie.
That necessarily doesn’t have to be bad, as playing as evil factions can be entertaining, if well-told. The main issue here is the switch in mechanics that ditches all the classic controls and set up—for something much more micro-intensive and plain obnoxious to play. You don’t have a HQ, or any kind of defenses, as your primary way of gameplay is to expand and overwhelm the enemy. That’s not how I like to play RTS games, at all, and fair enough—you can’t like every faction, but in combination with the extremely underwhelming narratively choice, it just took me out of it. I was hoping the story would take me through it to the end, but sadly, that didn’t happen. Playing something you find on the damp cellar floor didn’t entice me much.
Not to be
It’s a real shame, too, because up to that point, I felt some serious potential here—at least for a low-key sci-fi tale in space about the dangers of unregulated tech progression. Because that is what the grey goo is; a self-replicating nanotechnology experiment gone very wrong—now running the risk of consuming its creators, and a few Betas on the way. I genuinely found it absorbing, especially in the way the story was being told too, as things are not laid out for you. You will feel the same bewilderment, as it happens to the factions, as it happens to you. Pretty cool, in fact.
Unless, the game ends on some mystical bullshit, that invalidates my whole thought-process and appreciation here, since, I haven’t actually seen it. But oh, well. Grey Goo had me—right up until it asked me to play as a puddle!
Thanks for reading.
– Thomas
Tom's Gaming Vault 