Grey Goo RTS, A pretty generic looking RTS from Petroglyph Options

[Kichō]

At first I had little interest, I've never really understood Petroglyph's offerings but after reading about it I've decided to give(one of their game's at least) it a go as I just went and bought it since it was fairly cheap, will post back my thoughts on it soon after.

[Serialkillerwhal...]

The one problem I can think of at the momment is the lack of a proper Mammoth Analogue.

Trailer's nice though.

[Anubis]

Game is nice and all, but it's one of the shittiest optimizations i have seen in years. My gaming laptop can handle most new games on ultra or high. This one plays like shit on frekin medium, and the internet is full of people who complain about this problem. So atm, until they release a patch to fix their pathetic optimization problems ... it's kinda hard to enjoy something that looks like starcraft 2 and needs the system requirments of battlefield 6.

[n5p29]

shittiest optimizations

looks like the legacy carries on.
never change Westwood EALA Petroglyph.

nonetheless I'll try to get it on sale if the public response keep positive.

This post has been edited by n5p29: 25 Jan 2015, 10:36

[Hecthor Doomhamm...]

I won their game in the MEME contest.
I'm gonna go throguht the campaign on stream (link sig) after I'm done with L.A. Noire.

Online is a no go for me, because of the lack of Spectator mode.
It doesn't even have Replays

Tho they have said these 2 features to be implemented as post release support. but they have not given timeframe, so I'm not going to bother yet

[Kichō]

So, I've played this for a reasonable amount of time (only as the Beta faction thus far during the campaigns) and I'll try to split it into categories. Remember that I can only speak for the Beta faction at the moment. I will try to note down the Human faction as I encountered during the campaign, some interesting stuff there. I did try the Goo faction briefly in Skirmish but that was too complex for me, you just start out with this blob thing... anyway:

1. General gameplay - It seems you start out with a 200 population cap which is rather generous and not as silly as C&C4's, during the first portion of the campaign I barely hit 70 so I don't see any problems with it there. You also have a Resource cap which is affected by the amount of Silos you build, Silos not only store Catalysts (the main resource) as well as increase the max amount you can receive but they also offer upgrades. Your HQ is much like a Construction Yard, but it cannot pack up so it is always permanently in position. You can literally build anywhere as long as you have line of sight around that position. As a potential offset to this, it seems that any building that is under attack will receive a penalty of some sort. (not entirely sure of this as I wasn't paying much attention, since I was too busy defending)

The resource system is much like RA3, deploy a Refinery and the Harvesters will seek out the nearest pool of resource. Once you deplete a resource it will slowly regenerate but you are advised to find a new one as soon as. It seems only the HQ Refinery will allow the deployment of 2 Harvesters whereas expansions(hubs) only allow 1.

The Beta are more offence oriented, so they can't build traditional defences. Instead, they must merge certain units ontop of walls to form as a base defence. (Obviously they can't mount gates) The units taking position on the walls cannot be killed but if you need them to be mobile, then you can dismount them freely.

Upgrades are perhaps the most interesting feature in this game, not every single unit can, actively benefit from an upgrade. You must choose what you think will help. You can only have one upgrade from each category at one given time however you are able to "unupgrade" and pick another from the same category if you desire. You can also research the same upgrade if you need it back, just remember that it'll cancel out your previous one.

There are Epic Units in the game, I can't give a solid opinion until I tried them all but the one I did try was the "Hand of Ruk" which is basically this huge flying fortress with a artillery emplacement on top, as well as being able to produce units in twos. It can also garrison up to 6 units which can assist it. Before you call it OP, I'll just say that I lost it to a basic Goo unit. (albeit it was a spam) The Hand of Ruk is completely defenceless when it is swarmed as the artillery cannot hit nearby units, so you must rely on the garrisoned units. Additionally (and probably obvious) it is very slow.

One thing I am not comfortable with is this feature called "brush" I think the name is, you can hide units inside a dense tree area and said units will be hidden, even when firing. I am unsure how to counter this other than sending in your own units but even then a majority of my own units got annihilated because I could not return fire.

There are no Engineer units, so you can't cross-tech or capture stuff. There are also no Superweapons either. (One could argue that the Epic Units are those)

Factories(production centres) can only train 4 units with an auto-repeat option, large factories can production 3 units at a time with a max of 6. You can build these for no additional production increase.

Another thing you should know is be prepared to hear your EVA a lot... I can't begin to count how many times she alerted me to the slightest thing.

2. Story - So far so good, some missions were a bit dull and very short. I would actually compare this to C&C4's: Good cutscenes(we'll ignore that Threshold Tower scene), mediocre story. Granted I have not finished it yet but the first few missions were just way too short.

3. Graphics - Very good, everything is on high and the game is rather crisp. However the atmosphere can be a bit distracting and it even gave me a mild headache due to the colours.

4. AI - Challenging, to say the least. I started on Normal and had to drop it to Easy because I got my arse kicked twice on the second mission. It seems the AI is rather competent in that it will try to be sneaky, utilise that brush thing and generally loves to harass. Even on Easy it will annoy you. Additionally, there appears to be some modifier embedded inside the difficulties, on Easy for example all their units HP dropped to lesser values. I think this applies to other values too, not entirely sure on that.

5. Music - Honestly, not great. The main menu piece was pretty decent but in-game it was pretty bland, felt comparable to C&C3's ambient music. Not Frank's best work at all.

Now for the Humans... I noticed their HQ, also known as the Core is a bit like the ECA Solar Reactor and the Region Command combined. The only difference is, is that you must deploy power lines to distribute the power your Core has, also known as "Protean". It is critical you maintain these lines because any section that is connected to the Core will be powered down if destroyed. You could potentially lose a defence grid due to this.


To summarise: This game has a lot of nifty and interesting features but is let down due to the too few units, the mediocre story, the lack of environmental interaction, horrible balance(you'd think they'd learnt from Tiberian Sun, all you need is artillery) and the awful post-launch issues (luckily, I was spared by this). I would give this a 6/10. The game had/has potential but it does feel quite bare bones in some places. There is definitely room for improvement.

Note: I might edit this or post some more later once I've extensively tried the other two factions but I don't expect much difference.

This post has been edited by Kichō: 26 Jan 2015, 2:42

[Anubis]

2 notes on kitcho's post:

- you can also counter the tree brush stealth with air scouts. They are basically the passive counter to this.

- the human core is not also called a protean . That's the name of the 2 goo production forms - small and large proteans - both produced by spliting a mother goo.

I will add further on the human faction. The geniuses at petroglyph decided that the defense oriented faction should also have the shittiest defense system. While they do have really powerfull turrets, they need to be attached to a power line which has to be connected to the core which can be destroyed at any point leaving your entire defense line useless. Couple that with a really shitty RA3 grid style building placement and you realise that creating a energy conduit line outside your starting location is almost impossible. So the defense faction has the worst defensive options on the map.leaving you with the only true option of defense which is units. So that makes it almost identical to the beta faction.

After playing all 3 factions with a shitty frame rate ofc, balance atm feels like shit with the beta faction being the only interesting and non frustrating faction.

[Hecthor Doomhamm...]

I'd like to refer to this topic

[Dragar]

The Human faction actually do have the best turrets and are pretty good at defensive play, if you're so worried about the power line thing just research the upgrade that makes turrets stay online even when they're not connected or else just do a better job of protecting your power lines. They're also really good at defense because a lot of their upgrades give units of theirs the ability to drop mines. Hell the arty unit that they get has the ability that it fires shells that turn into mines when they miss. And I've never had problems creating power lines in my starting location. You just have to be mindful that units can go over power lines but they can't go through buildings. Oh yeah, and don't forget the human walls, that lets your units see, go through and shoot through them.

[Kichō]

Some more notes:

While the Humans have the greatest defences, the system used is still horrible. It becomes an incredible eyesore seeing these all over the place. Plus the fact that artillery components can counter artillery coupled with the auto repair and no power loss upgrades just shows how broken they really are.

Descriptions of all factions units are so bland and barebones that you are more or less forced to find out for yourself, then again the counter system is very soft so anything is pretty much good against everything.

Another thing I dislike is how awkward and really inconvenient on how it is to build the Human Epic. You have to sell the power conduit to attach the 4th attachment and then re-add the attachment separately along with the power conduit to re-supply power. I even had to search it up because their tutorials were just not very informative at all. The 'How to build Alpha' was misleading.

The Goo faction is probably most interesting, at least that's what I thought but it's just incredibly dull. It feels like this faction wasn't really thought out. You start out with the Mother Goo which is your all-in-one production/resource/tech 'structure'. You pretty much have to always be on the move, spamming Mother Goos. (Otherwise it's game over for you if they are destroyed) Their units are produced in various quantities but with half health and have to recover. It's a little ironic that Mother Goos are the Goo's strongest unit which is risky to use considering. I had actually lost all my units except for my last Mother Goo in the first Goo mission because Anti-Heavy Sentinel defences are really strong, luckily I was able to 'eat' the enemies Core in time.

With that said, going to knock this down to a 5.

[DELETED MEMBER]

You have to sell the power conduit to attach the 4th attachment and then re-add the attachment separately along with the power conduit to re-supply power.

You can start building one of the attachments and then "attach" the heavy factory to it, but yes, is counter intuintive

And after playing it, i can only say is mediocre, actually even tempted to say bad, and i can't believe how much praise is getting.

[Hecthor Doomhamm...]

For those interested, the entire campaign play through I did is up on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLi5U...ZhivtrzBbZc33F1