Grey Goo

I grew up on WC2, SC, TA, and C&C-RA. Lately I've played lots of SC2 ladder, drifting between plat and diamond 1v1 zerg, though I play mostly 2v2 format. If you enjoyed those games, and love challenging multiplayer, you can stop reading now, go buy it, and lose the next few days (or months) to fun. If you need more convincing, read on...

Grey Goo is a shot of fresh air into an otherwise one-note genre now that SC2 ladder raised the quality level for multiplayer RTS. It has a high-quality, though short, single player campaign. It has 1v1 and 2v2 multiplayer, both on a ranked ladder, unranked quickmatch, and pre-arranged steam and lan games.

I find Grey Goo gameplay a bit slower and more positionally strategic than SC2, which is refreshingly different. That said, there is plenty of room for APM and micro, both in scouting, and in micro-manging battles. This evening, I spent some time watching the #1 ranked Grey Goo player's stream (bikerush) and it's some quality action.

The army conflicts center around range differences (short/mid/long range), vision differences (stealth, brush, cliff) and ground/air/aa challenges. As the battle rages on, a tractable set of (5-7?) tech-tree choices per race specialize armies. There are no straight unit "power" upgrades, though some tech upgrades give units splash or additional damage capabilities. If the game lasts long enough, "ultra" level units create some good eye-candy and carnage.

Some of the classic attack-vs-macro tradeoff exists, though so far to me the game seems more macro focused. That said, there is certainly some effective "cheese", both Goo harvester absorbtion rush, and Beta wall rush. So far, these rushes seem more problematic in 2v2 than 1v1.

Just about the only downsides to this game are (a) replays are coming soon and not-done-yet, (b) the relatively small player-base sometimes means waiting for games, (c) the meta-game isn't ironed out and documented in liquidpedia-like wikis, and it's not clear what's it's going to be like when pros play it for longer.

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I'm also going to provide the barest of race-overviews, but all of this is just *my* impression.

The human race is arguably presented as most "technologically advanced", with a teleporter pad, stealth harvesters, and cannons. However, their main buildings must all have a conduit line to their main HQ. The Beta race builds around base-pods with different numbers of sockets (small-2, medium-4, and large-6). Both Beta and Human mine resources with harvesters, though the rate is the same regardless of distance (the harvest building automatically spawns enough harvesters to keep the rate constant). That said, the further away, the easier it is to intercept the supply line. The Goo race is more radically different. It has no harvesters or air units. Instead it has three sizes of Goo (large, small, medium) which can cliff-climb, and double as melee units to "absorb" opposing armies. Large Protean act as harvesters when sitting over a resource pool. Small and Medium Proteans convert into small and medium army units, respectively. However, because they move faster, cliff climb, and absorb smaller forces as goo, they are sometimes left undifferentiated until specific army is needed.

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If you'd like to read a review with pretty pictures, here is a really long review written by someone else.

Enjoy the Goo!!