Grey Goo

[KingIsaacLinksr]

Is the single player fun?

The campaign is reasonable but flawed. Story is a bit....lets just say there's holes in the writing. It's enjoyable enough if you take it at face value. As for the missions themselves, they've got a pretty nice variety to them but the difficulty is rather high even on easy. It could be better but it could also be worse.

I think the reason why it's flawed is because it feels rushed. It doesn't take its time to dive into the personalities and motivations of characters beyond the skin-deep stereotype so some acts or decisions by characters are rather weird and seemingly "out of character".

Yea I think that's right and its disappointing too because these characters clearly had a decent amount of thought put into them.

[chemical_art]

To be a stick in the mud, I did not find my jive when it was on that free weekend.

It is very well possible it takes more then a weekend to really get into it, but my backlog is long enough already including the games that *do* jive at the start.

[Mánagarmr]

To be a stick in the mud, I did not find my jive when it was on that free weekend.

It is very well possible it takes more then a weekend to really get into it, but my backlog is long enough already including the games that *do* jive at the start.

Not everyone has to like it. It's got flaws there's no doubt about it, and it's hardly the second coming of christ as far as RTSs go, but considering recent RTS releases...it's heads and shoulders above everything else...and still just decent. It speaks more about the state of the RTS genre than anything else. I'm cautiously interested in Ashes of the Singularity though...although there's another thread for that.

[Wingflier]

I just don't agree that the RTS games made within the past several years have been underwhelming at all, especially when compared to other genres.

Hell, just look at MMOs, they haven't changed at all for the past 15 years. Literally almost no innovation whatsoever. Look at fighting games. Look at competitive first person shooters. As if those titles have been any better? I can't think of a single genre off the top of my head that, within the past 5 years, that has done anything amazing. The exception to this might be the roguelike genre, which has been producing game after game of innovative excellence (FTL, Darkest Dungeon, anything related to XCOM, etc.)

But the RTS games that have come out in that time have been solid, or have been re-released/remastered in such a way that its major flaws were addressed. Company of Heroes 2, PA: Titans, Grey Goo, Starcraft 2 (and expansions), Dawn of War 2, Wargame: Red Dragon, and now even Act of Aggression has been revamped to satisfy its audience.

Perhaps people's standards are too high? Really I think the greatest problem with the RTS genre nowadays is simply the lack of interest, not the quality of the games themselves.

[Hearteater]

I think the problem is too many studios try and make games that fit perfectly inside a genre box, instead of making fun games people want to play. When I hear "X game is a <genre>" as the first sentence out of a developers mouth, that tell me a lot, and none of it good. If the best thing he can say about his game is what genre it belongs to, that's really sad. Genres are more about marketing, and trying to fit a game concept into one of a preset number of marketing boxes generally doesn't end well for innovation.