Grey Goo (video game)

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Grey Goo
Greygoo-cover-art.jpg
Developer(s) Petroglyph Games [1]
Publisher(s) Grey Box [1]
Producer(s) Six Foot
Designer(s) Andrew Zoboki [2]
Composer(s) Frank Klepacki [3]
Engine GlyphX
Platform(s) Microsoft Windows [1]
ReleaseJanuary 23, 2015 [4]
Genre(s) Real-time strategy
Mode(s) Single-player, multiplayer

Grey Goo is a science fiction real-time strategy video game developed by Petroglyph Games, produced by Six Foot, and published by Grey Box on January 23, 2015 [4] for Exclusive for PC Microsoft Windows. [1] It features a playable faction based on the grey goo scenario.

Science fiction Genre of speculative fiction

Science fiction is a genre of speculative fiction that has been called the "literature of ideas". It typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, time travel, parallel universes, fictional worlds, space exploration, and extraterrestrial life. Science fiction often explores the potential consequences of scientific innovations.

Real-time strategy (RTS) is a sub-genre of strategy video games in which the game does not progress incrementally in turns. This is distinguished from turn-based strategy (TBS), in which all players take turns when playing.

A video game developer is a software developer that specializes in video game development – the process and related disciplines of creating video games. A game developer can range from one person who undertakes all tasks to a large business with employee responsibilities split between individual disciplines, such as programming, design, art, testing, etc. Most game development companies have video game publisher financial and usually marketing support. Self-funded developers are known as independent or indie developers and usually make indie games.

Contents

Gameplay

In Grey Goo players can choose one of three playable factions, the Humans, the Beta, or the Goo, [5] and use them to complete a single-player campaign or play in a competitive multiplayer mode versus other players. Each faction features a unique set of units, structures, and play style as well as its own segment of the single-player campaign. The Beta faction relies on speed, mobility, and power to dominate the battle through battle machines and specific units able to mount themselves on "hard-points" for defense. The human faction is well-rounded and highly based on reconfiguration of their base. They possess teleportation technology, able to reconfigure their sentinels and other structures and also transport their units to anywhere on the battlefield. The Goo faction features the game's namesake, self replicating nanobots that can move around the map consuming enemies and forming themselves into new units. Due to this, they only rely on pure strength and speed to destroy anything in their way. The game bases itself around "macro decisions over micro management" and features a qwert hotkey system for unit control and construction. [6] Also, maps feature terrain obstructing vision similar to games such as DotA and League of Legends . [7]

A single-player video game is a video game where input from only one player is expected throughout the course of the gaming session. A single-player game is usually a game that can only be played by one person, while "single-player mode" is usually a game mode designed to be played by a single-player, though the game also contains multi-player modes.

Player(s) versus player(s), better known as PvP, is a type of multiplayer interactive conflict within a game between two or more live participants. This is in contrast to games where players compete against computer-controlled opponents and/or players, which is referred to as player versus environment (PvE). The terms are most often used in games where both activities exist, particularly MMORPGs, MUDs, and other role-playing video games. PvP can be broadly used to describe any game, or aspect of a game, where players compete against each other. PvP is often controversial when used in role-playing games. In most cases, there are vast differences in abilities between experienced and novice players. PvP can even encourage experienced players to immediately attack and kill inexperienced players. PvP is sometimes called player killing.

<i>Defense of the Ancients</i> mod for Warcraft III

Defense of the Ancients (DotA) is a multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) mod for the video game Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos and its expansion, The Frozen Throne. The objective of the game is for each team to destroy their opponents' Ancient, a heavily guarded structure at the opposing corner of the map, which is based on the "Aeon of Strife" map for StarCraft. Players use powerful units known as heroes, and are assisted by allied teammates and AI-controlled fighters. As in role-playing games, players level up their heroes and use gold to buy equipment during the mission.

Plot

The story takes place 500 years after humans first ventured outside of the solar system. The Beta (or Mora, as they call themselves), a once-spacefaring culture, has fled with the remainder of their civilization to Ecosystem 9 (which they call Falkannan), the planet the game takes place on, from an unknown threat they call the Silent Ones. During a test firing of the wormhole they meant to use to return to the stars, they are attacked by enemies coming through the portal, or "Keyhole". These advanced drone units are first suspected to belong to the Silent Ones but are later revealed to be human in origin. As the conflict between the Beta settlers, led by Aran (Commander) Saruk, and the human forces intensifies, an explosion in orbit scatters wreckage all over their colony, from which the Goo emerge and attack both sides.

Solar System planetary system of the Sun

The Solar System is the gravitationally bound planetary system of the Sun and the objects that orbit it, either directly or indirectly. Of the objects that orbit the Sun directly, the largest are the eight planets, with the remainder being smaller objects, such as the five dwarf planets and small Solar System bodies. Of the objects that orbit the Sun indirectly—the moons—two are larger than the smallest planet, Mercury.

Wormhole hypothetical topological feature of spacetime

A wormhole is a speculative structure linking disparate points in spacetime, and is based on a special solution of the Einstein field equations solved using a Jacobian matrix and determinant. A wormhole can be visualized as a tunnel with two ends, each at separate points in spacetime. More precisely it is a transcendental bijection of the spacetime continuum, an asymptotic projection of the Calabi–Yau manifold manifesting itself in Anti-de Sitter space.

Grey goo is a hypothetical end-of-the-world scenario involving molecular nanotechnology in which out-of-control self-replicating robots consume all biomass on Earth while building more of themselves, a scenario that has been called ecophagy. The original idea assumed machines were designed to have this capability, while popularizations have assumed that machines might somehow gain this capability by accident.

After a long history of war and exploration in space, during which no intelligent life was found, humans had returned to planet Earth in an attempt to seek peace and stability in a post-scarcity society guided by AI. A signal is detected from the distant planet Ecosystem 9 in the outer Crux Arm, and the starship LSV Darwin, captained by Lucy Tak, is sent to investigate. Landing forces are engaged by the Beta (who are designated as such by the humans because their original planet was the "beta candidate" for intelligent life during previous radio telescope surveys, but subsequent investigation did not receive any more signals — likely a consequence of the Silent Ones' attack) and collect samples from the surface, including Goo, which promptly escapes and destroys the Darwin, reaching the Beta colony site in the re-entering wreckage. Despite their initial conflict, the Beta and the now-stranded humans agree to an alliance to destroy the Goo that threatens them, which is revealed to be part of the artificially intelligent "Pathfinder" Von Neumann probe system sent from Earth centuries prior to chart the galaxy in advance of the human expansion. The probes were believed to have been decommissioned when exploration was abandoned, but presumably the Goo on Ecosystem 9 somehow altered its own programming, becoming self-directing.

Post-scarcity is a theoretical economic situation in which most goods can be produced in great abundance with minimal human labor needed, so that they become available to all very cheaply or even freely. Post-scarcity does not mean that scarcity has been eliminated for all goods and services, but that all people can easily have their basic survival needs met along with some significant proportion of their desires for goods and services. Writers on the topic often emphasize that some commodities will remain scarce in a post-scarcity society.

In computer science, artificial intelligence (AI), sometimes called machine intelligence, is intelligence demonstrated by machines, in contrast to the natural intelligence displayed by humans and animals. Colloquially, the term "artificial intelligence" is used to describe machines that mimic "cognitive" functions that humans associate with other human minds, such as "learning" and "problem solving".

Scutum–Centaurus Arm spiral arm of the Milky Way Galaxy

The Scutum–Centaurus Arm, also known as Scutum-Crux arm, is a long, diffuse curving streamer of stars, gas and dust that spirals outward from the proximate end of the Milky Way's central bar. The Milky Way has been assumed since the 1950s to have four spiral arms although the evidence for this has never been strong. In 2008, observations using the Spitzer Space Telescope failed to show the expected density of red clump giants in the direction of the Sagittarius and Norma arms. In January 2014, a 12-year study into the distribution and lifespan of massive stars and a study of the distribution of masers and open clusters both found evidence for four spiral arms.

After sacrificing himself to destroy what was believed to be the last Goo on the planet, the robotic human commander Singleton's consciousness merges with the Goo. It is revealed that the Goo are attempting not to consume life, but rather to protect it from "the growing shroud of Silence" that is expanding across the galaxy — the same unknown force that destroyed the Beta civilization. All previous hostile actions were merely attempts to expand in order to effectively defend the planet. With Singleton's assistance, the Goo fights back from the brink of extinction and carves a path to the Beta's Keyhole device in the hope of contacting and reuniting with the scattered Goo across the galaxy, to stand united against the Silence. Singleton attempts to negotiate with the Humans and Beta, but the Goo is forced to destroy the opposing armies. Defeated, Saruk, Tak and others who were spared watch as countless Goo masses emerge from Keyholes across the planet. In an after-credits scene it is hinted that the "growing silence" has discovered Ecosystem 9.

Milky Way Universe events since the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago

The Milky Way is the galaxy that contains the Solar System. The name describes the galaxy's appearance from Earth: a hazy band of light seen in the night sky formed from stars that cannot be individually distinguished by the naked eye. The term Milky Way is a translation of the Latin via lactea, from the Greek γαλαξίας κύκλος. From Earth, the Milky Way appears as a band because its disk-shaped structure is viewed from within. Galileo Galilei first resolved the band of light into individual stars with his telescope in 1610. Until the early 1920s, most astronomers thought that the Milky Way contained all the stars in the Universe. Following the 1920 Great Debate between the astronomers Harlow Shapley and Heber Curtis, observations by Edwin Hubble showed that the Milky Way is just one of many galaxies. The Milky Way is a barred spiral galaxy with a diameter between 150,000 and 200,000 light-years (ly). It is estimated to contain 100–400 billion stars and more than 100 billion planets. The Solar System is located at a radius of 26,490 light-years from the Galactic Center, on the inner edge of the Orion Arm, one of the spiral-shaped concentrations of gas and dust. The stars in the innermost 10,000 light-years form a bulge and one or more bars that radiate from the bulge. The galactic center is an intense radio source known as Sagittarius A*, assumed to be a supermassive black hole of 4.100 million solar masses.

Release

Grey Goo was originally announced on March 13, 2014, with a release slated for fall 2014. [8] [9] This date was pushed back, and the game was released on January 23, 2015. [10]

The DLC pack Emergence, containing three new single player missions, was released on June 11, 2015. The missions are centered on the robotic human commander Singleton, and how he became the guiding consciousness of the Goo following the events of the main human campaign. [11]

The DLC pack The Descent of the Shroud, containing new single player missions, was released on February 1, 2016. The missions are set months after the game finishes, where it introduces a new faction, The Shroud, also called The Silent Ones.

Reception

Reception
Aggregate score
AggregatorScore
Metacritic 77/100 [12]
Review scores
PublicationScore
GameSpot 8/10 [13]
IGN 7,6/10 [14]
PC Gamer (US) 82/100 [15]
Hardcore Gamer4/5 [16]
HonestGamers 8/10 [17]
Metro 7/10 [18]
GameWatcher 8/10 [19]

Hardcore Gamer gave the game a 4 out of 5, stating: "Grey Goo is a stand-out RTS that has found an expert way of blending old with new to create something familiar but fresh. Fans of old-school real-time strategy classics such as Command & Conquer will find much to love here". [16] HonestGamers gave the game an 8 out of 10, opining it is "a reinvention of how RTS games used to be, looking back on that time when you’d send harvesters out to collect spice and hoped to hell a sandworm didn't eat the bloody thing, or when you geared up to take on that one bald guy from Nod. Just in this case, the production values have been ramped up, and it hates you just a little bit more". [17] GameWatcher scored it 8.0, saying that Grey Goo is "probably Petroglyph’s best game (especially if you’re not a Star Wars fan), it won’t steal the RTS crown from Blizzard or Creative Assembly but if you want a straight fun strategy you won’t regret being absorbed by Grey Goo". [19]

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References

  1. 1 2 3 4 "Grey Goo FAQ". GreyBox.com. Retrieved 13 January 2015.
  2. ↑ "Grey Goo, and the Rise, Fall, and Rise of the RTS" . Retrieved 28 March 2014.
  3. ↑ "Grey Goo - Creating the Soundtrack". YouTube. Petroglyph Games . Retrieved 13 January 2015.
  4. 1 2 "GREY GOO LAUNCH DATE ANNOUNCED". Greybox.com. Retrieved 13 January 2015.
  5. ↑ "Grey Goo Game Info". GreyBox.com. Archived from the original on April 12, 2015. Retrieved 13 January 2015.
  6. ↑ Zacny, Rob. "Grey Goo exclusive reveal: a throwback RTS that emphasizes macro decisions over micro management". PCGamer. Retrieved 13 January 2015.
  7. ↑ Hafer, T.J. "GREY GOO: AN UNCLEAN RTS (IN A GOOD WAY)". IGN. Retrieved 13 January 2015.
  8. ↑ Cavalli, Earnest. "Petroglyph introduces RTS Grey Goo with brief teaser, screenshots". Joystiq. Retrieved 13 January 2015.
  9. ↑ Macy, Seth. "PETROGLYPH ANNOUNCES NEW RTS GREY GOO". IGN. Retrieved 13 January 2015.
  10. ↑ "Grey Goo on Steam". store.steampowered.com. Retrieved 2015-09-17.
  11. ↑ "Discover "Emergence" Grey Goo's new DLC - News". www.greybox.com. Retrieved 2015-06-29.
  12. ↑ "Grey Goo for PC". Metacritic . Retrieved 19 June 2016.
  13. ↑ Todd, Brett. "Grey Goo Review". Gamespot. Retrieved 17 January 2016.
  14. ↑ "Grey Goo Review". IGN. Retrieved 17 January 2016.
  15. ↑ Birnbaum, Ian. "Grey Goo". PCGamer. Retrieved 17 January 2016.
  16. 1 2 Storm, Bradly (8 February 2014). "Review: Grey Goo". Hardcore Gamer. Hardcore Gamer. Retrieved 13 March 2014.
  17. 1 2 Hartley, Gary (8 February 2015). "Review: Grey Goo". HonestGamers. HonestGamers. Retrieved 13 March 2014.
  18. ↑ "Grey Goo review – get stuck into the strategy". Metro. Retrieved 17 January 2016.
  19. 1 2 "Grey Goo Review". GameWatcher. Retrieved 17 January 2016.
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