Re: Games Beaten 2019
Posted: Thu Jul 11, 2019 1:57 am
1. Octopath Traveler - Switch
2. Dusk - PC
3. Forsaken Remastered - PC
4. Tales of Eternia - PS1
5. Resident Evil 2 (2019) - PC
6. Pokémon Trading Card Game - GBC
7. Metro Exodus - PC
8. Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales - PC
9. Project Warlock - PC
10. Magic: The Gathering - PC
11. Ghost 1.0 - PC
12. Call of Duty 2 - PC
13. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice - PS4
14. Revelations: The Demon Slayer - GBC
15. Mechstermination Force - Switch
16. Shadow Warrior Classic Redux - PC
17. Lost Sphear - Switch
18. Warcraft II: Beyond the Dark Portal - PC
19. Dragon Quest III - NES
20. Rage 2 - PC
21. Blood - PC
22. Harvest Moon 64 - N64
23. Battlefield V - PC
24. Sigil - PC
25. Shining Force III: Scenario 2 - Saturn
26. Shining Force III: Scenario 3 - Saturn
27. Borderlands 2: Commander Lillith and the Fight for Sanctuary - PC
28. Gato Roboto - Switch
29. Timespinner - Switch
30. Amid Evil - PC
31. Pillars of Eternity II: Beast of Winter - PC
32. Pillars of Eternity II: Seeker, Slayer, Survivor - PC
33. Pillars of Eternity II: The Forgotten Sanctum - PC
34. Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night - Switch
35. Orphan - PC
36. Project Nimbus - PC
37. Hardcore Mecha - PC
38. Grey Goo - PC
Grey Goo is an RTS by Petroglyph Games, a studio formed by a bunch of ex-Westwood employees after the studio was merged into EA Los Angeles. I was hoping their pedigree with Command & Conquer would translate into a new IP, but unfortunately it just doesn't catch the magic and ends up being a pretty mediocre RTS.
The basic plot follows three forces. The first is the Beta, an alien race who are setting up on a new planet after a threat only known as the Silent Ones destroyed their last one. They encounter a new threat on the new planet, though this threat does not seem to be the same as the Silent Ones. While dealing with this threat they also encounter something strange; a mass of nanobots that form army units and also attack them. The Beta seek to save their civilians and keep their race alive. Meanwhile, humans have seen this planet and sent their robot drones to explore; that's the first force that attacks the Beta. They finally get to have a conversation with the Beta and realize they shouldn't be fighting, and that the nanobots they dub the Goo are the remains of an old humanity probe system that didn't shut down when ordered. They come up with a plan to try and wipe out the Goo in a massive explosion, and one of the robot axillaries is lost in the process. Said robot merges with the Goo and becomes the leader of their hive consciousness, in the process discovering the Goo had encountered the Silent Ones, a force that seeks to extinguish all life. The Goo is now bent towards eliminating this threat, but the humans and Beta stand in their way. After smashing both armies the Goo is able to enact a plan to draw the Silent Ones to the planet to draw them into a trap and give the three races a chance. This finally gets everyone to realize they shouldn't fight, and the game leaves off there. While the Silent Ones (known as the Shroud) exist as a multiplayer race you don't actually get to properly fight them (the one mission where you do the trap is against special units and is mostly an interactive cutscene; it's easier than the intro missions).
The races, unfortunately are not nearly as differentiated as they seem at first blush; it's much more akin to the racial differences in Supreme Commander; every place on the tech tree has an analog in each race, it's just some subtle differences between a given counterpart unit that matters. The main differentiation between the three factions is in their base building. The Beta are built around a hub system; you place a hub that has a certain number of hardpoints, then you attach structures to those hardpoints. You have a wide range in placing hubs, but this also gives single points of failure (the hubs are generally weaker than the structures attached). The humans build around running power conduits from their headquarters to all their builds. This restricts their ability to expand a bit, but also allows them to more quickly build up their production structures (as conduits build faster than hubs). The Goo don't use traditional buildings; instead, they start with a Mother Goo which gains health when it sits on top of a resource pool (all three factions harvest from these pools). At various health breakpoints the Mother Goo has the ability to spawn off something; this could be another Mother Goo (expanding), a small unit goo, or a big unit goo. The spawning is instant, and then the production goos can transform into whatever units they want; you might get 4 infantry or 2 anti air from the same goo, as an example. This is also effectively instant. This causes the Goo to economically play very different from the other two races, as they can expand across the map much faster but also are more vulnerable (as they have no base defenses, other than the slow melee aura of the Mother Goo). It's akin to how Zerg hatcheries work in StarCraft; you spit out armies very quickly, but a given area can only spawn so fast (as you have a fixed resource gather rate) and you can't bank resources like other races can.
Personally, I don't think they go quite far enough with the Goo concept. While the economy is reasonably unique, after that the units are all pretty mundane, and a waste of a concept. The building differences of the other two factions is mostly negligible; the biggest thing you'll notice is that the humans have easier to use base defenses (the Beta garrison units on top of the tower posts of walls, costing supply, while humans use turrets which use minimal supply). And unfortunately, the campaign doesn't really salvage things to make up for it. Each race only gets five missions, with the first one being a tutorial. You end up climbing the tech tree extremely quickly as a result, and also as a result realize that the tech tree isn't really deep. The campaign also has some annoying things, such as an overreliance on spawning hostile units for objectives that require you to protect things. Even if you wipe out enemy bases you won't be safe for those portions of the objectives, which is a major feel bad. And the individual missions aren't really any longer than any other RTS"s mission; while Supreme Commander had 6 mission campaigns each mission ended up being akin to two to three standard RTS missions through both the general scale of the gameplay as well as expanding maps with new objectives midway through.
I'd only recommend this to RTS junkies; if you're just a casual fan stick to StarCraft and Command & Conquer.
2. Dusk - PC
3. Forsaken Remastered - PC
4. Tales of Eternia - PS1
5. Resident Evil 2 (2019) - PC
6. Pokémon Trading Card Game - GBC
7. Metro Exodus - PC
8. Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales - PC
9. Project Warlock - PC
10. Magic: The Gathering - PC
11. Ghost 1.0 - PC
12. Call of Duty 2 - PC
13. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice - PS4
14. Revelations: The Demon Slayer - GBC
15. Mechstermination Force - Switch
16. Shadow Warrior Classic Redux - PC
17. Lost Sphear - Switch
18. Warcraft II: Beyond the Dark Portal - PC
19. Dragon Quest III - NES
20. Rage 2 - PC
21. Blood - PC
22. Harvest Moon 64 - N64
23. Battlefield V - PC
24. Sigil - PC
25. Shining Force III: Scenario 2 - Saturn
26. Shining Force III: Scenario 3 - Saturn
27. Borderlands 2: Commander Lillith and the Fight for Sanctuary - PC
28. Gato Roboto - Switch
29. Timespinner - Switch
30. Amid Evil - PC
31. Pillars of Eternity II: Beast of Winter - PC
32. Pillars of Eternity II: Seeker, Slayer, Survivor - PC
33. Pillars of Eternity II: The Forgotten Sanctum - PC
34. Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night - Switch
35. Orphan - PC
36. Project Nimbus - PC
37. Hardcore Mecha - PC
38. Grey Goo - PC
Grey Goo is an RTS by Petroglyph Games, a studio formed by a bunch of ex-Westwood employees after the studio was merged into EA Los Angeles. I was hoping their pedigree with Command & Conquer would translate into a new IP, but unfortunately it just doesn't catch the magic and ends up being a pretty mediocre RTS.
The basic plot follows three forces. The first is the Beta, an alien race who are setting up on a new planet after a threat only known as the Silent Ones destroyed their last one. They encounter a new threat on the new planet, though this threat does not seem to be the same as the Silent Ones. While dealing with this threat they also encounter something strange; a mass of nanobots that form army units and also attack them. The Beta seek to save their civilians and keep their race alive. Meanwhile, humans have seen this planet and sent their robot drones to explore; that's the first force that attacks the Beta. They finally get to have a conversation with the Beta and realize they shouldn't be fighting, and that the nanobots they dub the Goo are the remains of an old humanity probe system that didn't shut down when ordered. They come up with a plan to try and wipe out the Goo in a massive explosion, and one of the robot axillaries is lost in the process. Said robot merges with the Goo and becomes the leader of their hive consciousness, in the process discovering the Goo had encountered the Silent Ones, a force that seeks to extinguish all life. The Goo is now bent towards eliminating this threat, but the humans and Beta stand in their way. After smashing both armies the Goo is able to enact a plan to draw the Silent Ones to the planet to draw them into a trap and give the three races a chance. This finally gets everyone to realize they shouldn't fight, and the game leaves off there. While the Silent Ones (known as the Shroud) exist as a multiplayer race you don't actually get to properly fight them (the one mission where you do the trap is against special units and is mostly an interactive cutscene; it's easier than the intro missions).
The races, unfortunately are not nearly as differentiated as they seem at first blush; it's much more akin to the racial differences in Supreme Commander; every place on the tech tree has an analog in each race, it's just some subtle differences between a given counterpart unit that matters. The main differentiation between the three factions is in their base building. The Beta are built around a hub system; you place a hub that has a certain number of hardpoints, then you attach structures to those hardpoints. You have a wide range in placing hubs, but this also gives single points of failure (the hubs are generally weaker than the structures attached). The humans build around running power conduits from their headquarters to all their builds. This restricts their ability to expand a bit, but also allows them to more quickly build up their production structures (as conduits build faster than hubs). The Goo don't use traditional buildings; instead, they start with a Mother Goo which gains health when it sits on top of a resource pool (all three factions harvest from these pools). At various health breakpoints the Mother Goo has the ability to spawn off something; this could be another Mother Goo (expanding), a small unit goo, or a big unit goo. The spawning is instant, and then the production goos can transform into whatever units they want; you might get 4 infantry or 2 anti air from the same goo, as an example. This is also effectively instant. This causes the Goo to economically play very different from the other two races, as they can expand across the map much faster but also are more vulnerable (as they have no base defenses, other than the slow melee aura of the Mother Goo). It's akin to how Zerg hatcheries work in StarCraft; you spit out armies very quickly, but a given area can only spawn so fast (as you have a fixed resource gather rate) and you can't bank resources like other races can.
Personally, I don't think they go quite far enough with the Goo concept. While the economy is reasonably unique, after that the units are all pretty mundane, and a waste of a concept. The building differences of the other two factions is mostly negligible; the biggest thing you'll notice is that the humans have easier to use base defenses (the Beta garrison units on top of the tower posts of walls, costing supply, while humans use turrets which use minimal supply). And unfortunately, the campaign doesn't really salvage things to make up for it. Each race only gets five missions, with the first one being a tutorial. You end up climbing the tech tree extremely quickly as a result, and also as a result realize that the tech tree isn't really deep. The campaign also has some annoying things, such as an overreliance on spawning hostile units for objectives that require you to protect things. Even if you wipe out enemy bases you won't be safe for those portions of the objectives, which is a major feel bad. And the individual missions aren't really any longer than any other RTS"s mission; while Supreme Commander had 6 mission campaigns each mission ended up being akin to two to three standard RTS missions through both the general scale of the gameplay as well as expanding maps with new objectives midway through.
I'd only recommend this to RTS junkies; if you're just a casual fan stick to StarCraft and Command & Conquer.