Welcome to our CHEATfactor Game Review of Grey Goo. We review the game and then factor in how the available cheats affect the overall game experience. For better or worse, our reviews will help you decide whether or not to use cheats when playing the game.

Grey Goo is a fantastic game with a dumb name. While it may not go out of it's way to break the mold in the crowded world of Real Time Strategy games, it's put together quite well and the few times it does try something new; they're fantastic ideas that you'll likely see copied in future games. Unfortunately Grey Goo and developer Grey Box have a habit of taking one step forward and two steps back as everything it does well is marred by unoriginal gameplay and random difficulty spikes that are sure to turn some gamers off. Still though, those looking for a new RTS game could do worse than Grey Goo.

Mankind has traveled to the deep reaches of space in search of new resources and has come into contact with two very different alien races. There's the Beta, an organized insect type species and the Goo, a species of blob like nano-bots that freely roam the map. The humans and the Beta have a very loose alliance going against the Goo, though as you'd expect, that'll change as you play through the game's fifteen mission campaign. There's not anything revolutionary here and though the game tries to surprise you, I was able to call the big twist from pretty early on in the game, and really anyone who's spent much time around science fiction could.

What is impressive about the campaign is how great the cut scenes look. The story may be on the bland side but it's told through a series of remarkably well animated and voiced scenes that rival pretty much anything else on the market. Some of the accent choices are a bit questionable but it's nothing more worse than other similar sci-fi stories are guilty of. I was able to sit through the campaign a lot easier thanks to the great job that the developers did here. In honest, it's a treatment that applies to most of the game, which handles itself mostly well, save for a few glitches that plagued early play throughs of the game, but seem to have been mostly fixed by the time I write this.

Gameplay wise, if you've played many RTS games, you'll feel mostly at home with Grey Goo. It's mostly built on traditional genre staples and does little to differentiate itself from the pack. The fifteen mission campaign requires you to get experience with each faction before jumping into the multiplayer modes and that may seem like a lot but you'll only get five missions with each before you're playing as the next, and as a result I often felt like I was just getting the hang of the game's quirks for each faction while the game told me I was done.

The Betas play most like other RTS factions and have major resource and building advantages over the humans; they can build everywhere and don't have to worry about connecting their bases to power conduits, which the humans do. The Beta can also build anywhere on the map, which again the humans can't do since they need to keep everything connected. In fact, the Betas even have the most powerful super unit. I get the whole make the humans seem like they're acting out of desperation for the story but I often felt like The Beta were so overpowered it was effecting how well I was enjoying the game, especially multiplayer matches where I was up against them.

The Grey Goo themselves though are one of the game's greatest innovations as they play like literally no other faction I've controlled in a Real Time Strategy game. The Goo doesn't need a base, nor does it need to stay stationary at all, it just keeps moving and can traverse areas of the map that the humans and Betas can not. Mother Goos act as a nearly unstoppable force that can suck up bases and soldiers they come in contact with and turn them into resources. This all adds to a very mobile and very adaptable faction that could change how you play Real Time Strategy games, especially for those who take the time to perfect the Goo's tactics.

Grey Goo plays it safe more often than not, but when it attempts to deviate from the heard it showcases some truly interesting ideas that could change the RTS genre if done right. Unfortunately the game is marked by sudden spikes of difficulty and once seemingly overpowered faction that makes multiplayer matches less fun. Still though, it's one of the best looking and well-done strategy games I've played in years, at least for one not made by Blizzard.