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StarCraft: Ghost
by Ryan Kang
Tuesday, March 16 2004
Blizzard's action game set in the StarCraft universe is PS2 bound.
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Title:
StarCraft: Ghost
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Platform:
PS2
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Publisher:
Vivendi Universal Games |
Developer:
Blizzard Entertainment |
#
of Players: 1 - 4 (Online?) |
Genre:
Action
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Origin:
United States
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Expected
Release:
Summer 2004 |
Grapevine:
The idea that you can actually go and visit the planets Mar Sara and Aiur and battle against protoss and zerg troops up close will pique any Starcraft gamer’s interest. |
When Starcraft is mentioned in any conversation the original RTS (Real Time Strategy) game comes to mind. However, Blizzard in association with Nihilistic Software, Inc. has decided to offer a new game inspired by a classic title in a completely different genre on a brand new platform. Starcraft: Ghost is a first person action shooter for consoles only. This is a big step for Blizzard since all of their previous games were released exclusively on the PC then later ported to console.
The game centers around a human female named Nova. Though not much is known about the storyline yet, it is rumored that the game is a tie-in type of story that will branch the gap between the original StarCraft and the upcoming StarCraft II, kind of like The Empire Strikes Back or The Two Towers. Nova seems to have a lot of fancy moves as her disposal as well. As an elite "Ghost" in the human army, Nova's abilities include being able to move at sonic speed, we like to think of this as bullet-time, seen in Max Payne originally. Nova will sometimes be asked to infiltrate bases and sneak past guards using her neato cloak ability. While both of these abilities are nice, once in a while Nova will be asked to shoot it out with Protoss and Zerg enemies. She'll have at least two confirmed weapons to use which include a gauss Rifle and combat pistol (very Halo sounding if you ask me). The game will even have vehicle support which should prove to be a blast in multiplayer type games.
Not much has been said about the multiplayer aspect, but if Halo 2 is going to be a trend setter, and it will, expect Blizzard to pull out all the stops including death-match, team death-match, capture the flag, and other types of multiplayer fun.
Nova's survivability goes up exponentially if you choose to be less than overt about your intentions...
While the game is receiving plenty of hype one can’t help but wonder if Starcraft: Ghost will really be the next Counter Strike, or Unreal. Blizzard responds to this inquiry in their press release highlighting the abilities unique to the character such as cloaking, super speed, painting targets, etc. While these options are cool, this ground has already been covered. The biggest draw the game has at this point, is simply offering the chance to play a part in the history of Starcraft as an individual character. Granted, the graphics will undoubtedly be phenomenal, but then again what game released on the consoles these days doesn’t look good, it’s pretty much a given.
However, a gamer can never go wrong by keeping his horizon’s broad. The idea that you can actually go and visit the planets Mar Sara and Aiur and battle against protoss and zerg troops up close will pique any Starcraft gamer’s interest, but personally I’ll rent this title before I make final judgment because these days it just seems that one FPS is no different than the other.
--- Ryan Kang
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