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StarCraft20 years agoGosu "GosuGamers" Gamers

Starcraft: Ghost @ E3 coverage

sg17-p.jpgI arrived in Los Angeles at 10 AM, and then checked in as a part of the gaming press and proceeded to get my badge. This was the 10th anniversary of the Electronic Entertainment Expo and it felt really special attending this year. I first started out by going to Konami’s booth to meet up with some friends and check out the latest version of Dance Dance Revolution that is soon to come out in the U.S. But was that why I was there? sg16-p.jpgNo, after a couple more hours of trying to make heads and tails of where everything was I ended up going through impressive tech demos at NVIDIA's booth who were showcasing one of Blizzard’s titles, World of WarCraft which was very impressive and then stumbling through the couple of PC Consoles that were being shown off.

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What are these PC Consoles you might ask? Well, just think of playing StarCraft on your regular TV and being able to play on that couch or nice comfortable recliner. Well now it’s possible. The PC Consoles allow you to play games on your TV and wirelessly. It also simplifies the process by turning the PC box into essentially what is merely a game machine. You will not have garbage programs running in the background slowing you down (I mean, I really want to know what Microsoft is having XP run in the background that’s hogging all my memory.) sg06-p.jpgThe down side to this, of what I can see, is that programs such as BWChart, BWPlayer, and any third party programs that allow you to play on private servers, such as our very own StarGate, may not be workable on this system. I didn’t get to really ask questions about the system, but if I obtain more information I will let you know!

sg04-p.jpgI continued on through software companies. There was a theme as there typically is at E3, and this year was all about games. I would say the vast majority of the games were sequels or games branching off from an established franchise. Blizzard Entertainment was no exception this year. sg05-p.jpgWorld of WarCraft is taking the WarCraft world from real-time strategy into the massive multiplayer online world. Their other product that they were exhibiting was a branch off of our beloved StarCraft. StarCraft is getting out of the real-time strategy mode and into the action/adventure genre with StarCraft:Ghost. StarCraft:Ghost is a game where you control a ghost named Nova. Who can deny that the ghost is one of the coolest characters in StarCraft. You all loved Kerrigan before she turned Queen of Blades right? Alright all you Protoss and Zerg players can stop throwing things at me, thanks.

sg02-p.jpgThe game isn’t what you remember StarCraft being. The units are vastly more detailed now then they were back in 1998. But how much of the original game is left? sg03-p.jpgDid Blizzard abandon the old fans that are still sticking by their superior game through the think and thin, and voting in all these popularity polls that keep showing up on websites? Nope, they remember us and the many unique touches that are in the game should remind us all about that certain game of StarCraft or the first time we heard a Science Vessel say “Explorer Reporting!”


sg01-p.jpgSo, what sets StarCraft:Ghost apart from this era of Solid Snake and Sam Fisher? The StarCraft charm works itself into making the game absolutely unique from the other games. The Blizzard representative I talked to told me they are going for “the perfect balance of action and stealth”. The levels do represent that balance greatly. The first level I tried was a level in a Terran installation and you had to sneak around to get your goal accomplished. One of the first things I noticed was how attentive the AI was to any move I made. sg08-p.jpgIf I pushed up too far on the analog stick and made a noise, a marine would come over and investigate. But what was incredibly satisfying was turning on the heat vision and finding where the guards were, and once one was alone sneaking up behind them and performing an instant kill was very cool. It was not easy though. You had to tap the action button to initiate the instant kill and then stop a bouncing line in between a defined area to make the kill work (if you have played Final Fantasy X, think of Tidus' overdrives). If you missed, or the timer ran out, about three seconds, you would be found out and would have to take the enemy out the normal way.

sg11-p.jpgBut if you got the kill the unit was done for and you could have your way with them. Drag them into a dark corner or drag them to the railing and throw the body over into the dark abyss and now you’ve covered up the evidence. Now, you can’t perform an instant kill on every single character. sg09-p.jpgSometimes you do have to pull out the good old gauss rifle of Nova. This is where the fun really begins. Shoulder pads, visors, and lights are all shootable objects. What sets this game really apart and is how they have separated the game into basically three sections, and each section you have to play completely differently from the other.


sg13-p.jpgThe first is the Zerg which we all know is the race that is all about overpowering by numbers. I played a level aptly titled “Zergling Rush”. The level started out simply enough, you start in what seemed to be a bunker and your goal was to help stop the Zergling rush that was attacking the base. You run out into a trench which looks exactly like the opening movie from Brood War. You are immediately attacked by Zerglings and have to take them out. After a couple of jumping moves I performed to avoid their attacks I was able to move on. Once I got out of the trench it split into a little in-game movie that showed the massive Zergling force moving in. A new objective then popped up, get to the turret and help defend the base while an SCV was getting a siege tank online. sg14-p.jpgAfter being guided by the Blizzard representative through some ladders and over some bridges I got to an unoccupied turret. I got in and let the Zerg have it. Now, this turret is something we have never seen in StarCraft, but it is something like a machine gun that is able to rotate about 180 degrees on a platform and of course you never run out of ammo. Once a couple minutes passed of taking out hordes of Zerglings and Hydralisks the siege tank came online and the nice sounding siege mode (or not so nice if you’re on the other side) came into my ears and it was over at that point. The Zerg could not overrun the base and we won!

sg07-p.jpgsg10-p.jpgNow other Zerg missions I saw including calling down a science vessel to irradiate an overlord which was done in a similar way as the instant kill. The nice thing Blizzard has put into this game is that if you suck at timing things correctly, like myself, they start making the gap a bit bigger so it is not so hard on you, but of course it works the other way too.


sg21-p.jpgNow the Terran missions got more difficult and you had to play the game in a completely different manner then the Zerg levels. The Terran levels included sneaking into bases to disable defenses that would then allow reinforcements to get in with minimal notice by the enemy. sg19-p.jpgThis included the hacking mini-game that the Blizzard representative described to me as “not overly complex”. You had to change numbers from red to blue, but the Blizzard representative was doing it so quickly that I had a difficult time figuring out what to do, but it did not seem too bad. It looked a bit like the Matrix with lots of zeros and ones, but it was interesting none the less. Now the Terran AI was vastly different from the Zerg because hey Terrans are different then Zerg. The Terran installations had cameras and turrets a la Metal Gear Solid and you could see the Marines line of sight line like in the game I just mentioned. But the next tier of levels seemed to be vastly different, even though they were sadly absent from the E3 version.


sg20-p.jpgOne race has yet to be mentioned in this article as an enemy. The Protoss were absent from the E3 version but I spoke to a Blizzard representative about these levels. The battles against the Protoss were explained to me as being very difficult. Once one unit was aware of your presence, they could alert every single Protoss that you were there, through their infamous psionic abilities. sg18-p.jpgWhile I did not get to see this in action just hearing about made shivers through my spine. I can not wait to see how much Blizzard will push the difficulty level since at E3 the game was lacking a multiplayer component. I am hoping this will be changed soon. If the game is so intriguing in single player, maybe it will not need a multi-player version, even though co-op would be nice.


sg12-p.jpgSo if you do not have a console system right now and want to play StarCraft:Ghost, which one should you buy? From what I saw at E3 the version to get was the Xbox version. This is the version they are working on the most and they basically are porting the game to the Gamecube and then to the Playstation2. So the Xbox version looked the smoothest and was the version that was the furthest along. The Blizzard representative assured me though that the slowdown I saw in the Playstation2 version, the version I got to play, would not be present in the final product. So what will be the difference between the versions? Nothing according to the Blizzard representative, except that I think if multiplayer is announced, Sony and Microsoft will start battling it out for the exclusive right to have their version of the game playable online via Xbox Live or the Playstation2 Network Adapter. At E3 the Xbox version had more levels and was just a much more clean game overall. The Gamecube was not bad at all and the Playstation2 version looked the worst. Unfortunately I was only able to play the Playstation2 version so I can’t tell you how the game controlled on the other consoles, but the controls were nice on the Playstation2 version. I have never been a big fan of any sort of shooter on console and this was really not an exception (I will take my keyboard and mouse any day thank you) but I am sure I will get used to the controls and learn to like them.


StarCraft is finally moving into the world of 3D and onto the console. I know many PC Gamers are upset that they will not get a version of this game, I am quite upset too, but I am lucky enough to own a Playstation2 and Gamecube and will be getting a copy for both systems to make sure YOU
know what the best version is. StarCraft’s future is looking bright on the consoles, so maybe selling a couple hundred thousand units of StarCraft :Ghost will prompt Blizzard to produce us a StarCraft2 or maybe even an expansion to the game we all love and play today. I know StarCraft: Ghost though will whet my appetite for more of the StarCraft story until we have a StarCraft2. We can always hope that Blizzard North’s “ secret project” is StarCraft2, but I wouldn’t put my money on it, or hold your breath for that matter. If you have any questions about the game that I might be able to answer that were not answered in this article, email me [email protected] with your questions and if I get enough questions I will have a follow-up article! StarCraft:Ghost is suppose to release in the winter quarter of this year in the United States. Check with you local video game dealer to find out when it is being released in your part of the world.



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