Starcraft Ghost Coverage:
StarCraft®: Ghost™, Blizzard Entertainment's upcoming tactical-action console game, refines the epic experience of StarCraft to the level of the individual soldier. Engage the StarCraft universe face-to-face as a deadly Ghost operative in the employ of the Dominion. With the help of determined allies, follow story-driven missions that take you from massive planetary battles through dangerous solo operations to an unexpected turn of events that leaves the fate of the universe in your hands.
General Information:
The exact platforms that Starcraft Ghost supports are not yet decided, but it definitely won't be developed for PC or Mac.
Starcraft: Ghost is a third person shooter, and will form an integral part of the Starcraft Storyline.
Blizzard has not yet decided whether Starcraft: Ghost will support online gaming.
The Game is planned for a late 2003 launch
Gameplay:
So far, nova had over 70 animation sequences, including your typical jumps, rolls and crouches as well as more innovative moves, such as sliding down ladders and walking on tight ropes.
Blizzard plans to add even more animations sequences
Nova is able to 'Dangle Sniper', a move in which she hangs off some sort of a object and destroy her enemies while upside down.
There will be a mana system in Starcraft: Ghost, and all Psi Abilities cost Mana. Your mana slowly regenrates over time and regenrates faster as you progress through the game.
In addition to Psionic Sight, Psionic Speed, Lockdown and Cloak, Blizzard plans for at least two more Psi Abilities.
Nova's main weapon will triples up as a Gauss Rifle, a Sniper Rifle and a Grenade Launcher.
There are plenty of special weapons and ammo, such as heat seeking grenades and the flamethrower.
In addition, you can go fight enemies hand to hand with a power scyth
Players will be able to assume control of anything in the battle, including, but not limited to, Vultures, Goliaths, Siege Tanks and Turrets.
You will be able to call down nuclear, yomato and siege tank blasts with that laser pointer of yours.
Nuclear blasts are huge
You will gain control of all the abilities a Ghost has in Starcraft, as well as plenty of new ones.
Nova will be able to read minds of enemies, see through walls, scale fences, and have superior reflexes. There will be something similar to Bullet Time in Dues Ex.
There will be Vehicles to drive, so far, Blizzard confirms that the Vulture and the Wraith are in.
Nearly all the units in Starcraft will make a return, and feature their abilities, such as burrowing Lurkers and whatever else.
Unlike Thief, players will feel like they're in a massive battle, and will be able to call down Yomato and Nuclear strikes, as well as reinforcements.
The damage you deal to an enemy depends on whereabouts you hit it.
Units will behave in an animated fashion, for instances, marines will assault you with insults when they fight you.
Single Player:
Directly from Gamespot, we have an account of the first mission:
The demo begins with Nova being sent into a rogue Terran base for the purposes of collecting information for the confederation. After she drops from the ceiling and lands on the top of a Terran drop ship, players can fully maneuver the camera around to look for any enemies in the area. In this case, a couple of marines are patrolling the area, so you can decide if you want to engage in a full fire fight or use the ghost's cloaking ability. The person giving the demonstration opts for stealth and quietly walks by the rogue marines and through a door, and down a ladder located nearby.
Once inside this new area, Nova spots a camera over a door leading into yet another room. Unlike Metal Gear Solid that shows a camera's line of sight through a radar, Starcraft: Ghost actually displays it in the game, so you'll see a bright yellow streak indicating where the camera's currently looking. After avoiding the camera, Nova walks into the next area, but instead of just charging right in, she starts to use her special sight ability that enables her to see objects behind walls to see if there are any marines scouting the area. Unsurprisingly, her sight reveals the neon-outline of a Terran marine walking just around the corner, so Nova walks around the corner and begins to open fire with her standard assault rifle. However, it appears that the marines can take quite a bit of punishment as Nova unloads a constant stream of fire for about 20 seconds before taking the marine down. Interestingly, if you don't kill these marines in a timely manner, an alarm will sound and additional marines will come in to help, but the marine that came running in to help his comrade met with Nova's grenade launcher and was dead within seconds.
After going through another door, Nova reaches a generator room with an enormous spinning fan located at the bottom. Here, Starcraft: Ghost resembles more of a platformer rather than a tactical action game because you have to make several hair-raising jumps in order to make it to the bottom of the generator and avoid being chopped to pieces by the blades on the fan. Once she safely reaches the bottom, another character back at the confederation base tells Nova that this particular facility was being used to study the Zerg, and that the specimens somehow managed to escape from their containment areas.
At this point, a couple of zerglings start to break through the metal panels in the floor and come charging at Nova, but because she's a ghost, she has the ability to move at hyper sonic-speed, which causes everything else in the environment to slowdown-it's somewhat similar to the bullet-time effect seen in The Matrix or recent games such as Max Payne and Dead to Rights. The zerglings are summarily destroyed and Nova goes into the next area where a large zerg hydrolisk pushes over a table while running at Nova. Instead of using her speed ability again, Nova busts out the flame thrower that bathes the room and all of the objects inside in a bright light as the hydralisk catches on fire and then falls to the ground.
Why SC:G is for Console Only:
Many PC Player's feel betrayed that SC:Ghost is a console only game. Bill Roper has responded with the following explanation (Kudos to Gamespy):
We’ve definitely seen a lot of comments from PC gamers concerned that we’re abandoning PC gaming. I think that the important thing to remember is that even though we are a relatively small company, we do have enough teams to work on more than one product at a time. We were working on World of Warcraft at the same time we were working on Warcraft III. One of the reasons we wanted to do a joint development with Nihilistic is that we didn’t have enough people on our own to do a big console game. I guess the important thing to remember is that one project doesn’t necessarily impact another.
So the work on StarCraft: Ghost doesn’t impact the World of Warcraft team. It doesn’t impact what the Warcraft III team is doing next. It doesn’t preclude us from doing anything else in the StarCraft universe. We certainly don’t see StarCraft: Ghost as being something that replaced StarCraft II. It’s just as likely that StarCraft II will be released at the same time as Ghost. We had two Warcraft teams working at the same time.
If you're not happy with this. You can sign this petition to try to convince Blizzard that they should release the game on PC:
