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| | Title:
StarCraft: Ghost
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System:
Xbox
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Genre:
Action
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Publisher:
Vivendi Universal
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Developer:
Blizzard Entertainment
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Release:
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Online:
No
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ESRB:
Rating Pending to Mature
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Any game that gets delayed, for the sake of being made better, is a game worth waiting for. Well, that’s my theory anyway. Hopefully veteran fans and newcomers alike, of Starcraft, will have endured the long wait for the upcoming installment of the SC series, called Starcraft: Ghost. The title is based on the black ops group for the Terran race, within the Starcraft universe. This Special Forces unit is pretty much the Starcraft equivalent of MI6 or a splinter cell, except you might want to tack on a couple of extra special abilities that might make poor Sam, Samus, Master Chief and Snake Solid, all weep.
The splinter cell in the Starcraft
While RTS fans might not know whether to rejoice for the new Starcraft game, or ready their typing fingers to e-mail rants toward Blizzard, console gamers, who are fans of the RTS series, will definitely be rejoicing. Personally, I was never good at birds-eye, top-down view, strategy games that pitted dozens of miniature units against dozens of other miniature units. The idea of a game where you could see who was attacking you, but never had the right fire-power to blast it to smithereens, was something that annoyed the heck out of me. For those of you who liked the concept of Starcraft, but just couldn’t get into the strategy elements, or for those of you who just like Starcraft, Starcraft: Ghost is the sort of game that tries to meet everyone at least half-way. Blizzard also wanted gamers to feel the presence of the Starcraft universe, and to make sure it was felt throughout the gameplay. They have also ensured that the developers have designed the game to keep story elements in context with the rest of the Starcraft universe.
The game takes on the role of featuring multiple genre elements, but primarily tasks itself on bringing stealthy; covert-ops style gameplay to the table. Gamers will take on the role of Colonel Hollar’s pupil, Nova, a young, but experienced, agent for the Terran Ghost unit. Like any black-ops member, her job is to infiltrate, incapacitate, and try to help her race take greater control of the galaxy, via any means necessary. Using a special suit, Nova can take nearly double the damage any normal human can, and she can also utilize her natural psi skills using enhanced technology from the suit. She can also wall climb, walk across tight ropes, hop or climb fences, peep from around corners, cling to ceiling fixtures and certain utility obstructions, cloak, snipe, and much more in 30 levels. The game also comes complete with a multiplayer feature with up to 16 players. Talk about jam packed.
Almost next-generation
Starcraft: Ghost has an interesting look. On a first glance you might think this game is a next-generation title, though on a second glance you might think you’re watching a high-end computer title. The game is surprisingly good-looking in comparison to some next-gen titles out on the market. The Xbox version is amazing, especially with the cloaking effects that are affected by all sorts of lighting conditions and environmental ambiance. Though, the Gamecube version was scrapped for the lack of on-line play. Swinging Apes is showing that the current generation of console gaming can still pack a heavy punch when it comes to the visual quality, and integrity, of the presentation.
The perfect predator
Cloaking isn’t anything entirely new to the world of video games. We’ve seen such a feature in the likes James Bond: Everything or Nothing, Predator: Concrete Jungle, Metal Gear: Solid, etc., etc. However, in this game the technology to cloak oneself doesn’t entirely keep you out of danger from being detected by the enemy. The cloaking abilities in this game are also reflected by the environment surrounding the cloak. For instance, certain areas with certain lighting attributes could possibly bend enough light around the contours of Nova, to give you away, such as fire or smoke effects. The cloak also has a limit on its use. So players must decide when’s a best time to apply it and when to find an alternative route through a particular area. Still, while the cloaking is in effect, players can take full advantage of being hidden from the enemies’ sight. This is particularly important, as players, for the most part, should try to dispatch of enemies unseen. This is in hopes of trying to avoid enemy reinforcements, or from being bombarded with too many foes to face at once.
Methods of infiltration
Cloaking is one method of getting past enemies. But so is hanging from a ceiling pipe upside down and sniping off the guards that are blocking the path you need to take. The various options to infiltrate and control an area rely a lot on the player’s keen sense of being stealthy. Any ledge or protruding surface that seems even remotely scalable, or usable, more than likely is.
But aside from physically manipulating the environment for stealth purposes, players will have a smorgasbord of other neat tricks at their disposal. Such as Nova’s innate psionic abilities, this gives her the ability to use a multitude of different psi skills to help her during a mission. One of those abilities includes the use of the psychic-cloak. As fore-mentioned, the cloak has a limit, as do all of her psi skills. The energy for her psi abilities is indicated in a bar beneath her health. As any particular ability is used, whether by itself or grouped with other abilities, the bar will drain accordingly.
Besides cloaking, though, Nova can communicate with the Starcraft orbiting in space, using her psychic abilities. There are just over six commands that can be issued to the command post in space from a Call-down menu. Some of the Call-down features include identifying enemies. Players can scan and send information on a particular enemy back to the HQ for future reference, and a more detailed analysis of that enemy. The Yamato Cannon, Irradiate, and an allied EMP burst on a specified target are also available from the Call-down menu. However, two of the cooler call-down features are the Arclite, which is a Siege tank sent down to wipe out your foes, and the Nuke.
The Nuke is self-explanatory. However, its effect is something rarely featured in an action video game. The Nuke option will basically wipe-out an entire area with a nuclear blast with a blooming explosion effect. Enemies will be affected by this terrible result with gagging, burning, and mostly a lot of dying. Added to this, if the explosion is not deadly enough, there is the atmospheric after-effect left behind from the massive blast. The after-effect of the blast leaving remnants of the deadly chemical in the air will also murder your foes just as well as the initial explosion.
Nova also has the psi ability to see in infra-red ad UV. This skill is called Sight. This neat little trick allows Nova to see all sorts of neat things, such as spotting a weakness in an enemy that was previously scanned using the Identify skill. Sight can also be used to track down electronic devices that Nova can interact with, or needs to destroy. If that’s not enough, Sight can also pin-point enemies who can detect you while cloaked, which will definitely come in handy if there is a roomful of baddies.
Other psi abilities can be gained or unlocked as you progress throughout the game. Some of which include the over-used, but equally cool, ability to slow time down to a near screeching halt. Actually it’s the opposite; Nova is sped up to super-sonic speeds. Yet in a game where stealth is the essential key for success, it wouldn’t make much sense running around like Sonic the hedgehog, and alerting everyone in the area. That’s why the Super-sonic ability is more like a bullet-time feature that allows you to move normally, while everyone else moves really slowly.
Well-crafted weapons
Majority of the game will take place from a 3rd person view, and the shooting will be done using an optional auto lock-on feature. However, certain weapons pack some serious recoil that’ll disrupt your aim. So shooting in increments will spare you from wasting bullets and alerting unnecessary adversaries. However, once you go into sniper mode you won’t have any lock-on help. During certain segments of the game you may have to incapacitate an enemy by targeting a specific part on their body. This can only be done effectively in the manually operated sniping mode.
While sniping, players also have the option of activating certain psionic abilities to help you out. For instance, if you need to kill off an entire group of zerg–without any of them catching on to where you are–you can activate your super-speed to slow down the entire troop. Once you bring time down to tortoise speeds, you can then snipe off each enemy with greater ease.
Besides sniping, Nova can equip a variety of deadly weapons. Her standard canister rifle allows for sniping, assault firing, and grenade launching with up to 10 different choices in explosives. Some of the grenades’ varieties are as cool as they are deadly, such as the sticky grenade (similar to the covenant grenades on Halo) or a cluster-like grenade called the Hellfire. This grenade works as a cluster bomb, except the particles are heat-seekers, and explode upon impact.
You can also take control of other weaponry within the game as well. As if your own arsenal wasn’t strong enough, players will be able to man allied and enemy turret guns. You can also take control of other enemy vehicles for whatever purpose it serves you to do so. The neat part is that Blizzard has brought gamers down into the universe of a game that was once only viewed from several kilometers up, in an overhead view. Everything is now seen up close and personal, and many of Starcraft’s vehicles and units can be interacted with up close and personal.
Strategy and deadly foes
The enemy is a sophisticated group, although they’re not sophisticated in the “James Bond” sort of way. The zerg are a diverse group of AI foes that will flank, surround, and skillfully use their environment to their advantage. If a small zerg recognizes that it can’t defeat you, it will graciously bow out of a fight to either dig itself into a hole–assuming its outside–or run for backup. That’s why it’s so important to keep silent and be stealthy. Underestimating the enemy is the biggest error a player can make in this game.
Puzzles and pulverizing go hand-in-hand
While you beat up foes, shoot enemies, and snipe from just about anywhere, there is also another aspect of the game that will challenge players apart from the tough AI. Players will take on the challenging tasks of solving puzzles. Although, these aren’t: door puzzles, find the right color-coated key puzzles, or move a box in the right position puzzle. Instead, players will have to hack and decode a variety of locks, doors, keypads, etc. Sometimes hacking into a specific system will grant you access to a restricted area, wherein other systems will require you to activate or initiate a self-destruct mechanism. Each race will also have a different pattern and key code mechanism that players will have to try to hack.
Terran key patterns must be hacked using a binary code puzzle. Players will have to match up a series of 0's and 1's in a successive pattern. As the game progresses so will the difficulty in trying to succeed in hacking into each system. The zerg has a different setup for hacking into their locking mechanisms, as Nova must use her psi powers to match her psionic wave lengths with that of the zergs’ wavelength. Once the wave lengths are matched together, Nova is given access into the system.
These mini-game puzzles are at least trying something different, as the whole box-moving deal was getting a bit tiresome. So long as it doesn’t slow down the intensity of the gameplay, it should be an entertaining addition to what is shaping up to be an interesting sci-fi adventure.
RPG multiplayer?
The multiplayer feature in Starcraft: Ghost makes up for a huge part of the content provided within the game. With up to 16 players, either the humans or zerg, as far as it has been announced, are playable in the multiplayer modes. While the standard deathmatch modes are included, there are some new multiplayer features tacked on, such as “invasion” and “global conflict”. The global conflict mode allows two teams to fight for one base, similar to Battlefield and the control points featured in that game.
In the invasion mode, players are pitted against each other by choosing from an opposing faction. Like Battlefront, Battlefield, the Siege mode on Jedi Academy or an RPG, Starcraft: Ghost’s allows players to choose from a class for either of the available factions. No matter what race you choose to play, though, you’ll have to save up points to upgrade to a higher class during the battle. For instance, the classes for the zerg include a zergling, a hydralisk, a mutalisk, or an infested marine. On the human side there is the infantry soldier, a marine, a firebat, and a ghost. You earn points for upgrades via making kills, or taking over control points throughout the multiplayer stages.
Unlike the fore-mentioned games above (except for Jedi Academy’s Siege mode), players must blast a control point that the enemy has occupied before taking it over for themselves. In this game just standing inside or on a control point isn’t enough to win it over. Though, once in control of the specified point, players can respawn there if they get fragged. Players also have the option of spending those hard earned points on changing classes, etc.
Each class also has its good and bad points. For example, zerglings only have melee attacks but move at incredible speeds. Or an infested marine can utilize the human assault weapons but moves like a staggering, drunk zombie. However, the infested marine retains a melee attack when it gets up close and personal. In the multiplayer mode the ghost unit changes, where they are limited in their weaponry, retaining only their sniping rifle and cloaking device. Moreover, players must decide which character class best suits them, and for what purpose. For instance, while the infantry soldier is relatively weak and doesn’t take much life, they can build certain resources, such as a defensive turret gun. So while some characters are weak in one way, they have great strength in other areas.
Some of the original aspects that players will have at their disposal during multiplayer battles, though, are the likes of some character classes that change how the game is played. For instance, certain zerg can burrow underground in the multiplayer battles, much in the same way that they can in the single player campaign. Another neat character class on the zerg side is the mutalisk. It’s an aerial creature that slowly flies in the air with firing energy weapons that can be charged up to do more damage. Since it flies, it requires a serious adjustment in the playing style as opposed to the run-and-gun playing scheme. Yet for those who think there is a lack of fairness...don’t fret. On the human side they can use vehicles and turret guns, which are off-limits to the zerg race. So it appears each race will have its advantages and disadvantages alike. Gamers will also have to find an affinity with a character to truly master their abilities. The multiplayer mode is definitely a big part of Starcraft: Ghost, and should be as entertaining and fun as the single-player campaign.
You can be sure to look for this game when it hit store shelves for the PS2 and Xbox, in February, 2006.
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