First Impressions: “They’re heeeeerrrrrreeee”
Blizzard. Aside from being a cold and fearsome winter condition and a tasty DQ treat, the name Blizzard automatically gets recognition with thousands of PC gamers for being one of the best RTS developers around. Now, luckily for us console gamers Blizzard is coming back to their console roots. And they’re doing it at full steam.
At last week’s Tokyo Game Show, StarCraft: Ghost was unveiled. And what an unveiling it was; Blizzard went further than simply announcing the game, as so many developers do – they gave us screenshots, game details and a select few were lucky enough to watch some gameplay footage. As in they actually have some of the in-game portions working, which would indicate that the game’s been under development for some time (no surprise, since Blizzard has a history of excellence when it comes to keeping their projects quiet when they want to). And the development time dedicated already shows – the graphics are excellent, as are the effects, and seeing all of those high-detail 3D models you were used to in StarCraft’s cutscenes come to life in-game… the sensation is phenomenal. Anyone familiar with the PC StarCraft games, debatably the most successful (and simply the best) RTS games of all time (though there was really only one full game and a couple of expansion packs), will be overjoyed at the chance to see your old enemies and/or allies in glorious full 3D, and might I add that the resemblance is more than just that – these characters might as well be the 3D models used in the original StarCraft.
Now recently I did a preview of Duality, a futuristic 3rd-person game coming next year from Trilobyte, and in that I mentioned that the game should be a major contender for the role that Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance will hold once it’s released – the king of espionage-style gameplay. However, this title might once again change hands upon Ghost’s release – it too is a 3rd-person action/espionage game. However, it resembles some of the greatest single-player games today in it’s open-ended approach to gameplay – you obviously have the option to go in brute forcing everything, shooting anything that moves, but you can also use your various skills to your advantage to stay completely hidden
Speaking of your skills, you’re going to have a very wide variety of them – almost everything the Ghost could do in StarCraft and more can be done in this game. However, for the sake of those not enlightened to the StarCraft ways, I’ll explain a bit – in the RTS, the Ghost was a one-man (or in this case woman) army, sent to take out major targets with their abilities such as cloaking, lockdowns (which disable mechanical units) and “painting” targets for nuclear strikes. These abilities all translate over into Ghost, as well as some wicked new skills – you can slow time in a somewhat Max Payne-ish move, scale walls, climb ropes, balance across thin platforms, and even use a nifty psi-blade (did I mention that Ghosts have psychic powers?). This plus your impressive weapon arsenal will all lead up to giving you the freedom of choice, allowing you to dictate how you approach any given area, and let you do so with a variety of options at your disposal either way.
This open-ended gameplay is one of the many things that made Deus Ex so popular, especially considering it’s single-player only approach. However, straying from MGS2, Deus Ex, and Duality, Ghost will have multiplayer options. It’s undecided as to whether online play will be supported or not yet, but multiplayer should be a big part of this game as well, and given Blizzard’s track record with multiplayer gaming I think we all have something to look forward too.
Ghost is also tearing a page from Halo’s book – vehicles will also be included in the game. Using them will not be necessary to complete a level, but vehicles will be placed with incentives to use them accompanying (not that anyone would need a reason to ride in some of the sweet vehicles planned). More importantly, however, is the sense of scale the game is going to give you – one of the best parts in Halo was encountering a huge battlefield filled with flood and covenant; it gave you a sense of a greater battle raging, and it simply felt incredibly huge. You felt like you were fighting not just a half dozen elite in a room accompanied by a couple grunts, but you felt apart of a war. Ghost aims to replicate this feeling, but rather than having it interspersed at one or two major points in the game, you should get this sense of feeling throughout the game, despite being a one-woman army.
