Gaming Target - Xbox: StarCraft: Ghost

Written by Leigh Culpin on April 24, 2003

Updated Look: When it snows, itЕ Blizzard(s)

Take one part Sam Fisher, one part Lara Croft, one part StartCraft and two parts kick-ass and you have an idea of what you're going to see in the latest StarCraft incarnation Ц Ghost. Deciding for whatever reason to stray from their standard formula, Blizzard is taking a leap into the unknown and throwing a third person stealth-action game our way, and the StarCraft universe has never looked so good.

Enter the world of Nova, an elite member of a Ghost unit, who has not only standard weapons at her disposal (and by standard I mean really kick-ass weaponry Ц Nova's rifle can fire around a dozen different grenade types, not to mention being able to make Sam Fisher's SC-20K look like a pea-shooter) but some good ol' Psi powers thrown into the mix too Ц fans of the series will recognize her abilities to call down nuclear strikes and use the lockdown ability to disable mechanical units, but will be thrilled to see the new arsenal the game will equip you with: a cloaking ability, a time-slowing ability, and of course a vision mode which again puts poor ol' Sam to shame by combining IR and UV modes into one. The coolness is so amazing it practically hurts.

It doesn't stop there either Ц Nova has more moves than you can shake a stick at, and combined with the fact that she's going to look damn cool doing them, we're quite possibly looking at a redefinition of the 3rd person genre here. Then there's the fact that game developers are slowly realizing that taking chances can be a very good thing Ц hybrid games rate huge on my list and I must say that Ghost looks to be taking a bit of that into consideration; while the game is more or less linear, you can get to your objectives in a variety of ways (stealth, brute force, driving vehicles or getting into turrets), a la Deus Ex.

Naturally some way of dealing with the really big baddies (and groups of them) needed to be implemented, and through the call-down menu (accessed while sniping) this is very much the case Ц not only can you call down nuclear strikes, but dropping a friendly siege tank to help out or throwing down some hardcore insect repellent to deal with those nasty Zerg will be only a couple clicks away.

AI is told to easily rival Halo's, and don't be too surprised when different types of enemies react differently to you depending on their numbers, abilities and surroundings Ц Blizzard's sparing no expense in this area, pushing extremely hard to really bring the StarCraft universe to glorified 3D life. And it's looking damn pretty too Ц as if it wasn't cool enough to see Zerg, Protoss and your favourite Terran units up close in full 3D detail, the environments look astounding (not to mention huge), the characters are all very true to the original designs (the voices of the original characters, where applicable, will be found here), and Nova makes Lara look both disproportioned and very outdated.