Yes, it looks good... but how does it PLAY? I'm waiting till the release. Blizzard pretty much outsourced most of the work to Nihilistic, so it might not have the same 'feel' as blizzard's other games. But I guess it would be hard to capture the feel of RTS games in an FPS anyway, heh.

Blizzard is a sellout for going console-only. It makes no sense why they can't develop for the PC if they're developing for the X-Box, outside of a contractual agreement.

Ya know, they could've just used MPEG-4 on the Quicktime file and saved themselves a lot of bandwidth and time.

It probably plays something like Bungie's "Oni," which was really fun. Except it looks even cooler. One thing I loved about Oni (and warcraft III, too) is that the models were somewhat blocky, but at the same time really fluid and beautiful. They moved like a real person (or a real cartoon), and were nicely proportioned. It looks like Starcraft:Ghost will be no different. This is where Everquest fails for me. Their models are like robots from the '50s.

And kudos to Blizzard for releasing it on all consoles at once. Now if only they'd make a PC version. Not likely, esp. considering the fact that my definition of PC specifies to "Mac."

> Well, Blizzard hasn't sued anybody attempting to
> do stuff they really shouldn't be doing,

And who the hell tells people what they should and shuldn't be doing? Blizzard? Uh, no... So you're wrong [bnetd.org].

"More likely two years, given Blizzard's track record on meeting projected shipping dates..."

Blizzard can get away with it. They release their games when it's ready to be released.

Personally, I'd prefer companies take a cue from Blizzard and consider the quality of their games instead of trying to meet trade-shows. With all the crap out there, there's room for companies that actually care.

Actually, I for one am rather disappointed with the direction Blizzard is taking. They made great RTS games (Warcraft I/II, StarCraft), and great RPGs (Diablo)... and then they decided that if the two genres were so popular, they ought to mix them.

Warcraft III was like Shakespeare writing a comedy-tragedy. Romeo and the Merry Wives of Windsor, anyone? From what I gather, Ghost is more of the same.

That Hyrdalisk that was right on top of him was pretty cool though :) Think of all the cool Starcraft shit that could be in the game... Lurkers and Battlecruisers and Goliaths and Archons.. thousand of zerglings.. :) could be a fun game.

But of course, who really knows. As with everything, have to wait and see...

One other point, zips are more likely to be allowed through numerous firewalls than other file types. Maybe better to say proxy servers, but you know what I mean.

The reason everyone's making 3rd person shooter games is the same one that drove everyone to make platform games back in the NES/SNES/Genesis days. They follow a simple formula, have some level cliches to keep you from having to work too hard on ideas, and with the vast number of others out there it's easy just to copy ideas directly if it gets too hard.

Everything now-a-days has to be 3d (Why this is, I don't know. I'd really like to play another side-scrolling sprite-based Mario Brothers game), and while games like Crash Bandicoot, Sonic Adventures, and Mario64 did well in certain markets, they're not the kinds of titles that sell anymore. They manifestly lack flashy graphics and things exploding, which are what sells games, apparently. As such, the console market had to move on to something else. FPSes have a pretty tight upper limit as to what you can innovate, and most releases focus on the newer, flashier, more-memory-eating graphics than any actual difference in gameplay. Console game authors can't rely on hardware upgrades to support their latest endeavour, so FPS games are pretty much right out. Third-person shooters (or just 3rd person adventure games in general, to include games like Onimusha that fit the mold but lack the guns) give you a little more freedom to innovate ("In this one you play a ninja frog with 76 secret tongue attacks to unlock!") without really moving Too far away from the "slightly-maze-like levels with plenty of moving things to make scream, bleed, and stop moving" formula.

So until someone comes up with a new display medium, we'll probably be stuck with an ever increasing selection of 3rd person adventure games and progressively more movie-like RPGs to play on consoles.