StarCraft: Ghost [Canceled] [Xbox]

During a meeting with Blizzard Entertainment, IGN was fortunate enough to see and play a demo of StarCraft Ghost's latest build. Since the last official showing at E3, Blizzard has been hard at work making the AI more intelligent, fixing the control scheme, and introducing more weapons. All of these combined elements are working together to make a more refined stealth game.

The feature most prominently displayed during the demo was the AI counters to Nova's various psi-powers. Nova is equipped with a series of different psi-powers (or super powers) that help her complete her missions. Powers include cloak, which will make her invisible to enemies, sight, which gives her thermal vision, speed, which throws her into a Max Payne like bullet time - only with more realistic movement, lock down, which will shut down all electronic devices, and call down, which lets you lace a target for an EMP, Yakari, or nuclear strike.

While these abilites surely tilt the scales in Nova's favor, she's up against some pretty tough AI. Players won't be able to sneak through entire levels cloaked. They'll be forced to actually think about situations and assess how to handle each encounter. However , you'll even have difficulty slipping past guards in cloak mode. Enemies make intelligent sweeps and are wary of everything out of the ordinary. Lock down a camera and they'll know something's amiss. Sound also plays a big role in how effective your stealth is -- if you are moving quickly guards will hear your footsteps. Also, if you get too close to a guard, he'll notice you. From this point he can call for reinforcements, start blindly firing in your general direction or call in equipment like a Science Vessel or specific sacanners that will detect cloaked beings.

You'll be pressured by all of these AI counters -- but cloaking does have its advantages. The coolest one is that if you sneak up behind a guy, you'll be able to access a stealth kill -- which is comprised of seeral different stealth animations. Nova might tap one guy on the shoulder before killing him, or she might wrap her legs around his neck and snap his spinal cord.

When in sight mode, you'll not only be able to see the thermal readout of enemies and objectives, but you'll also be able to see weak spots in amour. A Terrain might have very heavy amour, but if you use sight you'll be able to see that his weak spots are his face through his raised visor or the grenades he wears on his belt. By zooming in on these areas with the gauss rifle and then using speed to steady your rifle, you'll be able to instantly kill the marine (shooting the grenades will make him explode).

While you might think that once you have all these powers figured out, you'll have the edge over the rebel Terrans, you'll be mistaken. Since Ghost takes Nova up against Zerg and Protoss too, you'll have to utilize all your other skills in order to succeed against the other races.

When you encounter the Protoss, you'll learn that their telepathic anilities can while you're cloaked, and if they happen to rush you with a melee attack you're in trouble. We witnessed an assault on the Protoss home world. Nova was sneaking into their base, but she kept getting spotted by a cannon. The only way to eliminate it (since Protoss buildings are shielded) was to call down an EMP strike by marking the target, and then shoot the pylon through a small hole that rotates around it (its weak spot). Of course, there are several other ways that the cannon could have been destroyed, but its up to the gamer to pick the correct attack, since StarCraft Ghost is constantly changing to keep players from adapting to a certain gameplay style. Fighting the Marines is vastly different than the Protoss, and it's promised that the Zerg will display their own unique set of problems, even though they weren't shown.