Rock, Paper, Shotgun

So Blizzard’s Starcraft: Ghost action game might not have seen the light of day, but it seems you’re going to be able to build your own third-person shooter within Starcraft II anyway. What? Yes, the editor is super-flexible, and is even going to support mouselook. Building a third-person shooter inside the RTS editing suite is going to be a possibility, as Blizzard demonstrated with their proof of concept at BlizzCon. Video of it in action below. The scrolling shooter is also acceptable. Cheers to sub edii for pointing out this link.
Read the rest of this entry »

Another transmission from Shacknews at Blizzcon reveals that the three races of Starcraft 2 are going to get a game each, with each game effectively being a Starcraft 2 expandalone. That’s right: the three-campaign game we were expecting is now three distinct games.

Each campaign will be very different, with [Blizzard bossman] Pardo announcing the Zerg campaign will contain RPG elements. The Protoss campaign will likewise be differentiated by elements of diplomacy. In addition, the Terran campaign will feature a Protoss mini-campaign.

Apparently each of the campaigns has enough content to justify a full, separate release. Apparently. Hmm. Two new bits of footage after the jump.
Read the rest of this entry »

Presumably because I’m still heavily damaged by a weekend of hard boozing and harder dancing in the company of those elements of RPS who enjoy fun, the loose connection between my brain and my typing fingers has dribbled out some stream of conciousness about RTS.

That strategy is on my/RPS’ radar so much at the moment is probably an inevitable result of an Autumn and Winter spent happily gorging on first-person shooters, followed by the early months of 2008 being distinctly short on big-name games. In the sudden absence of fast action snacks, we turned to our long-lasting strategy game rations for survival. It seems to be a trend within the microcosm of PC gamers I know. Where not so long ago there was this daily pile-on into Team Fortress 2 servers, now my taskbar fills with instant messages about playing Dawn of War or World In Conflict. And it’s been ace, not just for the actual playing, but also the post-match analysis, which reaches the sort of insane blow-by-blow detail that would be reason enough for the rest of the world to demand that all PC gamers be rounded up and executed for the good of humanity.
Read the rest of this entry »

I exaggerate only slightly.

Since Soulstorm is out and it looks like Dawn of War 2’s announcement may be imminent, I thought it time to transcribe a passably memorable event that I had on tape. It occurred when Alec and I toddled over to visit Relic when they first debuted Soulstorm. To be precise, when Executive Producer Jonathan Dowdeswell stopped the video, and asked if there were any questions. And a Polish Journalist showed that, yes, he had.

This lead to fifteen minutes of intense wincing and turning “Your game is nothing compared to Starcraft 2! Nothing!” into a games journalist running joke.

The origin of which I now share.
Read the rest of this entry »