While World of Warcraft received the lion’s share of space at Blizzcon, StarCraft Ghost did have an entire corner of the Anaheim Convention Center dedicated to it. Row upon of row of long tables were covered with flatscreens and Xboxes, letting players get a taste of multiplayer Ghost. While we’ve all seen a fair amount of the single player game as it has evolved over the past few years, the multiplayer game has remained somewhat under wraps – until now that is … and I got some hands on time with the game.

If like me you’ve enjoyed playing StarCraft in the past, then you’re in for a real treat with Ghost. The multiplayer game is basically a third-person shooter set in the middle of a StarCraft battle. The mode I played was called Mobile Conflict, and it pitted two Terran factions against each other for control of a mobile factory. To score a point, a team had to capture the factory and launch it into the air, and then fly it back to their base.

There were four playable classes in the game, and each corresponded to a Terran unit from StarCraft: the first is the ubiquitous Marine, the flame-throwing Firebat, the Ghost stealth specialist, and a light trooper whose main role is to pilot the vehicles found in the game. And yes, the vehicles correspond to StarCraft units. You’ll be able to ride the Vulture attack cycle up to the Siege Tank, with a couple of new vehicles thrown in for good measure.

I spent some time as a Firebat, simply because there’s something special about lumbering around a battlefield with giant fuel tanks strapped to your back. Besides all that stealth and sniper rifle stuff just isn’t for me. Anyway, the Firebat is on the slow side but makes up for it with some pretty powerful weapons. The basic weapon is a dual-wielded flamethrower with each trigger on the controller tied to a flame jet. The Firebat also carries a rocket launcher, but you only get three shots with it. The coolest weapon, though, is a guided missile. Launch this bad boy and you are instantly switched to the view from the missile’s camera. Now for the really cool part: you get to guide the missile. That’s right, you can fly the missile to its target, making turns, flying around obstacles, or up and over hills. The missile will detonate when it hits something, or you can pull the trigger to detonate it in the air. Needless to say this can be a powerful weapon, so to compensate for this it takes some skill and a little luck to hit your target. At times it’s kind of like trying to control a rocket sled on a frozen lake. However, when there is an immense feeling of satisfaction when you manage to send one into a canyon after a fleeing enemy and succeed in planting the missile in his backside. Playing as a infantry soldier was also fun. On foot this class resembles an engineer, armed with an underpowered weapon but also capable of laying mines and detonating them remotely. But the fun really begins when piloting one of the vehicles found in the game. You’ll have access to both ground-based and aerial vehicles: the speeder bike, a buggy that resembles Halo’s Warthog, a tank, a fighter, and an aerial transport.

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