Haze game review

Vehicles handle very loosely, as if they weigh just a few pounds, and the odd, limited camera implemented during the driving sections adds to the awkwardness. What are you, a Communist? Thankfully, the core gameplay of a first-person shooter--the shooting proper--is smooth and silky.

The standard assault rifles handle beautifully and have just the right weight and feel, and chances are that you'll be using them for the majority of your journey. Each faction's shotgun also feels good, though it takes a few more close-range shots from the Oso shotgun to defeat a trooper than you may expect.

It's also effective at a greater range than with similar weapons in other games. The small blight on the parade of solid weaponry is the flamethrower, not just because of how it feels, but because of the frustration it initiates. If one should set you ablaze, you have to shake your controller to fan away the flames, which disturbs the momentum of battle and simply isn't much fun. The flamethrower also seems to have a much greater range than it should, so though it may not look as if the flames spewing forth are reaching your enemies, somehow you manage to set them alight anyway.

That issue could be partly due to the pixellated fire visuals, which look decidedly last-generation. In light of the PlayStation 3's powerful capabilities and the genre's ever-rising standards of technology, Haze looks good but not impressive. It certainly has its bright spots: Some of the outdoor lighting is striking, and the centerpieces of the best levels, such as the aforementioned observatory and a hotel courtyard, are rendered with great detail.

The game performs beautifully with few frame-rate jitters, so when the action is heavy or you're traveling at high speeds, things look quite nice. When things slow down, you'll notice how modest Haze actually looks.

Textures are muddled, scenery is blocky and lacks detail, and animations are clunky. Character models are also inexpressive, which only reinforces the pettiness of the story. At least Haze sounds big and boisterous, filling your ears with explosions, gunfire, and the rush of aircraft engines. These elements don't sound extraordinary, but they fulfill their roles nicely, as does the orchestral soundtrack, which injects drama into the scenes most in need of it.

But this is a game that prizes juvenile leering over multidimensional storytelling, and the voice acting is exactly what you would imagine: a cast of drill sergeant wannabes competing to see who can sound more uncivilized.

The Promised Hand is no less annoying; once you hear a rebel cry out "Remember your promise to Merino" for the hundredth time, you may be tempted to look down the barrel of your own weapon.

Then there's the awful rap tune that plays while you wait for competitors to join some online matches--and then continues to play throughout the match.

Its presence is absolutely embarrassing. Most shooter campaigns are better when someone else joins you, and Haze is no exception.

Up to three others can play along, both online and in split-screen play. The game ramps up the challenge during co-op play, and considering the horrendous AI, that's a welcome change indeed. Vehicle sequences are all the better for having a buddy join you, and some action-packed moments are improved with the presence of a few hired guns. However, not every level is suited for cooperative shooting. I played halfway through it and all I can say is that its Definitely not the best first person shooter around, and maybe you should dismiss it entirely.

While Haze comes up with an interesting concept, it can't make the majority of things fun or engaging, so it falls f Haze has always been a game I have been interested in but never really had the chance to buy. I was in the mall the other day and had some extra cash so I decided to pick up a copy and I was extremely disappointed.

For a game that had so much hype, it sure sucks. The AI is horrible. Your own teammates will literally jump out in front of your bullets while you are shooting. The voices they added for the other soldiers makes you feel When I first heard about it, I got quite excited.

Haze First Released May 20, released. If there were more stages where you had access to the drug, or were exposed to the situation, it would seem much more useful. As it stands now, the way it's handled comes across more as a tossed-off afterthought than a key element of the game. That brings up the third and perhaps largest problem with Nectar: once you've changed sides, you never get a sense that the Mantel troops use the drug against you at all.

The fact that you can play dead, steal weapons and perform other rather unique moves as a Promise Hand rebel is supposed to be a way to balance out the incredible benefits of Nectar itself. In fact, the only reason you would need to set traps or perform some of the other abilities that you have should be to balance out the powers given to the troops.

Not only do they not appear to be superhuman soldiers with exceptional sniping abilities or able to shrug off large numbers of bullets; instead, they come across like basic grunts with suits of battle armor that are inept with their weapons. All of these issues make Nectar seem like more of a gimmick than a plot device.

Then again, there are some serious AI issues that crop up within the game regardless of the side you're on, such as the fact that your allies will constantly cross your line of fire.

This makes it extremely hard to miss firing on them in the middle of battle; on the rebel side, you'll constantly find yourself reviving your troops because of an errant bullet that found its way into their skull because they were stupid enough to run in front of you as you were firing.

You'll even find that your allies will shoot you at times, making it a bit harder to avoid taking damage. Enemies aren't that much smarter, however, because there are plenty of times that you can come up on a soldier that's "hiding" behind cover or standing still in the middle of a battlefield. You can clearly see him and vice versa, but he won't fire until you've shot at him.

If you have good aim, you'll eliminate him before he even has a chance to respond. For all of the single player issues that continually crop up within the game, there is one small shining spot, which is within the multiplayer aspect of the game. Haze supports two player split-screen and up to four player co-op play from any point in the game. As long as a player is invited in thanks to the game's easy to navigate "Friends and Invites" option which ties into your actual friends list on your XMB , they can join with their friends and fight their way through the story.

This can sometimes make single player a bit more interesting, because you can rely much more on your friends to watch your back. Otherwise, you'll find yourself playing with up to 16 people through the three multiplayer modes available in the game: Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch and Team Assault.

While Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch are self-explanatory, Team Assault provides both sides with different objectives that have to be completed, such as blowing up a specific target or reaching a certain area for the rebels while Mantel is tasked with preventing the Promise Hand from gaining any ground. At the end of each multiplayer round, you can receive different merit awards based on which side you were attached to as well as general accolades.

They don't translate to anything other than bragging rights for that particular game, so you won't unlock any new weapons or stages, but it is nice to see a mild reward system in the game. That being said, you are going to have to put up with some extremely weak visuals within Haze. There is a litany of problems with the game, from the odd warping of allied soldiers that blink into view suddenly at arbitrary checkpoints to poor texture work.

Fortunately, faced with a chance to take out the apparent source of the local evil, instead you predictably switch sides and begin to wipe out all the mouthy imbeciles you've been fighting alongside. But as liberating as this might be in theory, the reality is dull: the absence of your Nectar-enhanced abilities turn the gameplay into a basic run-and-gun trudge.

That might not be such a bad thing if the game's AI was capable of putting up an engaging firefight, but it plainly is not. Enemies are predictable, idiotic, never work as a team, and seem strangely incapable of utilising the massive advantages that Nectar gives them. It's faintly forgivable to make the combat very manageable in the early stages of a game while you're an enhanced super-soldier, but to make it just as boringly straightforward when the odds are apparently against you is a strange decision.

Occasional attempts at giving the gameplay a little more depth and variety with switch-flicking 'puzzles', buggy-driving interludes or on-rails flyby shooting sorties only serve to underline the absence of inspiration and imagination. Not only that, but the handling on the driving sections is ridiculously wayward, and the ease with which you can evade roadblocks and pursuing enemies makes you wonder why they were included at all.

Elsewhere, on the rare occasions that you have to destroy a bridge or a piece of equipment, the insultingly basic process of pressing a couple of switches to make it all happen wouldn't trouble a four-year-old. That we're fifteen years on from Doom, and somehow regressing in terms of ideas and execution in a big-budget first-person shooter is slightly incredible.

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