May 27th, 2008

by PacManPolarBear (http://sarcasticgamer.com/wp/index.php/author/pacmanpolarbear/)
http://sarcasticgamer.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/haze.jpg


The “Halo Killer.” The “flagship” FPS title for the PS3. The game that will put the PS3 “on the map.”

Haze is none of those things.

After being delayed time and time again, I was really expecting a lot from this game. You can tell me to “ignore the hype and just enjoy a good shooter” all you want, but at the end of the day the flaws in this title make doing even that next to impossible.

Check out my Haze impressions after the jump!

Only the most delusional of PS3 fanboys could possibly call this a great game.

Is Haze a total piece of crap? No, it’s not. There are definitely some great, fun moments in the game. Nectar is a pretty cool feature (enemies glow, you can take more damage etc…) and some of the maps are really well done (minus all the back tracking). You don’t get a huge selection of weapons, but everything except the flamethrower is great. Shooting is pretty fluid and feels good, especially the assault rifle. The game looks decent, but is hardly something to write home about.

Everything good about Haze is overshadowed by its many blatant and painful flaws. The AI in this game is the very definition of the word stupid. I’m talkin’ frontal lobotomy-level intelligence. Bad guys shoot walls with abandon, run past you, stand still and ignore grenades. Your squad mates are just as dumb, but are even more annoying, at times, than the enemy. They don’t take cover, vehicles will run you over and the AI seems to take pleasure in blocking your line of sight all the bloody time. Watching the friendly and enemy AI fight is like watching a bunch of 3 year olds throw down. Actually, scratch that, even 3 year olds would be more useful in a firefight than the AI in Haze is.

Words cannot describe how bad the voice acting is in this game. I seriously feel like throwing up every time I hear “Remember your promise to Merino.” Especially in an FPS, you’d think a bad story and poor voice acting wouldn’t really be that big of a deal. Unfortunately, when they’re THIS bad, it makes playing through the campaign more painful than watching Fried Green Tomatoes with your Grandma and her sewing circle.

Co-op would be fun, if the AI didn’t suck. Multi-player is average at best. The rebels pwn all. The whole time your playing this game online your thinking “I’d rather be playing COD4, Resistance…hell I’d even rather play UT3 right now.”

If you simply MUST play this game, rent it or play it at your friends place. If your looking to get your shooter fix, there are far better alternatives. What I want to know is “what the hell were all the delays for?” This game absolutely reeks of “unfinished.” All of the problems in this game are so glaring it boggles the mind that they spent so much time on it.

Resistance 2 and Killzone 2 won’t see any competition from Haze when they come out. To think I could have spent my weekend having fun, playing GTA4, but instead I played a game that not only made me scream at the TV to “SHUT UP!”, but also more than likely killed braincells I will need to play LBP.

Except its not going to break records the day it comes out. Haha.

I was so wanting to play Haze. I thought that just maybe it was interesting enough to check out. And then the demo came and I was like, "that wasn't too bad". Then the reviews came and stated what I purposely forgave and demoness. The last straw was one of my buddies. He has this weird ailment of trading in great games for crappy ones. When he traded in GTAIV for Haze I new that it wasn't meant to be. I try to use him as my ignore game meter. If I am on the fence on a game and he plays it I know that it isn't that great and I usually ignore it. Like science it worked again this time.

With all the hype and the way the game was being sold, I was getting very close to really wanting a PS3 (also because of Metal Gear). Guess I can scratch this one off of the reasons to buy a PS3. It's probably better that way so that I don't run out of money.

I bought it, played it for a bit, got disappointed, know returning it tomorrow, what a shame:(

whats so bad about it?

whats so bad about it?

There's just no bang for your buck. It's a damp squib of a game with no force behind the guns, and no impact when you take Nectar. You get a barely-audible sound effect and a barely-noticeable effect on your ability. Can you run faster? I don't know, maybe, but I didn't notice. Can you hit people harder? Sure you can, if you don't die before you get to them. The only thing that was slightly practical was the glowing of your enemies and even then it was hard to tell if they were in plain site or hiding behind a tree - it was usually the latter. Even the zoom of the rifle and pistol wasn't that useful, because every shot went straight into a tree that I couldn't even see because of the gleam of my glow-in-the-dark enemies.

Not even overdosing is that fun - I was expecting to have to wrench with the analogue sticks, maybe even shake the SIXAXIS around a little as my character struggled to control himself and his trigger finger. But no, I could stroll around like normal, albeit with my gun pointed at the sky so I didn't hit anyone. It's almost enough to say: "hey, drugs are okay, you can walk around okay if you overdose, just don't have a gun in your hand at the time".

Oh, and the voice acting's terrible too. And the textures are grainy, blocky, and very low-res; "the game runs at 576p so it's smoother" is no good excuse for this, especially since Ridge Racer 7 pulled off 1080p, 60fps gameplay with some relatively high-resolution textures.

Basically, everyone got excited because it was Free Radical making a new game, and got sucked into the hype; we all expected a new Timesplitters and so we were very, very let down.

PMPB, the way you described Nectar.... did they take inspiration from Phazon and then totally mess it up?

Even tho I don't own a PS3 I so wanted this to be a good game.

If anything puts the ps3 on the radar, it will be Resistance 2. It's such a shame that haze didn't do better, but I guess it can't be helped. We just have to wait a bit longer for that amazing ps3 game were waiting for.

Sony needs a flagship franchise, this had the perfect qualifications. An instatly recognisable character (seriously, those mantle troopers look noice!), a short snappy title and lots of little querks that the game can be remembered by.

pathetic. Insomniac games, infinity ward, nintendo, or bungie AKA a good company, could have scraped this up in about 4 months.