[MurderShell]

There's nothing I can say about this game that hasn't been said before so this review will be short. But the games is short too so it kinda works out, I guess.

Haze is a FPS released in 2008 for the PlayStation 3. Though it’s worth noting that the game was originally planed to be released on the Xbox 360 and PC. Haze was developed by Free Radical Design, most famous for the Timesplitters series, and published by Ubisoft.

Haze takes place over a three day period in which you play as Shane Carpenter, a Mantel soldier who joined the corporation during college in order to “make a difference”. Haze is set in South America in the Boa region where Mantel has dispatched soldiers to battle a group of rebels known as "The Promise Hand" which is led by Gabriel "Skin Coat" Merino. After a while Shane’s Nectar administrator goes on the fritz and he’s no longer getting to correct dosage causing him to see things Mantel doesn’t want him to. This leads to a few sequences that blatantly rip off F.E.A.R. and a few other horror games. Halfway through the game Shane goes over to the rebels to join them after being marked a Code Haze (which is where the game gets it's name) by Mantel and having their Black-Ops searching for you. If that wasn't cliche enough the game has you do a variant of the escort mission. Really most of what happens in this game storywise has happened in about every medium of entertainment ever.

To make an obscure reference, it's kind of like the movie Training Day, you're a wide eyed kid who is put into a situation where your superiors are severely fucked-up in the head and you later flip on them and fight against them. Sure Training Day’s plot had been done before but it was the only thing I could think to compare it to. The whole game is based around the Anti-War movement but the delivery of it is terrible. Movies like Full Metal Jacket that carry a very strong Anti-war message get their point across in the presentation. Haze has no real presentation. FMJ has characters you can identify with, characters that you like. Haze has a bunch of douchebags running around in the South American jungle killing anything that looks brown.

Shane Carpenter has a exposition where the reveals he was in college when he go swept up in Mantel's propaganda and decided to join. Whether or not he dropped out is never actually stated so one can assume he... yeah, I don't know. Normally I wouldn't care but for some reason I can't let this go. Anyway, moving on. Morgan Duvall is the squad leader while Shane is still fighting for them. Duvall is the biggest D-bag of the bunch so to speak as he's quick to lambaste everyone under the sun. Then we have Teare, Peshy, and Watchstrap. Teare is similar to Shane in that he doesn't identify with the others in the squad. While Peshy and Watchstrap are just lower ranking versions of Duvall.

When you switch to the Promise Hand you’re commanded by Merino himself. Merino tries to tell you that his people are peaceful and just want to live in harmony which is what we all want to do, but at the end of the game he has you do something that completely contradicts what he tried to show you about his people. Chock it up to the bad presentation of the plot I guess.

Nectar is a narcotic created from a plant located in the Boa region of South America (which is the real reason as to why Mantel is even there). Nectar is, well, like heroin. It's injected into you and then you go superhuman sight and health regeneration (which reminds me of something I'll talk about in the gameplay section). Like all other drugs Nectar has a down side, it’s easy to overdose on and being as how it’s so accessible to the soldiers it happens quite often. When a Mantel soldier overdoses on Nectar every human character turns black making it hard to distinguish between friend and foe. During the coarse of the game more is revealed about what happens to those you overdose on the drug.

Everything about Haze is as basic as it gets with today’s FPS games. You fallow a linear path and kill every enemy in sight. Haze features 4-player co-op which would come in handy if the game wasn’t so easy to beat by yourself to begin with. It’s really perplexing as to why certain games feature co-op when they’re easy enough to beat with the only player being drunk.

One thing that had me angry about Haze was that you’re given a life bar in the start of the game when you’re a Mantel soldier which is used to monitor when you need Nectar or not. But when you become a Promise Hand fighter it’s taken away. Why? I get you need it when you’re a Mantel soldier but why just take it away when I become a PH soldier?

The driving sections are rather schizophrenic as at certain times the vehicles can handle well and at others the handle like Halo 1 warthogs on Sidewinder. There are four vehicle sections in the game, luckily the last one doesn't require you to drive.

Something worth mentioning is that the enemy AI is retarded. Honestly some of the worst in gaming history. I swear there were times when I walked up to an enemy soldier and they didn't even notice I was there. But as soon as another one started shooting oh they sure knew I was there. I'm guessing the AI is supposed to have some sort of proximity detection that makes them react to you and if so, it's horribly broken and they can't even do their damn job. And at some points the AI is stupidly smart, like when they run around in circles so that you can't melee them.

In terms of weaponry there’s NOTHING new. Pistol, shotgun, assault rifle, sniper rifle, rocket launcher, sniper rifle, and grenade. Although at the half way mark you get the ability to attach the Mantel soldier’s Nectar administrators to grenades and make gas bombs causing the soldiers to overdose on Nectar. One thing worth noting is that you can take enemy assault rifle ammo and convert it to the one you're using at the time. The accuracy of the guns is, well, shit. It never fails only one shot out of five will go to the designated target, which can make head shots non-existent.

Multiplayer wise I can’t comment. I uninstalled this game after beating it cause for one it was taking up 5GB and I honestly didn't want to play it anymore. But seeing as how back the single-player campaign is in terms of gameplay, multiplayer can’t be much better. Plus the two DLC packs available are $10 each, which are grossly overpriced for a game this bad.

My Final Verdict: Skip. Even with it being $20 now you can do a lot better. And buyer beware, this game crashed on me numerous times.

[Johnny_C]

I have to be honest. I have no intention of playing this game. The fact that one can go and but this brand new for five dollars, speaks volumes about how good (or rather bad) it is. The only reason I would have played it, was because Free Radical made it. Let's face it, Timesplitters IS the greatest FPS ever made. That's why I'm sad that they were capable of making such a crappy game. It's not like Free Radical is anything like Grin Studios now.

Thanks god, when Free Radical closed shop (I assume due to the crappy response to Haze), EA scooped them up. Timesplitters 4 is on the way.