Haze

"Fight the Establishment! Free Your Mind!"

The four letter PS3 shooter that starts with "h,a" isn't as bad as I thought it would be. Actually, it's nowhere near as bad as I thought it would be considering the abysmal reviews it has received. Since I don't play very many first person shooters I would like to state that I believe I am reviewing this for the average person and not some FPS elitist.

First off I'm going to speak about the graphics:

The graphics are so-so. They are actually borderline PS2 graphics. For me, this isn't a big deal but if you like your current-gen games to have mind-blowing graphics then you'll be disappointed in this. There isn't any clipping or rendering issues, it's just not extremely textured or detailed. However, what this game lacks in graphics it makes up for in style. The design for each character and each environment has some sort of symbol involved right down to the faces of the NPCs. You'll notice at first that everything looks a bit too clean and very bright in terms of color. This ties into the storyline and is more of a design choice than a graphical problem (since your character is on a drug called "Nectar" it blinds you from any bad or stressful things happening around you, including dirt and grime). Personally, I enjoyed the clean and brightly colored look since most first person shooters pick a gray overcast for the environments making the scene look more morbid and serious. The bright happy "funland" look will soon disappear but I'll let you play through the game for you to experience when and how it happens so if you are into that grey overcast style then don't despair, it's in this game too, but at least there is some variety.

Now I will speak of the story:

The story is very political and you'll find the main character, Shane Carpenter, constantly confused about whether or not he is doing the right thing. This is another refreshing new idea for the first person shooter market. Most of the shooters on this generation's consoles star a faceless, emotionless jerk who has no doubt in his mind that blowing up that space colony in the distance is the right thing to do. Ironically, I think that Free Radical is trying to make fun of that mentality by making your first squad members just exactly that - faceless jerks who blow stuff up and say it's the right thing to do. Shane Carpenter is constantly at conflict with his choices which makes him more of a believable character than the standard cyborg, mutant, steroid-injected, faceless, jerk that has quickly become the trend of this gaming genre.

The voice acting isn't "A" material but at times they can be spot on with the character's emotions. Primarily the characters Duvall and Merino who are both two major roles in the story. Unfortunately, the worst voice actor in the game is the one that plays Shane Carpenter. It's not Resident Evil bad because he'll occasionally emote and sound relevant to the situation but at other times it sounds like the voice actor hesitated before speaking his line. Perhaps Free Radical had told him to do it that way to represent Carpenter's personality or perhaps he was just a bad voice actor. Either way, it doesn't sound very good and will make you wince a few times when he messes up a line.

For the story, the Mantel can best be described as tweaked out fratboy chuckleheads with a thirst for blood. If you are familiar with Free Radical's character personalities from other games you'll just take this as a joke. Their lines are intentionally corny to make you despise them even more, while at the same time, laugh at their low I.Q. As long as you don't try and take these characters seriously (which they shouldn't be and is obvious that Free Radical intended them to be jokes) then you shouldn't have a problem with some of their bad lines.
"This is the most fun I've had with my pants on!" <--LOL

The Promise Hand is the opposing side to the Mantel. They aren't nearly as funny to listen to because their lines are the standard "Death to the enemy!" lines and some words of encouragement towards the main character when you do something right. There is a sense of foreboding with some of their leader's words, Gabriel Merino. He seems to not let you know everything right away and makes Carpenter question, yet again, if he is fighting on the right side.

The game has a decent story but if you're a punk or totally against "the machine" then you'll LOVE the story. The thought of gunning down a henchman of some corporate jerk up in his nice building counting his money makes me feel good inside. Maybe it will for you and maybe it won't, but like most political stories you will either love it or take offense. It is in no way poorly written or terribly arranged, just very political. If anything, I have new respect for Free Radical for taking such a risky chance in making a game with political undertones.

Then there was the gameplay:

The controls are tight, the customizable button layout is a big plus that pushes past the edge of the rest of the FPS market, and the vehicles control with some stability though I think the 4 wheeled ATV of the Promise Hand needs to have less turning sensitivity but it's not beyond adjustability for the average gamer. One thing I didn't like was the fact that you can't change the look sensitivity (turning speed) for either single player or multiplayer, but that's just nitpicking since the turning speed is well enough and doesn't impede the flow of battle. A big part of the gameplay is the use of Nectar. While it is possible to complete the campaign mode without using it, Nectar does make it more interesting as well as gets you through some of those hard parts. Since the Mantel troops gain health quicker with a Nectar injection it can save your life in the middle of a gunfight if you had made the wrong decision. Nectar as a Mantel troop also makes your foes glow making it easier to find them, and it increases running speed as well as your zoom feature that every gun has. Essentially, the strategy for the Mantel is to barbarically overpower your foe and become somewhat of a juggernaut in battle.

Where some of the gameplay shines the most is with the Promise Hand special abilities. They can convert any ammo on the ground into the ammo for your currently held gun. This means that if you ever find yourself short of Sniper ammo you can just find any gun on the battlefield and convert it to Sniper ammo. The only weapon you can't do this with is the Rocket Launcher, but that is understandable for balance issues. The Promise Hand can also scavenge Nectar from the dead Mantel troops and use it on their knife and grenades. With Nectar on their knife they can cause a Nectar overload in the Mantel troops causing them to go insane and shoot the closest living thing. This works online against human players as well which makes it a key strategy for the physically weaker Promise Hand.

A grenade mixed with Nectar is another, more effective way to make the Mantel go insane. Since it is on a grenade, the Nectar is scattered across the area of the grenade blast. This will dampen the damage that the grenade can do but will leave yellow vapors in the air that will make any Mantel go insane if touched. Another ability they have with grenades is turning them into proximity mines. If you aim at the ground and hold the grenade button you can bury it and it will detonate if an enemy steps over it. This is great for securing an area in multiplayer where the best weapons are or keeping enemies from entering vehicles. Both types of grenades can be buried, the Nectar grenades or the standard grenades.

Another great ability of the Promise Hand is the ability to steal a weapon. This ability won't need to be used very often due to the abundance of weapons around but any time you find yourself lacking ammo or missing a gun you aren't necessarily a vulnerable little trooper, you can melee the opponent and steal his gun then use it to shoot him down, it feels very satisfying too when you pull it off I might add.

The last ability I'll speak of is the ability to roll. At first I thought this might be a useless ability since I had played other first person shooters with a roll and all it did was expose my character without the ability to defend myself. This roll can have the same problem but when applied correctly you'll find yourself dodging missiles and gun-volley while rolling to safety.

The AI:

The AI of the game isn't very good, but it isn't extremely bad either. It seems to be inconsistent. One minute your squad member will be running straight into a rocket sandwich and the next it will be shooting down turrets that you had missed to save your sorry butt. It was really hard for me to stay mad at the AI because for every horrible thing my squad did they had a really good thing that they did. The best I can describe the AI is that it's like a pet dog. Many times your dog will frustrate you to no end with its barking and gnawing but it will still bring you your slippers and keep you company when you feel lonely. Since I don't have anything against pet dogs I don't have anything against this AI. That doesn't mean that I don't want it to be better, it just means that I'll deal with it since there are times where the NPCs are quite helpful. The best AI I've seen is the bots in multiplayer. The bots have some pretty good AI which makes me wonder why my squad members in the campaign were so inconsistent and unreliable.

In summation, this game is a solid first person shooter with some twists on gameplay and an intriguing (yet risky) story. The game runs well, no framerate issues to speak of, and the controls are tight and responsive. It definitely is a game you can just jump into thanks to the option of fighting bots and isn't nearly as bad as the reviews will lead you on. If you haven't played Call of Duty 4 (which I haven't) this could be the best and most satisfying first person shooter you've played all year. Just don't expect MIND-BLOWING graphics.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 05/23/08

Game Release: Haze (US, 05/20/08)