Haze (PS3)

I had played all of Free Radicals previous games before, and the Timesplitters series were some of my most played fps games on my xbox.I heard about Haze on release and decided it would be worth buying if I had a PS3, at the time I only had a 360.So after I got a PS3 for Christmas, I decided I should buy Haze and judge it for myself.Graphically the game is mostly excellent, there are some textures that appear low-res, but this is an issue in nearly every game I've played, lots of the textures in Half-Life 2 have exactly the same issues so I don't really see how Critics can blame Haze for this.The Storyline is excellent, there were many sections that actually made me question what NATO and other forces were doing in countries like Iraq and Afghanistan, and how the insurgency encountered is actually an act of defence not aggression.The controls work well and there are a few places in the game where the six-axis controls work well, noticeably when your character is set on fire.The online is fantastic, as well as standard deathmatch gamemodes that Timesplitters did so well it also features more in-depth skirmish modes, which are like mini-missions with 8 players on each side.Overall Haze is an excellent game that unfortunately got shunned by the critics.

Lets start with the good part. Haze is an absolutely brilliant story premise with it's chemically dependent soldiers waging dubious wars in foreign parts backed by a shadowy, all-powerful private military corporation. It has both sci-fi intrigue and uncomfortable echoes with current real-world events.However make no mistake Haze is utter, utter drek.I don't work in the software industry and in truth I don't really know how it works but I would imagine it's something like this: Sony really, really need a big hit exclusive game for the PS3, which at the time of writing is little more than a really expensive Blu-Ray player (in my house anyway). Free Radical are given a large money advance to start developing Haze. Things are going well and the deadline is still miles away. Sony start ramping up the hype surrounding Haze. Behind the scenes Free Radical are experiencing some problems and that deadline is getting closer. Sony's PS3 is being crushed by the 360 in Europe and the US and so they ramp the hype up to fever pitch, still not in possession of a Bioshock sized hit exclusive. Free Radical start to panic as the deadline draws near. Under pressure from Sony not to let the release date slip they abandon some of the lofty plans they had for the game. Time they hoped to spend smoothing textures, filling in detail and deepening the experience no longer exists.Release date comes and tellingly they are too scared to give pre-release copies to the press.Says it all doesn't it.My first problem is that this simply isn't a next gen game. It's a PS2 generation FPS with tarted up graphical textures. Here's why: The whole point of the PS3/360 generation of consoles was supposed to be not just graphical advances but processing grunt too. In Haze you are supposed to be part of an army and yet your team consists of two or three other guys and your enemies never number more than four at a time. It's simply pathetic. Like Medal of Honour Frontline - and that was nearly a decade ago.In the early levels when you can use the drug Nektar to heighten your fighting skills it is tempting not to do so as using it causes dreadful visual distortions on screen that are far too frequent to be anything other than nauseating and annoying.For a supposed premier FPS the voice acting and some of the character models are terrible with the ambient character dialogue of the guerrillas grating particularly badly. The cut-scenes too are long and bland with uninspired dialogue and often nothing but the waxy, inanimate face of another character to look at.The set-pieces blow chunks too with dull vehicles bumping about in small, linear levels quite contrary to the laws of physics. The scene in the copper smelting plant with the drop ship versus the missile turret would have been laughable even on the PS2. When you get behind the wheel of a vehicle yourself things don't get any better. While the control system is very good, connecting with the scenery results in the vehicle coming to an almost dead stop.As if all this wasn't bad enough, the weapons are lifeless and uninspired, the visual effects lacklustre and the levels totally and utterly linear. The god-awful `play dead' feature is worthless and only the Nektar grenade feature managed to raise a smile.Having paid the going rate for this game certainly didn't.When I had only had my 360 for a few months I considered Ghost Recon - Advanced Warfighter a big disappointment but this is exponentially worse.I really didn't want to be saying this but this game is getting sold as soon as I've finished the story mode (I want to stay with it just to see how bad it'll get) and sadly it is nothing more than another blow to the PS3 at a time when it really doesn't need it.

I bought this game as I had seen it reviewed on a game show and wanted a FPS for my new PS3. I was quite surprised by the quality of this game, the storyling isnt great to be honest but the gameplay is ejoyable.Half of the game you are fighting with the treasured necter which makes you semi-super-human, you heal faster, run faster, can see enemies, mines etc... and it is good fun getting your "hit" of necter. Then, things take a turn for the worst and you are without necter for the rest of the game (I wont go into details as I dont want to spoil the story for people). One of the down points is that your character can only carry two weapons at once, it is good how you dont need to rely on health packs, you just need to douck out the fighting to let your health stabilize. The vehicles are good fun to drive, and there are a good amount of levels to play.The game is great value for money and worth buying for the solo play and for the online play. The game gains longetivity from this, alas it is the way these days that people say a game will not be popular unless it has online content. I feel this is not true, the game is very playable solo, the online content is a nice little extra, capture and hold levels, deathmatch, etc... There is also free downloadable content from the PS3 store, which is always a good touch.Also, download the Haze theme for your PS3, it is quite nice :)And so, I give this game 4 out of 5 stars, it is good, but not the greatest FPS I have played, but do buy it, it is fun.