Anyone tried Haze? It's terrible!

[popisdead uk]

I think people expected this game to be much more than it is and they were just extremely disappointed. I find it quite insulting that the developers could even think it would be a Halo 3 killer....They are either extremely arrogant or just plain stupid. People like these should just be ignored and not supported. They get everyone excited then they deliver crap. I am a huge fan of Ubisoft titles and I was very angry to see this massive failure :no: Oh well, maybe next time.

It's not a Ubisoft title mate, they just published it. Free Radical made the game.

[Smigit]

My mate played and hated it and is considering returning it to EB and exchanging it with something else.

[popisdead uk]

My mate played and hated it and is considering returning it to EB and exchanging it with something else.

Its not great is it...

Get Rock Band.

[Dc'1]

I think it is pretty good so far... Am I the only one? lol. 4.5 is a completely wrong score in my view, I'd say 6,7 or even 8.

Though the nectar disruptions are quite creepy :( lol

[Dirk]

I played the demo by myself and then asked my friend to play with me and this might be the first game in a long time that I can't even be bothered to put on my gamefly list. I disliked it that much.

[popisdead uk]

I think it is pretty good so far... Am I the only one? lol. 4.5 is a completely wrong score in my view, I'd say 6,7 or even 8.

Though the nectar disruptions are quite creepy :( lol

You're not mate, I personally think its nothing more than average - 6.5/7 out of 10. I agree that the 4.5 is out of order.

[Nightz]

Got my Gamefly copy yesterday and played through the first couple of levels. Some quick impressions:

- The game is definitely not 4.5 bad, but nowhere near the 8-10 range. It's your average shooter, so I would say about a 6 or 7.

- Graphics: not so great. At some places there are some Xbox-quality graphics.

- Sound: The weapons and effects sound good. The dialog, especially on the Mantel side, is atrocious. I actually wanted to turn the game off at the beginning cutscene because those Mantel soldiers were pretty annoying. One word that I never ever want to hear again: BOOSH!

- Gameplay: Not bad. Plays like a generic shooter. The Nectar gives you a pretty good advantage when you're on the Mantel side, so it makes the game quite a bit easier. I actually prefer playing on the rebel side as there's a little bit more of a challenge. If you ever play this, play with other players on co-op. The team AI in this game isn't that great.

- Story/concept: I actually like the concept of the game. Some of the visuals do get you thinking, and I like how the main character is coming to terms with the truth about the war that they are fighting. All bad things about the game aside, it's the story that'll make me want to complete the game.

Again, these are from playing the first few levels, so some of them could change. I have not tried multiplayer yet, but will do so sometime today or tomorrow.

[popisdead uk]

^^ Agree with you. Nice little review.

[Deletedforeverhaha]

Haze reminds me of Project Snowblind. A generic first person shooter with a generic plot and generic characters that was fun to play through. They all take the good features of the best games at that time. Haze sees to take after Cod4 and Crysis. Nothing eye opening and that is why it deserves a 7.

Project Snowblind:

Haze:

Edited May 25, 2008 by masked unknown

[DirtyLarry Veteran]

I also got my copy from Gamefly, and I also think it is not a 4.5 game, but it also is not a 9-10 game either. Not even an 8. I would personally say it is in the area of a 6.5-7.5

I only played the first three levels, so I am only basing my opinion on a pretty short time of play.

With that said...

The vehicle level was incredibly weak. The handling of it was very, very arcady, and the AI soldiers occupying it with me were truly dumb as nails, no help at all. I would have much preferred that they dropped the AI, and also gave the player control of the guns as well. Oh well.

The FPS aspect of the game is standard FPS fare. Nothing groundbreaking at all, but nothing all that bad either.

The voice acting is incredibly bad, it really is. I believe the soldiers are so over the top and incredibly stereotypical to actually try and make some kind of "political statement" if you will based on stereotypical "US Soldier Machismo," but they failed miserably if that was there intent. The lines they say are so over the top and stupid and so poorly acted it is not even funny. Also the main character obviously has some kind of "morality" to him, but the lines he says are so lifeless they truly make whatever he has to say painfully corny and as such pretty irrelevant. The funny thing is I could hardly care less about the story in FPS's, at the end of the day I personally enjoy shooting things much more than if the story is a good one or not, but this game does make me realize that bad story or not, the voice acting needs to be done right, or it just is very apparent it is not good.

The cutscenes are also poorly done. Lifeless animations combined with the aforementioned poor voice over work, and they are painful to sit through. Worse yet, you cannot skip through them unless I am missing some magical button combination that lets you. I tried everything though so I am pretty sure you cannot do it.

The game itself just seems to suffer from a really bad case of no polish to anything.

A perfect example is the level from the demo, which is the first level. In this level, you get a tutorial on how to use Nectar, the very major gameplay "gimmick" when you are on the Mantel portion of the game, so it is a pretty big deal in regards to the game itself while you are a solider. The whole tutorial for using nectar is as low budget as it gets. A very common text box comes up explaining what you need to do, and in this day and age when games do this, 95% of the time it is also accompanied by a voice as well, making it seem fairly legit. This game is just a bad looking text box with the text. It just stuck out. What REALLY makes it stand out as something they just did not get around to finishing is in the vehicle level, you also get your tutorial on how to drive the vehicle. And guess what? Same text box (albeit it smaller), but THIS TIME around there is indeed a female narrator also saying what is in the text box.

So why does one tutorial text box have a voice over and another does not? I can only guess it is a result of pushing a game out that was not ready. And this is apparant in most every aspect of Haze itself... despite pushing back the game several times from my recollection, it still needed much, much more time IMO. Someone somewhere was eager to meet a release date, and it made the game suffer tremendously.

I am going to give it a few more levels, actually I want to try and make it to where you switch sides if I can, but honestly if it is more of what I have already experienced, I think I will be sending this game back fairly soon.

[American Ninja]

have you guys tried play it 4 player co-op? and how is the multiplayer?

[popisdead uk]

have you guys tried play it 4 player co-op? and how is the multiplayer?

The co-op is its best feature, and multiplayer is also decent.

[obsolete_power]

It's not a Ubisoft title mate, they just published it. Free Radical made the game.

Yes you are quite right, my bad!

[Dc'1]

have you guys tried play it 4 player co-op? and how is the multiplayer?

The multiplayer I think is actualy pretty good :) could use a few more game modes though...

As for the co-op, I've never tried it on the full game, only the demo.

[jokeripa]

I played the demo at my friends, I was expecting it too be alot better. But how sick does the pre-rendered scenes look?

[Jimmy0]

My brother had this on pre-order, I promptly showed him the demo and a few online reviews and suffice to say he didn't pick it up after that.

He said he might pick it up second hand when its a lot cheaper for the 4 player co-op experience. (Y)

[obsolete_power]

My brother had this on pre-order, I promptly showed him the demo and a few online reviews and suffice to say he didn't pick it up after that.

He said he might pick it up second hand when its a lot cheaper for the 4 player co-op experience. (Y)

Ouch....these developers will definitely suffer because of this title! I swung by Blockbusters all over Toronto and very few Haze copies are rented out. And they have alot because they, like everyone else were expecting this game to be BIG.

[Nightz]

so i beat the game today and played a bit of multiplayer. here are my final impressions:

- the story that i was excited about in my earlier post? it gets meh near the end. i still wanted to beat the game to find out what happens, but when i did beat it, i was thinking to myself, "is that it?"

- 4 player co-op is definitely the way to go. i played some sections by myself and found then kinda boring. but when people jumped into my game, it got a little bit better. not by much though. :p

- multiplayer is decent. you can tell that they spent more time on the multi than the single player experience. i only played a few rounds of team deathmatch and i had fun for the most part. it's still generic and the experience didn't feel "next-gen" though.

so yeah, the game is ok. my final rating would be a 6/10. fun at times, but not worth buying. my copy's headed back to gamefly tomorrow.

[popisdead uk]

Ouch....these developers will definitely suffer because of this title! I swung by Blockbusters all over Toronto and very few Haze copies are rented out. And they have alot because they, like everyone else were expecting this game to be BIG.

Its one game. Far from the end of the world.

[red.]

What i'm worried about is that there seems to be quite a few graphics issues and supposedly they are going to be using the Haze engine for the next TimeSplitters game.

[DirtyLarry Veteran]

Anyone here an IGN Insider (I used to be but stopped paying last year)??

Reason I ask is they have an alternate take on Haze here, and I am curious to read it.

[obsolete_power]

Wow they make you pay so you can read their articles? DirtyLarry, it seems like you did the right thing to stop paying them.

[Neo003]

Here you go.. :p

Part 1 of 2

If games are a communicative art, how can you understand gameplay? How can interacting in a game world communicate an experience that is thought-provoking and expressive? In Haze, Free Radical has committed to taking the traditional gameplay mechanics of a first-person shooter and putting them in a context where they can actually mean something. Most first person shooters cast players as the reluctant hero, stoically razing wave after wave of dehumanized villains, either ethnic stereotypes or imaginary alien races. The theme is always one of simple empowerment, providing a stark setting where grim expressions of masculine violence are the only solution to cartoonishly dire scenarios. In the span of fourteen missions you've got to destroy a super weapon, stop an alien invasion, and occasionally save your squad-mates before being greeted with a hero's welcome and a videogaming heart of valor during the end credits.

Haze is a brilliant rebuke of the jingoistic formula that advocates violence as a gameplay mechanic without serious consequence. Haze isn't an empowerment fantasy but a black-hearted satire in which violence isn't the key to saving the day but, rather, the engine that drives the protagonist to the very bottom of his gradual downward spiral. It accepts the gameplay mechanics of a traditional FPS but frames them in a way that makes success anathema to victory. The more the player wins, the more lost they become in the tangle of cruelty and delusion.

Life on Nectar.

In the opening levels of the game, Haze encourages the player to treat the game as a traditional hero story sending Shane and his squad mates on a mission to eliminate a rebel leader known as Skincoat, based on a reputation for wearing the skin of his victims. Immediately, however, the game undercuts the moral rectitude of the mission by surrounding the player with a squad of adrenalized alpha males whose delight in causing pain and suffering directly mirrors the villainy of the man you're supposed to be chasing. As you listen to your squadmates cry out in glee "This is the most fun I've had with my pants on," every time they kill a rebel soldier, it's impossible not to feel like you're marooned in the middle of the jungle with a frothing group of psychotics. It's impossible to see the difference between a man who treats human remains as fashion accessories and your own teammates who so eagerly announce their conflation of sex and murder.

How many games can you think of where the first three hours of play are spent making you increasingly uncomfortable about your actions? How many games open with the protagonist connected at the hip to frighteningly unhinged alpha males whose violent outbursts frequently veer into open masochism? Playing the first three missions in Haze is a revelatory experience in which players gradually come to understand that they are in the position of the villain and there is no excuse for the cruelty of their actions. Free Radical has built this theme directly into the gameplay with Nectar, in which the players give themselves a temporary power boost by administering a drug. Now instead of having to confront the enemy as human beings, they become abstract orange silhouettes, faceless and voiceless against the tangled jungle backdrop.

Nectar allows the player to reduce each mission to its most abstract and detached level, where you are no longer killing human beings for a specific cause, but simply eliminating highlighted obstacles from an arena. In another brilliant stroke, players are taught to mistrust their partners from the outset as your squad mates will occasionally overdose on Nectar and start shooting you in the back. In a game about the illusory context of good and evil, being shot at by your teammates is a terrific use of a familiar concept (team killing) to communicate something thematic: you are riding with the devil.

Life without Nectar.

The game continually teases players with the prospect that they are not seeing everything as it really is, offering quick flashes of rooms filled with dead bodies and blood splattered on the austere uniforms of your teammates. In the factory level just before players finally track down Skincoat, a drop in Nectar levels actually reveals that it is raining and gloomy outside. When the nectar comes back into effect, players see the environment with bright sunlight and a cheery blue sky. Where traditional shooters like Call of Duty 4 and Halo 3 open with having players trying to figure out the mystery of what their enemy is plotting, Haze encourages self-reflection. The enemy remains static, while the real mystery is focused on what exactly are the "good" guys trying to accomplish. In a genre where violent interaction is a defining necessity, Haze's ability to involve morality directly into its shooting mechanics is an extraordinary achievement.

Just when you're level of distrust for your fellow soldiers and the valor of your own cause is coming to a head, the game throws another striking turn your way in the confrontation with Skincoat (or Merino). Merino offers the player a convincing explanation for all of their misgivings and lays the seeds for Shane's eventual switch from Mantel Corp. to the rebel faction. "They feed you stories about your enemies to make you hate them. To give you the confidence to shoot them. To make you believe that you are a hero?My friend, there are two sides to every war. Are you sure you're on the right one?" Now Shane has a convenient invitation to exorcise all his feelings of discomfort and moral outrage against the same soldiers he once fought alongside.

Part 2 of 2

After deciding to turn on your former allies, Shane is stripped of all his Nectar abilities. Now the game shifts towards a more traditional shooter in which players can take up the role of heroic savior leading a ragtag group of rebels against the improbably well-equipped invading army. The grand metaphor for the rebel group is the image of a hand, which you'll see graffiti'd everywhere as a symbol of solidarity for the Promised Hand faction. While you may want to get carried away down the delusional path to becoming a hero of the Promised Hand, there are just as many disturbing experiences to be had as a rebel. One of your first acts in the village that serves as home base for the Promised Hand is to kill your old squad mates in a close quarters combat.

Hunt the pig. It deserves to die.

While there is nothing inherently sympathetic or likeable about your former team members, you are forced to confront them at close range with the revolting sound effects of bullets piercing flesh. As a Mantel soldier you only heard the firing of your gun and the cries of your teammates, but here, for the first time in the game, do you get a full audio-visual portrait of the consequences of your shots-fired. Whatever rhetorical justification the rebels may give you for killing the "junkies" and "invaders" the game's soundscape tells you there is still more to the story with its nauseatingly vivid rendering of bullets hitting flesh. The absence of these sound effects earlier in the game underscore their disturbing impact as now Shane is fully awake to just how much of a savage killer he really is, justified cause or no. The game's score further suggests the continuing conflict as every ascendant theme begins to suggest a heroic motif, dissonant notes are thrown in to create doubt and tension. The suggested discomfort is palpable, almost synaesthetic, as you guide Shane further through his killing spree.

As a rebel you'll eventually disrupt the flow of Nectar to the Mantel soldiers and be confronted with the sad sight of your former partners going into withdrawal, turning on one another, and revealing themselves to be dependent pawns. If you've been paying attention you'll see the final twist of Merino's plot to use Nector to shore up his own authority coming a mile away. There is simply no other way for the game to conclude. Haze isn't about heroism and achievement in the face of great difficulty. It's about the human capacity to destroy and be cruel to itself. The image of the hand sprayed everywhere serves as a constant reminder that action is what defines us, not the mellifluous rhetoric of Merino, nor the authoritarian propaganda of Mantel. We are what we do, and in a gameplay environment where aiming and shooting is the primary option for interacting, we are heartless animals no matter what side we fight for.

Haze is, of course, an imperfect game. The AI is largely inconsistent, sometimes using team tactics to draw players into tight quarters before bull-rushing them with a heavily-armored shotgun soldier, and other times standing alone in a corner firing at a wall for no reason at all. The level design is also a bit obtuse in places, leaving players in sprawling levels with little indication of where they're supposed to go next. Many of the indoor environments are disappointingly empty and devoid of residential flourishes of lived-in functionality. This will undoubtedly frustrate players coming to Haze looking for another rendering for the shooter as a tactical chess match. Compared to games like Gears of War or Halo 3, Haze offers a relatively simple and sometimes repetitive tactical experience.

It's easier to do when you can't see their faces.

Some have complained about the low-fidelity visuals in Haze and it's true that there are plenty of blurry textures and pop-in. Once you get past the technical issues, however, you will discover a game whose naturalistic color palate is among the most realistic and lushly realized in any current-generation game. Character models are likewise well-detailed and Mantel Soldiers have an appropriately fetishistic slant to their rubbery black uniforms. The environments themselves are also admirably sprawling and compensate for the lower-level of texture detail with scale and the relative lack of loading screens. Haze may not be the most technically impressive game, but its art and color design compare favorably with most shooters on the market.

Finally, Haze isn't about texture resolution or AI. It's about giving players an irreplaceable experience of feeling guilty for the consequences of their actions. It's a startlingly engaging game because it has the courage to not forgive or justify any of the misdeeds you will be forced to carry out in the single player campaign. Haze has taken all of the thematic conventions of shooters throughout the years and stripped them of moral equivocation. When you come to the end of any story in which you have killed hundreds, if not thousands, of people you are a monster, even if you had the best of intentions. Haze allows the player to feel that sense of regret, futility, and moral vacuousness at the heart of a game built around repetitively firing a gun. It does so with a black-hearted sense of irony, not unlike Heinlein's Starship Troopers, that is as harrowing as it is subversive. If shooters have taught us to be avenging heroes over the course of the years, Haze is an inspiring break from tradition, showing the long, circuitous path to failure and destruction. Let's to it pell mell. If not to heaven, then hand in hand to hell.

[DirtyLarry Veteran]

Wow they make you pay so you can read their articles? DirtyLarry, it seems like you did the right thing to stop paying them.

Actually I got the IGN Insider thing for being a subscriber to Fileplanet, I used to pay for the high speed servers, but that is when I was a big PC gamer and me and a few friends just shared the price so we could all get it and it definitely was a nice little perk (got into some betas early, etc.). But even then, I realized it was stupid to pay for it, and I did not even realize they were charging me yearly for like two years. :pinch: Totally messed up though they make you pay for articles. Servers and all of that I understand, but articles (especially one like this that I think people should read) is a bit messed up.

Here you go.. :p

Part 1 of 2

Part 2 of 2

Thank You Very Much. Reading Now (Y) (I would have said thank you sooner, but I forgot I asked since I was sick yesterday LOL)

[DirtyLarry Veteran]

Truly thanks again Neo003. (Y)

I had a feeling from playing the game a bit more they were going to talk exactly what they talked about. I quickly realized one of my original gripes about the mantel soldiers being so damn over the top stereotypical was actually done on purpose.

So I do think it is extremely admirable what Free Radical were doing with the overall message of story itself and it is indeed very topical for todays war time climate.

I actually stopped at the part of the game where I am about to make the switch. Funny thing is IGN said it was about 3 hours into the game, and I have maybe played 90 minutes tops, I really think just a little over an hour.

I am going to continue on since it is a rental and I want to see what it is like from the rebel side.

Honestly though a admirable story does not change the fact it is just not the most enjoyable game to play. I do think people were incredibly harsh on it, including myself, but with that said it is only okay. I do have to check out the Co Op still, but I may not have it long enough to do so, I have to send it back in time to get MGS4.