Haze

Written by Tom Clare in PS3 Game Reviews, Sunday 5 April, 2009

Released: 2008
Developer: Free Radical Design
Publisher: Ubi-Soft
Genre: FPS
Platform: PS3
Version: 1.36

Haze is proof of just how fickle hype can be. Every now a game will come along that’s groomed for greatness, and should it live up to expectations, glowing media coverage usually grants it the final significant springboard to success. On the occasions when such a game falls short however, it must face the weighty scorn of a disappointed press and, by association, an apathetic gaming public.

Haze, in the aftermath of its release and subsequent lynching, is not a bad game; indeed, it has a number of bright ideas, it’s just it tends not to make good on them. Anticipation was high and for good reason; the most evident being that was the first (and as it would transpire, last) ‘next-gen’ title from Free Radical Design, the brains behind the excellent TimeSplitters games. Early info and screenshots also were seen as promising and at the time of release, it was viewed as a major PS3 exclusive that could provide a much-needed Triple-A shoot ‘em up for Sony in their attempts to make up ground in the console race.

You control Shane Carpenter, a young soldier working for the Mantel organisation whose task is seemingly to tackle terrorism and root out the enemies of democracy. The main attribute utilised by the company is NECTAR, a performance enhancing wonder-drug that steadies your aim, makes you less susceptible to damage and reveals enemy positions in clearer focus as they develop an amber glow. Cleverly, it also dulls the user’s perceptions of horrifying warzone around them; kill an enemy and their body promptly vanishes, whilst injuries are also masked from those who use the drug. Mantel has effectively desensitised their soldiers, but as you progress, Shane’s NECTAR occasionally malfunctions, allowing for a momentary glimpse of the carnage around you.

These early sections are pretty decent, though rather easy. Whilst it’s fun to play around with the NECTAR, the objectives rarely stretch beyond area-clearing, flicking the odd switch or moving from A-to-B, in most instances accompanied by several team-mates. Disappointingly, you only get the perks of the Mantel Corporation for a couple of hours, before Shane joins the rebel Promise Hand group.

For the rest of the game, you’ll find a more familiar FPS experience. There are some genuinely good ideas, though most are put to rather banal use in the Campaign mode. Planting grenades in the ground (effectively creating a mine) is great fun in multiplayer, as you can catch out competitors trying to follow you up ladders, but as there’s so little backtracking in the Single Player mode, it’s difficult to anticipate when you’ll need to lay down such traps. The developers evidently realised this themselves late on, as there’s a section in which your allies are preparing for an enemy assault, and you are told to booby trap the grounds.

Free Radical deserve credit for the integration of a story that has a deeper, more thought-provoking message than your average FPS, but some of its characters make it difficult to enjoy. Shane, thanks to distinctly wooden dialogue delivery, comes across as a weak and forgettable hero. The hyperactive Mantel soldiers are over-the-top, abrasive and irritating, making your trips with them more heavy-going than is necessary. When Shane switches sides to the seemingly more-enlightened Promise Hand however, you’ll find they become even more intolerable, ceaselessly repeating the same five slogans over and over again. What’s more, they’re just about the most hackneyed you could possibly devise, such as: “Kill, or be killed!”. You’ll hear “Remember your promise to Merinho!” so many times in the midst of a firefight that you’ll be tempted to cap you allies just so you can give your ears a rest…

…And in doing so, it may prevent them from hindering your battle plans, of which they appear to have very little finesse in executing. The A.I. is disappointingly lightweight – allies strafe across your line of fire, whilst some enemies don’t even realise you are there until you are standing next to them, and similarly, but for the occasional use of cover, they tend not to employ much in the way of tactics either.

At intervals you are forced into the tiresome business of driving off-road vehicles to reach different destinations, and though these segments are competent in there execution, the high frequency of their appearances feels suspiciously like padding and each amounts to about as much fun as you’d expect from an FPS vehicle section (i.e. very little). And yes, as it has vehicle bits, it also comes with the obligatory selection of tedious on-rails shooting sections to plod through. They work alright; it’s just they feel a bit pointless, almost as if someone at Free Radical was making sure that Haze ticked enough ‘first-person shoot ‘em up conventions’ boxes. Multiple restart points and vehicle respawns mean they also present very little in the way of a challenge.

Visually, Haze is a bit of a flawed masterpiece. There’s a lot to like; the environments are huge and wonderfully dynamic, with meaty explosions and vivid, varied settings. In terms of show stopping set-pieces it certainly has its share; a mad dash towards a half-dilapidated hotel whilst being pursued by a gunship; accompanying the transportation of a missile across a giant, sniper-infested bridge and riding a cable car across a vast expanse whilst tackling hostiles mid-way across to name but a few. However, it loses out due to some major frailties in the game engine – the frame-rate isn’t always steady (possibly a victim of the ambitiously large levels) whilst there’s serious glitching and tearing at times too – large parts of the landscape entirely disappear, enemies will get stuck on walls or simply not activate (shooting the occasional stationary enemy can be like blasting a statue) and this in turn can prevent you from completing a mission objective. These are troubles you wouldn’t have thought possible from a team who worked on something as solid as TimeSplitters.

It’s also surprisingly short, with the Campaign offering perhaps three days worth of play. The lowest couple of skill settings are won’t pose any problems to seasoned players, but along with the lack of boss fights, they allow beginners to move through the game without too much grief. Offline multiplayer doesn’t carry the same fast thrills as TimeSplitters: Future Perfect, but the ability to choose between Mantel and Promise Hand soldiers offers a nice spin on things. The Online setup is a bit suspect though; the levels are too big, so unless you have at least ten or fifteen competitors, the deathmatches aren’t worth bothering with. Also, due to the server constantly disconnecting, I’ve never finished a game, therefore the game has never recorded any statistics of my performances. If however stats are of no concern to you, there are some cool free maps available on the PS Network.

When all is said and done, Haze is a decent, playable shoot ‘em up with just about enough smart ideas to be worth a rental. However, sloppy programming and a flawed game-engine mean it can’t live up to expectations, and thanks to the humdrum mission structure, it struggles to distinguish itself from the mountain of other first-person shooters on the market, many of which, unfortunately for Free Radical, are more clinical than Haze.

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