Posts tagged PS3

Alright so this is a game which, whether merited or not, received a lot of hype from the media.  After all, Haze is from the acclaimed Ubisoft, makers of the Prince of Persia series as well as the Tom Clancy branded shooters - all of which have been well-received.  Secondarily it is a title that's exclusive to the Playstation 3, and so it was heralded as a potential system-seller that PS3 fanboys could hang upon their mantle (Mantel??) and point to as a justification of their console purchase.

Unfortunately when Haze failed to deliver on the godly expectations that had been manufactured for it the media went a little overboard with the scathing reviews.  This obviously turned a lot of gamers off and subsequently made Haze a failure in a lot of peoples' eyes.  In my opinion though, despite lacking the qualities needed to be considered a AAA title, Haze delivers in many aspects.

 

 

First of all there's the story: you're a soldier fighting for a cause you're not sure about, and you procure a ton of super-human abilities via an enhancement drug that is injected into your bloodstream via your hi-tech combat suit.  The drug is called Nectar and it makes you stronger, faster, and more accurate.  Surely nothing could go wrong here, right?

Well, as it turns out Nectar has some interesting side-effects.  First of all it turns soldiers into the ambivalent slabs of meat that we've seen in far too many generic action movies.  They don't question what they're doing, and as long as they've been told that they're fighting for good they'll commit all sorts of atrocities in order to fulfill their quest for false heroism.  The drug also affects the soldiers' view of the world - corpses are turned into non-descript piles of who knows what.  Basically, the drug shields the soldiers from realizing that they're actually being used as mercenaries for a much more greed-driven goal.  This storyline is very interesting if you've played the entire game because it sets up some impressive twists and turns, but the demo for the game shows only the very beginning of the story.  For that reason when you're spending most of your time with these meat-head soldiers that you'll eventually grow to hate, many objective gamers were quick to bury the game based on what they had witnessed in the demo.  Basically the soldiers come off dumb and that can be interpreted in a negative way.  Many people complained that the dialogue for the game was stupid, that the voice acting was over-the-top and that they hated the soldiers they were fighting amongst.  Little did they know that, as I said, your contempt for your fellow soldiers is an integral plot point.

The gameplay is fairly standard-fare first person shooter stuff.  You have a arsenal of guns at your disposal as well as some special abilities depending on which stage of the game you're at.  I thought the controls were pretty well done but I've heard complaints that they're hard to manage.  There are also some driving portions of the game which I did have difficulty with, but after a while I adjusted.  Just don't expect the vehicles to control like they do in Project Gotham Racing.

As far as level progression goes I have to admit, I was surprised by the amount of variety there was in the various environments throughout the game.  From lush jungles to dark swamps and beyond, chances are good that you probably won't get tired of the look of the levels.  The level progression is also very interesting to me.  Generally in these types of games (story-driven first person shooters such as Gears of War) the levels are very linear.  You have a cutscene, you play a level, you have another cutscene which takes you to another part of the game world, and so on.  In Haze you move from level-to-level seamlessly.  Very seldom will you find yourself transported to an entirely different part of the world without having made the progress to that spot personally.  Basically, there aren't many cop-outs where your character will be picked up in a chopper and taken to another continent to continue the fight.

The combat (which is 80% of all FPS games) is fast and fun.  You can use your special abilities as well as your weapons to out-think and beat your opponents on the battlefield.  Especially later in the game, there are many different ways to attack a particular fight.  You could set traps, you could use your enemies' weapons against them, or you can just do the standard bull-rush with guns blazing.  This is especially good because Haze is one of the few PS3 games that includes full campaign co-op, so you can take a buddy through the story portion of the game.  Not only that but there's a full  adversarial multiplayer portion of the game as well, providing plenty of replay value.

So then, how would I recommend Haze?  This might come as a surprise but I'd have to give Haze a Buy.  The game has a story that's worth seeing through and despite being somewhat short, there's plenty of reasons to play it again.  Add to that the fact that you can find the game for as little as $20 and I'd suggest any PS3 owner purchases the game.  Of course there's a demo on PSN if you want to give it a try, but keep in mind what I mentioned about the demo not doing the full game justice.