User Review : Haze

The critics got it wrong... HAZE is great!

I was looking forward to HAZE for a long time, and I must admit that I was unsettled by the IGN review among others. However, I kept it on order in the hope that it would still be decent enough, but when I finally played the game, I was pleasently suprised by how enjoyable the game is.

HAZE features a very interesting story regarding Shane Carpenter, a newly recruited soldier of the private miltary corporation MANTEL. Though he initally believes that he is fighting for the good guys, he soon realises that MANTEL have been lying to him and he is on the wrong side of the war. Ergo, he joins a rebel group called the PROMISE HAND, who plan to take down MANTEL and expose them for who they really are. The story of Haze is what initially drew me to the game, and dispite what critics say, it remains as one of the strong points of the game.

The gameplay is what really sets Haze apart from other first-person shooters. As a MANTEL trooper, you have NECTAR at your disposal, which is useful for a number of reasons. It allows you to spot enemies from a distance, enhances your melee attacks, improves your aiming and prolonges your health. As well as this, MANTEL troopers have a special aiming system on their visors which makes picking off enemies alot simpler. This might make the game sound quite easy, until you become a PROMISE HAND rebel when you dont have NECTAR at your disposal.

However, PROMISE HAND rebels have their own set of abilities. They can Play Dead when their health is low, steal weapons from enemy hands, dive out of the way of gunfire, scavage ammo to make it useable in your chosen weapon, steal fallen MANTEL troopers NECTAR administrator to attach to grenades and plant grenade traps in the ground. On top of this, PROMISE HAND rebels can use NECTAR against MANTEL troopers, by shooting their NECTAR administrators, throwing NECTAR grenades at them and throwing NECTAR-covered knives at them, which causes them to overdose on NECTAR and lose control of their perceptions. You find this out the hard way as a MANTEL trooper.

HAZE supports 2-player split-screen coop and 4-player online coop, which makes the 8-hour campaign mode infinitely more fun to play. I played through the game with my mate and two other people we met over the PlayStation Network, which was much better than playing with AI controlled teammates. There is also a 16-player multiplayer component, which contains three game modes; Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch and Team Assault. The first two speak for themselves, but there is much more fun to be had with Team Assault. There are 6 maps in total, each with their own objectives (defend/destroy the NECTAR plantations, prevent/launch the missile etc.), but theyre essentially attack vs. defense. The multiplayer is well balanced and no side has any clear advantage or disadvantage, allowing player to choose the side that suites their gameplay style the most.

HAZE runs on a graphics engine developed specifically for the game, which has more downs then it has ups. The game looks decent enough, but nothing that will amaze you. Some environments lack detail and the explosion effects couldve done with some more work, but the character models look good, and overall theres not a whole lot to complain about. The AI engine is also abit disappointing, due to the fact that enemies can take two of three shots before they react to you. In fact, I hit an enemy with a melee attack twice before they even took notice of me. However, the AI is alot more improved on the hard difficulty, and I would recommend that seasoned FPS gamers play on that difficulty, especially on coop.

All in all, HAZE is a solid shooter with a number of gameplay features that set it apart from other FPSs on the market. It has an immersive story that it experienced entirely in first-person view, some cool gameplay and shooting mechanics, and the allure of online multiplayer and coop modes. Its not a classic by any means and contains some noticeable flaws, but considering how enjoyable this game is to play, it just doesnt matter. As for why the game got poor reviews, it was perhaps a symptom of its own hype, but HAZE does exactly what it set out to do: BE FUN TO PLAY!