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If you are a fan of first person shooters, it’s a game that has decent entertainment value and the playability is decently simplistic. The premise of the game is much like squeezing Half-life and Halo together (minus the crazy monsters and different story line). The date is 2048 and a war has emerged which a private military becomes a private peacekeeper. With a drug developed by the private military’s hands called “Nectar”, the soliders can see better, be stronger and take less damage from opposing weapons.
However, the game is so similiar to other games on the market that I found myself comparing Haze to other first person shooters and found the a lot of the game functionality very quirky. I found myself running around with the zoom set on when there were fight scenes and it was much easier just to snipe the enemies than run around and shoot them point blank. As well, on reload, you can conitnue to be in a zoom position (which is odd for me). Throwing grenades was a slight challenge as holding the grenade longer or running and throwing didn’t affect the distance. Driving vehicles was even a more greater challenge as the camera angles were just wonky to work with. I ended up having to change the camera angle and turning in tandem. As well, the game never used the full controller thus leaving the left arrow keys mostly useless.
Worst of all, the AI in the game is terrible. The rendered scenes in the game are mostly ugly and seemed reused and the weapon selection is far from spectacular. In face, with so many years past, you’d think that we’d be able to develop more promonent weaponary by then. What’s worse is that the cut scenes aren’t skippable. If you ever wanted to play the game again without all of the boring banter from solider to solider, then forget it. You’ll have to sit through it again.
The dialogue also reminds me sitting in a base full of American army folk. There were so many teenage, brainless banter in the game that eventually you get sick of hearing the same things over and over again. Often times I found it funny but no because of the dialogue itself but the unintentional humourous aspects in the storyline.
I think the worst part of all of this is that there were so many gaps in how to play the game, the short span of each save points which made the game ridiculously easy and the poor character development. It seemed almost as though little thought was put into creating this game which is a shame as I’ve loved Free Radical’s productions in the past (Golden Eye 007 for example). It just never seemed that the game was ever completed or maybe it was rushed though? I’m not sure but whomever’s call it was to release such a poorly put together game needs to re-evaulate in the future. This game does make the view of such a great gaming company turn into corporate hogs only trying to make a buck from it’s exclusive production.
It wasn’t all bad though, the one really nice feature about the game is the ability to play online co-op through the story mode or battle mode (LAN or external network through IP address). It’d have been nice if there was a storymode split screen (like Halo’s revolutionary creating back when).
You’re better off purchasing a different title than spend $60 on a game that’s mediocre at best.
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