Haze Review

my oh my. this game has caused quite a bit of controversy. mainly due to the fact that it has been extremely hyped for almost 2 years and was said to rival the Halo series. unfortunately, Haze falls short of its expectations. and i mean reeeeally short. like J.J. short.

the first thing you will notice when you play Haze is that different elements of the game don't match up. the most distracting one being the graphics.

"Woa! Look at that helicopter! Great lighting and shadow effects! Oh, and the soldiers armor!"

(2 minutes later)

"Wtf? Those trees are the same ones they used in Goldeneye 007...and these walls are extremely blurry looking! WHY THE HELL DOES MY GUN LOOK LIKE IT WAS RENDERED WITH MS PAINT?!"

these are some of the things a lot of people are asking themselves when playing Haze. honestly, if game details keep questioning your sense of what something should look like, then it stops feeling like a game all together. not only that, but every time one of your team members even speaks, you cant help but cock an eyebrow and wonder what exactly hes talking about.

in otherwords, the story is poorly delivered with really strange cutscenes. as most of you heard me say, theres one scene specifically that stood out to me. you and your other Mantel members are talking on a helicopter.

you and your other Mantel members are talking on a helicopter.
the screen fades to black.
the screen fades in to you and your team in the same spots.
everyone is looking at each other awkwardly for a minute straight.
the screen fades to black again.

strange.

but lets talk about what good things Haze has to offer. really, the only good thing is that it could have been much better than Halo. the basic layout of the game and mechanics show that the developers had some great ideas. but how can the game still suck overall? BECAUSE IT FEELS UNFINISHED. i really have Ubisoft (the publisher) to blame here. Free Radical (the developers) are experts in the FPS field. they wouldnt make a game this bad had it not been "rushed" or whatever excuse Ubisoft decided to give.

with that said, the game was most disappointing because it could have been something great, but wasnt. had it not been hyped so much and maybe came out before Call of Duty 4, this game could actually be viewed as a decent shooter. unfortunately, this wasn't so, and i suppose PS3 owners will have to wait until Killzone 2 is released in Feb 09 to see a decent PS3 exclusive shooter.