Price: $78.00 Genre: First-person shooter Platform: Playstation 3 Rating: 5.0/10
NEVER have you seen a happier bunch of soldiers in your life.
You are Shane Carpenter, the latest addition to a military task force privately owned by Mantel Global Industries, a leader in the biomedical industry, and you have just met your squad mates for the first time.
Their exuberance is almost overbearing.
Minutes before your first mission, the Mantel men are still throwing jokes at each other. They talk about the mission - the liberation of a South African territory from a rebel militia - as if it were a football game.
They look and sound like they are running on steroids.
More small talk ensues and then the screen suddenly warps. You feel a sudden rush of adrenaline coursing through your veins. "Here it comes, boys!" your squad leader remarks.
It turns out that they really are on something similar to steroids. A substance called Nectar is periodically administered into your bloodstream to improve combat abilities.
In terms of gameplay, this translates to a power up. Holding the L2 trigger provides you with a temporary boost to your mobility, shooting accuracy and health recovery rate.
While in this heightened state, your enemies are automatically highlighted in orange, which is particularly useful in jungle environments.
Just be careful not to overdose as you will lose control and start shooting teammates. Also watch out for the Nectar grenades that rebel troops occasionally throw. These send you into overdose mode instantaneously.
Unless, of course, you are the one doing the throwing. Halfway through the game, Shane learns of Mantel's true motives and switches sides.
As a rebel, you lose access to Nectar-powered abilities, but you can now steal weapons, perform diving manoeuvres and feign death.
Regardless of the side you are on, however, gameplay is tepid and uninspired.
The faction-specific traits may sound cool on paper but, in practice, they don't do much to shake up the repetitive aim-shoot-hide nature of the game.
To make things worse, there is something to complain about at every step throughout the eight-hour, single-player campaign.
For starters, Shane walks slower than my grandmother. Never mind that this makes darting for cover impractical. Sometimes he cannot even retreat fast enough to save his hide from heavy fire.
Then, there are the controls: You can freely assign any command in the game to any button on the controller, but you cannot adjust the aiming sensitivity.
In terms of weapons, you get to wield a grand total of five: an assault rifle, a shotgun, a flamethrower, a sniping rifle and a rocket launcher. Coincidentally, there are also only five different types of enemies.
Even the sporadic driving segments are plagued by cars with a handling system that is overly loose.
As a shooting gallery-style game, Haze is marginally entertaining when played online with friends or strangers, either through the four-player co-operative campaign, or the 16-player adversarial mode that pits Mantel soldiers against rebels.
But it's the compelling narrative, which pegs a meaningful message to its ending, that prevents Haze from degenerating into a full-fledged disaster of a videogame.
Cheatsheet
PLAY to your strengths. As a Rebel, you can "play dead". Press the L2 trigger when your health dips to dangerously low amounts. Usually, you will have only a split-second to do this, but if you repeatedly press the L2 trigger when engaged in combat, you will be able to nail it every single time.
Playing dead is the most useful trait in the game, on- or offline. Rebels who play dead automatically disappear from the sight of Mantel troopers. As a Mantel trooper, the only thing you can do to Rebels playing dead is to throw a grenade where you suspect a Rebel might be hiding. Alternatively, if you are unsure, pretend to walk away from your target and hide close by so that you can begin firing at your prey the moment he comes out of his little feint.
