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Are you kidding me?

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 0 / 1
Date: August 27, 2008
Author: Amazon User

To start with something nice, the game is fun. Unfortunately there are more negative aspects to the game that really bring it down.

First and foremost, the graphics are terrible. Not just that but they are inconsistant. Some textures will be pretty nice and others look like the developers just didn't care. The particle effects primarily in the smoke and fire are the worst I have seen in years. They are almost embarrassing.

The game isn't organized well, it seems to just shuffle you around from place to place without much of a purpose. Most of the time I spent either lost not knowing which path to take while hitting select regularly to remind myself of what I was doing.

The AI is awful. You can stand right next to enemies and they won't even see you.

Too easy. The Mantel soldiers are too easy to kill and at certain parts where you are told to hold off the Mantel "onslaught" turns into no more than shooting a couple guys. Some onslaught.

The weapons lack substance. I found myself using the Mantel and Promise Hand assault rifles most of the time. Certain areas are easier by using the rocket launcher but there never seems to be any reasoning with the placement or specific use of other weapons.

Last is the glitches. I have had lockups after check points and fellow Promise Hand soldiers firing at "invisible" enemy Mantel soldiers, hitting me and everyone else in the process.

They always say don't judge a book by its cover and this is one of those cases. The cover looks sweet. The game inside unfortunately is not.

For a PS3 Exclusive title, this game just does not deliver. Ubisoft and Free Radical should be embarrassed.

Average game in a crowded genre.

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: July 19, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Some of the critical reviews of this game are way too harsh. I'll admit that it is not on par with other FPS games on the market. I'll admit that I'd advise people against buying the game and point them towards renting it instead. But this is by no means a horrible game. It is simply an average game in a genre filled with superb titles.

The one thing that brings the game down, in my opinion, is the AI. Enemy AI, even on normal, is stupid. They tend to stand around and wait to be shot. Friendly AI for some reason puts your squad on suicide runs in front of your line of fire, blocking your view of the enemy and getting them killed.

Other than that one complaint regarding the AI, the game play is about average while the story is above average. Don't spend $60 at the store or $40 here. Rent the thing, have some fun over the weekend, and return it when you're done. After all, there are worse FPS on the market (Bioshock, anyone?).

Good Idea - Not Great Execution

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 7 / 8
Date: July 07, 2008
Author: Amazon User

The first-person shooter - and especially the "futuristic" first-person shooter - has been done, over and over, with little to no changes in gameplay, since almost the beginning of gaming itself. With that said, games like Haze occasionally try to mix things up a little, and while the idea is good, the execution ends up dragging it down a lot.

The underlying plot of the game, both single-player and multiplayer, is that, in the future, a company/organization called Mantel uses a drug called Nectar to produce a generation of drugged-up super soldiers to fight for them in the third world. Multiplayer battles consist of skirmishes between Mantel troopers and rebels, while in singleplayer you start as a trooper and switch sides later on.

The two sides have the same basic first-person gameplay, with some key abilities that are different. Mantel troopers inject themselves with Nectar, which enhances their perception (scopes can zoom in farther, enemies are rendered as glowing objects) and strength (soldiers move faster, hit harder, and regenerate health) as well as providing a hallucinogenic "high". There is a limited supply of Nectar that each soldier has, but it regenerates over time; the supply is counted in "shots" or "injections". Holding the L2 button down injects Nectar into your bloodstream, represented by a gauge. Release the button too soon, and you won't feel the effects of it for long. If you hold it down for too long, though, you can overdose, which renders you unable to tell between friend and foe. In many cases, when you are overdosed, you are unable to control yourself even to the point of randomly firing weapons or arming grenades (which you must shake the controller to throw away before it detonates). If you run out of Nectar, you are highly vulnerable; for this reason, you can usually siphon Nectar off of one of your teammates, if they have enough.

On the other side, the rebels are as weak in combat as a Mantel trooper without his nectar. They make up for this with various ingenious techniques. Some rebel weapons are coated with Nectar, specifically knives and grenades that are made from Nectar-packs taken from dead troopers. Both of these weapons can cause Nectar overloads in enemies, causing the aforementioned self-damaging effects. Playing off of Nectar's effect of making dead bodies "invisible" (bodies fade almost instantly when playing as a trooper, but remain for a long time when playing as a rebel), rebel soldiers can "play dead" when hit, and then "revive" after the troopers have left. Rebels can also do various mechanical improvisations, such as taking ammo from dropped weapons and converting it to ammo for the weapon they are currently using, as well as turning grenades into proximity mines. Finally, they're generally faster and more agile than their trooper counterparts, capable of dodging and in some cases stealing an enemy's weapon.

The single-player storyline is laughable, for the most part, with some interesting parts. You play as Shane Carpenter, wide-eyed idealist youth, who joins Mantel to make a difference and stop the unspecified mass murders and ethnic cleansings that the rebels are carrying out. The story starts on a carrier, where Carpenter meets his teammates - gung-ho, drug-fueled murderers in the finest traditions of sci-fi and war movies everywhere. Only, the difference here is that it makes sense - it's plain to see that Nectar screws with your mind just by the effects that show up when you use it in-game; the blurring, the sudden shifts of motion, and so on. Carpenter's injection system malfunctions several times, which (a) leaves the player unable to use Nectar's beneficial effects, and (b) causes Carpenter to see things that his fellow troopers don't see; a dying comrade, screams of pain, massive piles of bodies, and so on. Carpenter questions his mission more and more, eventually leading to his switch to the rebel side midway through the game. Most of the story is ham-handed dialogue, though there are some good atmospheric moments; walking through one burnt-down village, or trying to find your way through a swamp, for example. These moments tend to only use dialogue as background noise - the heavy-handed boasting of the Mantel troopers contrasts against the quiet of the jungle's ambient noises. The use of camera in cutscenes is interesting, but not really new; the view is always from Carpenter's first-person perspective, though in some scenes his visor will slide away so that the HUD doesn't block your view. In most cutscenes, you can look around but not move, lending at least some feeling of interactivity to the scenes.

As a whole, the gameplay - as mentioned - tries some interesting things, but ultimately falls short. A lot of it makes sense as a Mantel trooper - the poor control, for example, or the lack of solid feeling to movement and aiming - but when you're a rebel and you're supposed to be free of the hallucinatory drug, it's just bad. The guns are the most generic first-person guns ever - a pistol, an assault rifle, a shotgun, a sniper rifle, a chaingun, a flamethrower, and a rocket launcher. None of them handle well, and none of them are particularly fun or interesting, either. Grenades are pretty much worthless, and even in single player I've never managed to kill a person with one even when it exploded right underneath him. The vehicles handle incredibly poorly, often flipping with little to no provocation. On that note, your AI buddies all have roughly the same abilities as yourself, but if they die they are gone forever, and finding new allies is incredibly rare. With that said, most of the times I had allies die (counting times I reloaded afterwards) was in vehicle crashes, when I'd take too much of an angle, my buggy would flip, and my gunner would die. Other than that, the AI soldiers are reasonably helpful, though the troopers and their Nectar injections are much tougher and more helpful than the rebel allies, who lack both the strength of the troopers and the ingenuity of the player and are left with pretty much nothing.

The graphics are nice in some ways and terrible in others. For example, they load slowly, leading to that awkward phase where you watch a person's resolution increase in front of you. In other places, animation is jerky, or edges are jagged, or some other flaw exists that prevents the on-the-surface good graphics from actually being good. Furthermore, the designs are both silly and generic, especially the Mantel vehicles and their bright yellow glass. The voice acting is generic, too; not bad, but by no means actually good, and the ridiculousness of the lines makes up for whatever points good voice acting might have gained.

This game has some good ideas, but the underlying genre of futuristic first-person shooter and the incredibly poor execution of graphics and gameplay render this game unbearable. For PS3 shooters, Resistance was better; for shooters in general, pretty much anything is better. This game doesn't deserve anything higher than a 4/10.

Overated

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: July 02, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I feel that the hype that was built up in the media and with the companies that created it, was in fact to much hype. The game in my opinion did not reach anywhere near the "greatness" that was all over the advertising for it. Would I ppurchease the sequel if it were released?...Only after renting it first this go around. I will not purchase the sequel without a test run.

Huge Disappointment

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: June 30, 2008
Author: Amazon User

This game was a huge letdown. Graphics, game play, everything was very disappointing. I had so much hope for this game. I wouldn't even recommend renting it.

Haze (PS3)

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: June 26, 2008
Author: Amazon User

If you're looking for an average to above average first person shooter then this fits the bill. It's not the best out there but what it does it does very competently.

Advantages are that there is split-screen co-op an upto 4 player co-op online. You can also have split-screen in online games unless it's a ranked game. Graphics are decent. Plot is OK. Gameplay mechanics are very solid.

The only real drawback to this game seems to be the hype. It was hyped as the next COD4/Halo etc ... and it turned out to be only a decent game.

Halo killer? More like on par with Turok. (disappointing)

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: June 25, 2008
Author: Amazon User

All show and no go. Hype, hype and more hype. The story is too short, the games message too clumsy and shallow, driving vehicles is kludgy and annoying. Oh yeah and you can finish the game in a strong evening of play. Maybe its supposed to be another generic multi- player game instead of actually having a decent story, maybe my expectations were too high. Anyway dont waste your money, wait until it starts showing up in the cheap bins. If you want multi-player get Unreal 3.

Be Patient and It's Fun

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: June 21, 2008
Author: Amazon User

My first experience of Haze was this: I open the amazon package and pop the game into my ps3. I start up an online match, just to see what it was like before I actually learned how to play. My character spawns right outside of a big building. I see a rocket launcher and I walk forward to go and pick it up. About halfway there to the rockets, the game crashes and I have to shut off my ps3.

By anyone's standards, this is not a good start.

Here are the pros and cons of Haze, now that I am a seasoned player who has beaten the campaign and participated in many online matches:

Pros:

-The variety of weapons gives you a nice selection on how to kill your opponents, whether you want to burn them, knife them, grenade them, or just plain shoot the hell out of the them with a minigun.
-Multiplayer matches always have good connection
-4 player co-op campaign is really fun no matter how many times you've played that level or if its the same people every time
-Shooting your teammates in the back causes them to overdose, and you won't know what an overdose is until you buy the game, but pretty much it's one of the funniest things in any game, unless a teammate does it to you...then it sucks
-Your character looks funny when he jumps.

Cons:

-The game crashes an average of once a day (I only play about an hour a day, so this is a lot)
-My online stats from the day before get deleted about every other time i start up the game. I once got 26 kills without dying and I was so proud of it, until the next day when it didn't save it on the online stats page.
-Your teammates think it's funny to shoot you in the back, so always choose the "rebels" team.
-The rebels suck, so choose the "troopers" team.
-There are only two teams.
-6 multiplayer maps can only keep you interested for so long
-In almost every campaign level, going through it the first time, I got stuck and couldn't find a way through to the next part of the level.
-Cut scenes are way too long and you can't skip them. I once went to the bathroom, got a snack to eat, and came back to find that the cut scene still was not over

Despite the number of cons vs. pros, Haze is a fun game. You just have to be patient. Four player co-op is the most redeeming part of Haze, because with four friends running around instead of one, you a 4x greater chance of find the way to proceed to the next area. I have fun playing this game, and I don't care what anyone rates this game or what anyone tells me, I am going to keep playing this game.

good but not amazing

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: June 21, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I guess I was expecting a far cry type game that would be free roam style go were you want do what you want, this game is not that, there is like 2 paths you can choose from in the whole game! oh well, still a pretty fun shooter, big battles, lots of action, the vehicles aren't done very good, but good enough, your team mates actually seam smart! they get ion jeeps with you and get your back.

The band involves should've been enough of a hint.

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: June 20, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I had pre-ordered Haze on here with the Korn MP3. I was curious to see how Korn was sounding now since I hadn't listened to them since I was in high school. Upon hearing it, I wanted to claw my ears out because it sounded so godawful. That should've been an indication to what the game would be like, but I didn't think much of it.

Haze had a lot of potential: it had a nice little bit of hype around it and it had a promising premise. I finally got the game from the fine folks at Amazon and I tore into the package, popping the game into my PS3. The next day, I took it down to my local Gamestop and sold it for 20 bucks.

The game was far too easy and, while the Nectar addition was an interesting touch, it was merely another incredibly bland FPS. The game was entirely too easy and it didn't do nearly enough to keep my interest for more than a day. You might find a little enjoyment in this game if you like Halo (I personally do not), but other than that, I'd go ahead and skip over this title, or give it a rental if you're really THAT curious about the game.

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