Haze

May 20, 2008

Pretty much everyone agrees that Haze sounded like an intriguing idea on paper (our past preview coverage was quite positive), but the execution leaves a lot to be desired in almost every respect.

Developer Free Radical has set two diverse factions against each other, each vying for control of South American territory: the privateering guns-for-hire Mantel Corporation and the freedom-loving Promise Hand rebels. That part is cool, and it gets even cooler when we discover that the Mantel troopers regularly dose themselves with a hallucinogenic "nutritional supplement" called Nectar which grants them superhuman senses and reaction time, while the rebel soldiers are left with only their wits and guerilla tactics. It's a tale designed to help us understand the nature of warfare in the future and the impact of performance-enhancing, psychotropic substances on our soldier's perception (and how that perception can be manipulated for maximum casualties). Like we said, the set-up is great, but then you actually play the game...

From the poorly performing graphics engine (which encounters serious frame-rate drops and loading errors) to the lackluster multiplayer offerings, Haze is a mess. Maybe these issues could have been mediated if the narrative of the single-player campaign was even remotely satisfying, but no, here too we are denied any pleasure thanks to the single-player campaign consisting of five to seven hours of milquetoast and meandering, self-aggrandizing drivel. Haze fails to make the bold statement about the nature of war that it promised, and it fails to deliver a decent shooter as well.

I Can't See my Legs

While Haze's story falls short of expectations, it's the performance of the graphics engine that really destroys the fun. Developer Free Radical has a history of providing tight and competitive shooting mechanics at beautifully smooth frame-rates, so Haze's lack of technical competency is puzzling. Despite cutting the screen resolution output to below 720p (leaving the PS3 to take up the slack through up-rezzing), the game still encounters frame-rate drops that are simply unacceptable.

The poor performance is particularly noticeable during the driving portions, which perhaps the engine wasn't originally designed to handle. Not only does the action become bogged-down with stuttering frames, but in some cases the environment simply refuses to load at all. Note that it's not that the environment's textures don't load; the entire environment won't load, leaving you without a game world to play in... or stand on! There were a few times when we'd figure that the level was still trying to load in the textures, drive forward into the nothingness, and fall out of the world to our death because there was no floor to the level to begin with. These issues were typically cleared up after a reload, but that didn't help maintain any sense of immersion.

Finally, the game just looks terrible. Environments are typically filled with bland, muddy textures in bland, muddy locations. The game opens in a steamy jungle, but the flora and fauna aren't particularly impressive and automatically beg comparison to the opening of Halo 3, which presented a much more robust jungle setting. Later levels focus on the classic gaming standbys of ruined industrial complexes and dusty shanty towns, which are likewise pretty unimpressive graphically.

One level stands out, however, and we cherished the precious few moments we spent in the detailed and visually appealing swamp. Swaddled in the queasy withdrawal resulting from Nectar disruption, the swamp uses some cool lighting effects, particularly on the glowing fireflies that guide you through the level. Unfortunately, this short portion of Haze is not enough to redeem the rest of the game, which is a dull and uninspiring slog through similarly dull and uninspiring levels.

Nectar Non-issue

One area where the graphics actually do improve the Haze experience is through the ubiquitous performance-enhancing drug Nectar. What's weird though, is that the most impressive visual filters come not from juicing the drug, but from its crippling withdrawal symptoms. Draining all color from the screen and painting the world in black and white (with only the tiniest slashes of color from red blood), the effect of Nectar withdrawal is stark and engaging... but you don't get to control when or where you experience Nectar withdrawal.

Instead, you get a handful of levels in which you are capable of interacting with Nectar, and you can only shoot yourself full of the junk. Under the influence of Nectar, not much is different save the initial rush that warps the screen in an animated fish-eye lens kind of distortion (that doesn't actually help you in any way and, in fact, makes things difficult to see for a moment) and enemies glow so that you can see them easily.

Supposedly, it's designed to make the Mantel soldiers that are hooked on it feel like they are playing a videogame instead of being locked into real-life firefights, but the problem is in the way this "feeling" is conveyed. See, you're already playing a videogame, so what's your basis of comparison? There's just not enough to differentiate the experience of a Nectar-infused Mantel soldier from a rebel, and the flimsy and obvious trope of every Mantel soldier acting like a coked-out crackbaby with a serious case of 'roid rage doesn't even come close to presenting any real characterization... you just get no sense of what this drug is doing to these guys, outside of making them act like poorly mo-capped spazzes.

Throw in the fact that soldiers on both sides constantly chatter the same four or five tired war slogans and there's almost no way to tell the difference between Mantel and rebel, even in that Nectar makes rebels glow and Mantel soldiers have strategically-questionable, bright, yellow shoulder pads. The actual differences are minimal.

AI-yai-yai

One of the major deficits to both the multiplayer and single-player components is the tragically stupid NPC AI. Think of all the "bad AI" cliches that you can: walking into your line of fire, eschewing cover and getting shot to pieces, not reacting to local firefights and just standing around like morons... Haze hits every one of them. This would be kind of understandable coming from the Mantel soldiers, since they're all doped-up anyway, but the shoddy mental processes are epidemic.

While it's nice to see bots available in the multiplayer, it's rather telling that you aren't allowed to play the Team Assault mode with them. One can only assume that, as they are incapable of taking cover from incoming fire, the bots in Haze can't even begin to fathom the delicate intricacies of objective-based combat.

Although the online multiplayer handles smoothly, the scant three modes simply don't compare to other multiplayer-focused games like Unreal Tournament III or even Grand Theft Auto IV. Though Free Radical has traditionally done well in the competitive online arena, Haze presents us with a very narrow and anachronistic multiplayer that satisfies only the leanest of expectations.

It's clear from the bare-bones multiplayer, glitchy graphics and incredibly short storyline that Haze is a game interrupted. Discussion of whether Free Radical did not anticipate the difficulty of building a next-gen engine or whether it ran out of resources is academic at this point, because we can all see that Haze is not finished... not graphically and not narratively, either. For a much-hyped, blockbuster PS3 exclusive, Haze does very little to endear itself or the PS3 to anyone.