Mike Bantick
Monday, 02 June 2008 17:42
Opinion and Analysis
Page 1 of 3
A PS3 exclusive, Haze promised to deliver juiced up first person shooter action for the Sony console. Can Haze be a Halo killer?
There are positives for a console maker in garnering exclusive titles. Hit the sweet spot of success and both software developer and hardware manufacture can ‘move units’.
Haze
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Developer
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Free Radical
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Publisher
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Ubisoft
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Rating
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MA 15+
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| PS3 |
Halo 3 moved a bunch of Xbox 360 units, but Haze won’t do the same for the PlayStation 3.
Set in the year 2048, 25 year old Shane Carpenter has joined (or been volunteered into) Mantel, a Private Military Corporation (PMC) that Governments have come to rely upon during times of conflict.
So along with his drug enhanced grunt buddies, Carpenter is sent off on a gigantic Mantel Land Carrier into the wilds of some country south of the boarder to free the citizenry from oppression. The dictator/rebel ‘skin coat’ (famous for donning a jacket constructed of his victims skin) must be stopped at all cost.
Drug enhanced you say? Yep, the whole premise of Haze centres around the use of Nectar, a performance enhancing intoxicant injected into Mantel troopers in measured doses. Nectar enables troopers to shrug off minor hits, increase melee attack effectiveness, highlight enemy troops for easier sniping and finally does weird things to the games soundtrack.
Nectar also explains why, during the initial parts of Haze, dead bodies disappear quickly from the battlefield, yet footsteps remain. I thought I had been transported back to a FPS from 2000, but it turns out it was simply the effect of Nectar on my avatar.
