Weapons and Multiplayer
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The weapons available in Haze are top notch and are a lot of fun to shoot. The developers of the game made sure that players will want to use the pistol as a weapon of choice rather than a last resort. Grenades are also used quite frequently and, combined with the Nectar collected from your fallen enemies, can cause a group of Mantel troopers to overdose on the drug at simultaneously. This is indeed a sight to see.
Sadly, with all of the interesting choices of weapons in the game, only a few of them exist throughout the majority of the campaign. For instance, assault rifles, high-powered machine guns, and shotguns are all over the place, whereas other desirable choices such as the flamethrower and sniper rifle are only available in the few missions that call for the extra firepower. In fact, the sniper rifle is actually touted verbally early on in the game, but it's not available until well past the halfway point in the campaign. Then when you do have the sniper rifle, you'll most like rid yourself of it as soon as you run out of ammo due to the lack of your ability to carry more than two weapons at a time. In fact, you may not be able to find additional ammunition for the rifle anyway since your chances of finding another along the objective path are slim to none.
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The multiplayer in Haze is as straightforward as the gameplay itself. When the PlayStation Network does not hinder one's ability to join a game without serious lag time or unavailable servers, players can enjoy the standard deathmatch and team deathmatch modes. While solo and team deathmatch are fairly run-of-the-mill, the team assault mode adds the most creativity to the online experience. During team assault matches, two teams totaling a maximum of 16 players are given both areas to defend and objectives to accomplish. This game mode actually compliments the single player experience with its own story elements not seen in the original campaign.
Regardless of the chosen multiplayer mode, bots can be added and customized to even out the teams with too few players. This is also a great way to enjoy the game's split screen mode that can be used to for instant action or to practice for upcoming online games. Even so, with only six maps available out of the box, the multiplayer experience may run dry all too quickly for some gamers.
While multiplayer proves to be much more fun than single player, Haze's co-op mode that can be experienced with up to four players is where the game really shines. There are those who choose to brave the campaign alone, and this still has its benefits, but there's nothing like bringing along a few friends to turn an otherwise mediocre campaign into an extremely enjoyable romp. Cooperative play allows players to complete the single player campaign in its entirety with friends via the PlayStation Network or at home using the game's split-screen option. Cooperative play has become quite popular in recent history and is easily the most enjoyable way to experience Haze.
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shabby - Monday, May 26, 2008 - link
I see you guys missed that haze actually runs at 576p rather than 720p, would of been nice to mention.JarredWalton - Monday, May 26, 2008 - link
Not owning a PS3, I can't really say either way, but would rendering at 1024x576 and then stretching to 1280x720 result in a sort of "anti-aliasing"?Furen - Monday, May 26, 2008 - link
A simple strech would actually amplify aliasing, since you would stretch the edges even more. I'm pretty sure that the upscaling algorithms used probably are the equivalent of some of the higher-quality upscaling methods we see in DVD players, so the effect may actually be decent--but nowhere near what it would be if you rendered in HD natively. So much for Sony's "every game will run at 1080p" BS...mmntech - Monday, May 26, 2008 - link
Keep in mind that this is a third party title, being distributed by UBIsoft, a company who has earned my ire many times over on many different platforms. The developer takes the blame for this one since the graphics in Haze aren't exactly going to tax the system. Given that it's a PS3 exclusive built from the ground up, that's particularly disgraceful. If nobody at the company can program for the Cell (I assume this will be their excuse), fire them and hire someone who can. All other PS3 games run fine at 720p or 1080p. Sony does take some blame though since in the PS blog they said Haze would run at 720p when in reality it's only being upscaled to 720p. That is deceitful. If you're using a display with non-standard resolutions higher than 720p (say a 16:10 computer monitor like I do), the image quality further deteriorates since it's being upscaled twice.Technicals aside, Haze seemed like a pretty generic dystopian future first person shooter to me after I played the demo. There's nothing spectacular about it. You go around shooting terrorists while doing drugs. It's like Vietnam except with fancy yellow and black suits. It's not a bad game but it's not great. Over hyped and under substance. I'd rent it but I wouldn't fork out $60 to buy it.
ats - Thursday, May 29, 2008 - link
Very Very few games for either PS3 or XB360 actually render to 720P let alone 1080P.Neither of the consoles have either the graphics power or memory to really support heavy shading and textures at real HD resolutions.
Slash3 - Tuesday, May 27, 2008 - link
No other comment on what you've already said, but here are a few other titles that do not run at 720p or higher resolution on the PS3:Lair: 800x1080 (no, really)
COD4: 1024x600
Dark Sector: 1152x640
Metal Gear Online: 1024x768
Haze is 1024x576
MGS4 is rumored to be 1024x768 as well.
The downside is that through the low rendered resolution + upscaling, you lose a lot of fine detail. It still looks great in motion, since you retain the modern particles, lighting and rendering passes for effects such as depth of field, HDR lighting and such, but you lose definition - literally.
I honestly don't think it would be such a big deal if people hadn't been force fed the notion that this console generation would deliver all content in 720p or 1080p format when it's simply not the case.
slashbinslashbash - Monday, May 26, 2008 - link
Reading the review, the game sounds a lot like Halo, although it seems Halo has a better weapons selection and a better multiplayer experience. I would have liked to see more explicit comparisions of each mode: single-player, multiplayer, and coop. Also comparisons of graphics, sound, etc. Halo 3, like it or not, is the standard-bearer of console sci-fi FPS gaming (distinguishing from historical or more-or-less realistic depictions like CoD). Not to mention, Halo 3 is exclusive to Xbox 360 and thus seems to form the most perfect competitor to Haze (bring on the "Hazo" comments). I, being mostly happy with Halo 3 and the 360, and not owning a PS3, would like to know how Haze fares in comparison.I'm not trying to be snide or anything, it just seems that this game is squarely aimed at the same niche that Halo 3 occupies.... like probably someone at Sony decided to come up with a Halo competitor. Nothing wrong with that, but since the comparison seems so obvious, I would like to see someone actually do the comparison in a review, despite the flak they will take from fanboys on both sides. I know that I will own a PS3 eventually, and I owned all 3 (4, if you count the Dreamcast) of the last-gen systems.
EddieTurner - Tuesday, May 27, 2008 - link
Aside from being a FPS and having a four letter title beginning with the letters H and A. there is really no similarity between the two. Haze is a story about conflict between humans and just doesn't give off that Halo vibe at all. I don't think that was the direction the devs were going with this. But I agree, Halo is a fine game that has set some standards in console FPS's.