Haze Hands-On
- Posted March 19th, 2008 at 05:38 EDT by
- 34 Comments
This weekend, intrepid PSU reporter Rob Zwetsloot got his hands on Haze at the Play.com Live event. Known among his peers to view FPS single player modes with mild indifference, will Haze lift his apathy?
Looking around the middle level of the show, you can’t help but notice the presence of Haze. A few separate booths circle a food stand emblazoned with Haze boards, and helpful Ubisoft staff greet you and introduce you to the demo pods of the game.
The demo itself contained four levels of the single player campaign, set in forest and desert environments. We spawn as the protagonist, Shane Carpenter, with an Assault Rifle and a side arm among our AI controlled team mates. A brief cutscene sets up the level, and in this particular one it seems we’re looking for a crashed aircraft.
Looking at the screen, the HUD is clean and uncluttered. A thin compass shows your heading and objective location at the top, while nectar and health are shown in the bottom corners. Weapon information concerning rounds and magazines are shown on the gun you are using, with outline of selectable weapons in top right corner and remaining grenades in top left. Also, like the Metroid Prime games, you can see a small part of your visor on the bottom corners of the screen, but this does not affect your view in any way.
Using your weapon is a standard affair. You get an onscreen cross hair for rough aiming, and can press L1 to go into aiming mode, similar to Call of Duty. The main rifle does a decent job of mowing down the bad guys you’ll encounter, and your AI team mates seem to be proficient enough with it to not require you to be Rambo.
The crown jewel of the weapons we encountered was the default side arm you receive. Equipped with a scope, it’s similar to the Magnum from the original Halo, albeit with the power of the Magnum from Gears of War. Effectively, you’re carrying around a hand cannon with a sniper zoom, and because of this, we ended up entering many an area and sniping soldiers with it. Shots from this thing tended to floor any opponent, and the gun itself had a meaty recoil to match. We likey.
In close range however, it’s better to change to your assault rifle, as the rate of fire on the magnum is very low. There is a melee attack in the game, but the range of it is not very large, and is more used in situations where you turn round and someone is right freaking there. A developer told us that this is because “we didn't want people to get into those button mashing melee contests”, and that we should “think of it like a special move, like a Dragon Punch”. To get the most out of it, timing and distance must be very accurate, but the rewards are worth it.
Going back to weapons for a moment, you have so many magazines, and when you reload any rounds left in the discarded magazine are not kept, much like Battlefield or Flashpoint. You can, however, pick up more magazines like you would ammo in some games. You can also pick up weapons from fallen Promise Hand men. They’re rifle has many more rounds per mag, and you can then obviously pick up your foes magazines. This comes in handy if you run out of ammo for your main rifle.
So how does it play? Well for those who don’t know, one of the key features of Haze is the nectar, a performance-enhancing drug that you and your buddies can take. It increases your speed, highlights enemies, and gives you a greater resistance to damage. You can merely tap L2 to administer a quick dose, which will fill up about two-thirds of your Nectar metre, or you can hold it down to increase your dose.
When you’re sufficiently high enough on the stuff, enemies are highlighted in yellow, and your in game speed is increased. Both of these are good, as the character's movement in the game is very sluggish when not pumped up with nectar. Also, in some areas that ... (continued on next page)
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[velocity]
- 3:01am EDT - March 19th, 2008
- 7
Halo Killer. Or I don't know, I have Halo 3 and have played it for 200hrs+ online and the singleplayer 2 times through. Halo is a great game, but I believe Haze could be better.
And I can't wait to test the nectar system. It just seems to be a great strategic factor in an FPS. This is not your normal everyday FPS, this is Haze, and Haze offers versatile gameplay and everchanging situations brought to you by nectar. Can't wait, really. Preordered this last september.
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swanky2167
- 3:57am EDT - March 19th, 2008
- 9
Good preview. I don't think this game can match up to R2 or KZ2. I'll probably just rent this to hold me over.
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Reagan1981
- 3:59am EDT - March 19th, 2008
- 10
wow, did this guy give a preview and not mention 1 thing about the frame rate, lag, or graphics? What a bad review, he just said everything we knew allready, and nothing about what we really wanted to know.....
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robbinator
- 4:08am EDT - March 19th, 2008
- 12
This is either gonna b one kickass game or something to hold us PS3 owners over til novermeber....
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Deusthousand
- 4:41am EDT - March 19th, 2008
- 13
I have noticed that alot of these guys that make the articles and reveiws stink real bad.But anyways Im gonna pass on this game here. I just started playing resistance the other day and I was very surprised and now Im waiting for part 2.So my wishlist is filled.
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Xdeth
- 5:00am EDT - March 19th, 2008
- 14
To all you Haze haters why dont you STFU and wait for the game to ship. I get so sick and tired of people spewing their hate when a game hasn't even been realesed yet. If your not interested then just say so. At least rent it for your self before you make a judgement.
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ps3_axe
- 8:20am EDT - March 19th, 2008
- 16
looking forward to haze. play on two different sides with a lot of features besides heavy gunfire to spice up the gameplay (nectar, weapon steal, playing dead, etc.) 4 player co-op should also be good and tbh i think the visuals look lovely on the newest screens. can't wait, always been looking forward to this title!
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AclayPS3
- 8:33am EDT - March 19th, 2008
- 17
I have to agree with a few other people and I don't see why people are hating on this game either when it hasn't even come out yet. Of course Haze doesn't sound as impressive as Killzone 2 or Resistance 2, but it's a PS3 exclusive and every PS3 owner that likes FPS should be all over this game and give it a chance.
I'm still looking forward to Haze and the Campaign in Haze is what I'm most excited about and the Nectar abilities. The whole Nectar concept is something new in FPS games and it's good to see some innovation in a FPS because so many FPS games seem to feel and look very generic.
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zombieking36
- 9:37am EDT - March 19th, 2008
- 19
Me wants, not more then R2, KZ2, and FFXIII, but it looks enjoyable.
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patthebaker321
- 9:55am EDT - March 19th, 2008
- 20
idk if i want this game anymore. i'm not being a hater, i'm just not interested anymore.
i WANTED this game so badly, but now i'm not that interested anymoer. i'm just starting to get tired of all these delays, and of all the same features. Hopefully they've come out with new features that they just haven't spilled the beans on... I'm mean, look how long they have had to work on this game with all the delays and everythng.
I think i'm probably just going to wait till R2 & KZ2!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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