Haze impressions

[Scruff7]

Scruff7 said:
right, what was all the fuss about?

got my copy at 8am this morning (well done Mr Postman and Amazon.co.uk!). i'd booked the day to 'work from home...' and slotted the game into my PS3, let it run the install before taking a shower to wake me up (i'd been up celebrating the football the night before...)

I've now been playing it ever since, and it's now 2:10pm, and i'm pretty loving it.

First things first. there are a few problems with it, especially in the beginning. it does feel a little shoddy, the video editing is a little rubbish at times, the characters aren't animated particularly well and the jungle environment... i've seen better. too many 2D plants with little detail that don't interact with the player at all. frankly, there are points where i thought it was only marginally better than a good quality PS2 game. infact there were some parts where the environment quality reminded me of Killzone... oops i suppose you could say.

the models are alright, but i wasn't too impressed when my squad of 3 contained 2 guys who were exaclty the same. maybe they were twins. who liked to dress the same... but you know, i get passed that. they don't look as convincing as CoD4 characters, but they get the point accross amd tey look like what they're supposed to be.

the dialogue is a bit repetive, it's true, but i don't really care, it doesn't bug me so much. it never did in the Halo games either. i've noticed on a couple of occasions that 'baddies' sometimes stand still, waiting arnd not doing much, but they've been isolated events that occur in every game.

onto something abit more positive. the game does get better. the enviornments are large, just sometimes you don't get the opportunity to explore it properly. you'll be fighting down a little road, smashing baddies and trying to stay alive without ever realising that there are so many more options. you're still following the route you have to take, but its much wider than you may realise. i can imagine this will be excellent for multiplayer campaign games.

levels i've realy enjoyed - the hotel, the village, i hate the vehicle bits, they're impossible to contol and it seems you have no choice but to drive. grrr... i just want to shoot stuff. it does get better as te game goes on, almost like they've improved the middle and end and not really bothered with the beginning.

sometimes you get the feeling it's trying to imitate other games but never quite getting it, but that doesn't mean its bad. not in the slightest. this game is good. not AMAZING, but good. 7.5 is an ideal score. not 4.5. did they get the same game as me?

ok, so finished the game now and i'm going to be a bit harsher, it doesn't really deserve a 75%, its more like a 68%. it took me about 9 hours to complete, probably the first time i've ever finished a game in one day! it's fun, story line is alright and interesting. i like the fact it doesn't go all silly by making you fight old school end of level bosses and it's just a good, basic, generic shooter. fine, if it had more atmosphere to draw you in. what i'm really disappointed in is just the shoddyness of it all. there are glitches all over the place. one time i died, came back and the environment was all in basic form with no texturisation at all - really surreal. that happened a couple of times throuhout the last few levels. sad really. and more of the soldiers standing around not doing anything when you know for a fact the should be (i don't want to give the story away, but it's near the end). obviously the game waits until you hit a trigger point even though you can clearly see the soldiers further away. its a shame, because it could have been so much better if the beginning and the end were given more effort. also, there are moments when you just end up saying to yourself 'is that it? surely there's more to do...' play it on hard, normal is to easy. i still found the vehicles a pain in the arse, and couldn't wait to get out. just one final thought; the game just feels shoddy. its fair enough as a game, just shoddy. but in that case, what the hell would it have been like if the had released it back in November?! and why didn't they sort out those little problems that plague the game so much?!