Haze Comments by Rob Fahey

"the PlayStation 3, a console whose vocal detractors aren't afraid to come out in force online to criticise any weakness."

Why would they be afraid?! It's one of their main goals in life. Why one bothers about their mindless opinions is the real issue.

" the "corridor shooters" of the late '90s"

As well as 2007...

"it lacks some of the slickness and graphical detail we've come to expect from modern shooters thanks to the ubiquity of the Unreal Engine, but Littlewood claims that developing its own engine gave the team much finer control over things like lighting, which lend hugely to the atmosphere of the game"

A good thing in my book. I can't stand the sterility and blandness of UE3's lighting. Even if Bioshock had had a proper way to tell a story, I couldn't have worked my way through it because of the awful engine.

Lots of hate for this poor game. I imagine this comment-section wont be much different.

Les: Not too many corridors in the best shooters of last year though.

"Les: Not too many corridors in the best shooters of last year though."

One of the more high profile ones (Bioshock) was nothing but corridors...

Saw this running at play.com LIVE, and had a play at the demo as well.

Nothing exceptional, bog standard shooter. Looks good, but stiff animation and poor AI brings it down.

Les: If all you saw of Bioshock was corridors, well then I guess all games are corridor-shooters yes ;)

Also, Bioshock was more Unreal 2 and 2.5 than 3 and specifically the renderer including the lighting was a happy Irrational mashup.

Excuse me for talking about that game in this thread btw. Haze to me looks interesting, for the game mechanics not just being shooting.

I also played it at Live.com and came away unimpressed. Still, 15 mins isn't enough to judge a game and I hope that the full release gives a better impression.

Unless you've complete freedom of movement, as first seen properly in Operation Flashpoint IIRC, then it's still a "corridor shooter" (whether it's literally a 'corridor' or an '1930s art deco underwater ballroom', you're still being funnelled towards your desitination)

Definitely want this game but I'm one of those annoying punters who waits for games to hit about Ł15 before buying. I much prefer open out door action to enclosed limited area type games like bioshock.

no hate no love, so it would be a "meh"
For some reason, i don't see this being fairly judged, the opinions are aleready made, either you already know you are gona like it or not, even the first impressions sound that way. And the word idiotic is used too much.
All I would wish for is a online FPS, that works decent and that makes friends invite and stuff easy, then i could imagine joining the crowd, but this will defenetly not be bought on release date, i'll wait for your opinions and then we will see.
Good thing I don't care too much for Haze to be awesome, even if it is exclusiv, MGS4 is much more important to be decent!-)

For those who played it at Play.com.

You're criticising a 5 month old build of the game.

Kind of brought the fanboy hate on themselves as soon as it left multiplatform... never really understood that decision as it's still not particularly seen as a system-seller, or even a big game in general.

Will a demo be released for this, before the game's out?

>"you can also feign death when you're being shot at - and because the Mantel soldiers can't see corpses, you'll be invisible to them until you start moving again."

Erm...but he's not actually a corpse though. So why wouldn't they see him?
Anyways, this game looks.....

@ Goodfella

Well that's Ubisoft/Free Radical's fault for demoing an old version of the game. Quite stupid really when they want & need to generate some positive hype about it.

Should be fairly decent, but coming out in the midst of GTA4, Wipeout, and MGS4 means i'll probably leave it till later in the year.

When will we actually start seeing representative gameplay clips, as opposed to CG and montages?

In a nice touch, you can also feign death when you're being shot at - and because the Mantel soldiers can't see corpses, you'll be invisible to them until you start moving again.

It's an interesting idea, but this Nectar stuff is really, really rubbish if it lets that work!

I don't think it's the nectar that deletes the corpses rather than the HUD on those yellow visors they all wear, hence the cracked visor of the promo poster.

Hoping the story mode is good. I would like to delve into something which is quite heavy on story.
I can't comment on Bioshock at the moment. Booted it up, liked the intro, impressed by it all.... but for some reason didn't pick it up again and moved onto C&C3, and then back to FFXII!

Interesting preview.

I had a short hands on with it when they gave an exclusive preview at Nottingham Game City. To be quite frank, I was disappointed, after wanting it to really impress, being Free Radicals new IP, it just looked and felt a bit clumsy. It was a very early build though I think.

I will definitely be keeping an eye on the dev of this title though, I want it to be a really good title!

@The Bodybuilder. Ye its the HUD on the Visors and the nectar that goes with it that causes the corpses to be ignored.

I glanced at the picture and thought it was a belated review of Time Shift

It's from FRD, who are almost all ex-Rare guys. They brought us fun with Goldeneye, Timesplitters 1, 2 and 3, Second Sight (hugely underrated) and they will do so with Haze.

I hope for them that one day they'll strike gold with one of their games, getting it to sell 6 million copy's or more. But until that day, I hope they're happy with making tons of fans and hardcore gamers happy, and earning a decent living. I know I would. I've met that David Doak bloke a few times, and from seeing the way he dresses and shaves, he's probably happy where he is now.

I'm buying this day one, because as a PS3 gamer, this 'll be loads of fun.

yeah the engine looks pretty kak

the lighting is non existent, the textures look shoddy too

If that guy was my creative director I'd have fired his ass for sounding so downbeat. He sounds like he's expecting a critical mauling, does he not?

If he can't get fired up about his game, why should he expect anyone else to?

So tell us about the actual gameplay then! Yo'veu just retread old ground, story mainly and the fact that it's got some stiff competition... normally your previews are gushing (regardless of the final review score). This one was incredibly reserved (is that a bad sign?)!

Haven't read the whole article nor comments but from an earlier video here on EG I got the impression that they've made a story that will make soldiers dumb "for a reason" hence they do not need that good an AI after all. Why are the soldiers stupid and just standing there like older games? "Because they're high on nectar!" But, still that was an old developer interview.

Why are all the links to page 3 broken?

Bah, got a 404, sorry for repost...

Why was this article pulled yesterday?

Embargo, basically. We messed up.

Ah, fair enough. Nice preview - I'm actually looking forward to it (mainly for the co-op play) but can't help wondering whether it will arrive for the 360/PC at some point (despite what they say...)

Krudster failed his Management New-Speak course, what he meant to say was...

To facilitate maximum customer/client satisfaction, Eurogamer facilitated an earlier than expected customer interaction phase. This resulted in a negative client happiness scenario, requiring the temporary suspension of the aforementioned interaction phase. Now that the client chronological retardation phase has been completed Eurogamer are delighted to announce that they can now restore the customer interaction phase.

Eurogamer thanks you for your patience in this matter.

" the "corridor shooters" of the late '90s"

As well as 2007...

Q2 is a corridor shooter. Played it this week again. It still is by some margin one of the best games ever made. What's your point?

A good thing in my book. I can't stand the sterility and blandness of UE3's lighting. Even if Bioshock had had a proper way to tell a story, I couldn't have worked my way through it because of the awful engine.

I dislike UE3 as well. Not because there is something wrong with it but because everybody uses it. I seriously can't tell the difference between COD4, RB6v, etc. You're wrong about bioshock though. It's a fantastic story that is told in a great theatrical method. Technically, the way they tell the story is 100% solid.

One of the more high profile ones (Bioshock) was nothing but corridors...

And it was a fantastic game. What's your point?

You're criticising a 5 month old build of the game.

But he said himself that they did nothing but polish for the past 6 months. Kinda m00t.


Oh well, really looking forward to playing this, if only because it has coop.

Xerxes, what you may think is a fantastic game others might not agree. I personally didn't get on with Bioshock because of the basic gameplay. Storytelling, I'm with you there to a point (the halfway mark) but simply because it references Ayn Rand doesn't mean it's the be all and end all. It still got lazy towards the end and frankly was rather repetitious. But we'll save that for the bioshock thread. ;)

Nice. Looks decent enough and all that, but I'm still not quite sure whether it has quite enough to tip it over the 8/10 mark that seems to be fairly ubiquitous for every "decent" shooter that comes along.

Nectar seems to be the key, but the idea of simply making yourself faster, stronger, able to take more hits and not being able to see dead bodies just doesn't - to me - seem to pack the same degree of (for want of a better word) coolness as a gameplay mechanic when compared to Crysis' stealth mode or F.E.A.R.'s slow-mo.

That said, Timesplitters 2 and Black still remain two of my favourite console-based shooters of all time and neither of them had such gimmicks, so whether Nectar hits the spot or not, I do hope FRD manage to deliver in the gameplay stakes.

I've been saving up what little enthusiasm I have left for the somewhat stale FPS genre for the "creme de le creme" exclusive games like Haze, Gears of War 2 and Resistance 2 (I can't see Killzone 2 coming out this year though). The footage I've seen from Haze looks fine and I'm pleased that the game is not using the Unreal Engine 3 as there's a tendency for games that use it to look rather samey, bordering on bland IMO. You can spot a UE3 game a mile off by the texture pop in issues and complete lack of anti-aliasing!!! That Haze is using a custom engine means that it has its own unique look plus it's designed to run well on the PS3.

I'm a bit puzzled at the hostility toward the game though considering it's by Free Radical, the developers of the TimeSplitters series, but even if it is only as good as Resistance, a game I really enjoyed, then I'll be happy. A game doesn't always have to be ground-breaking to be fun, just a little different and playable. Hopefully Haze will be that.

Right on queue.

What are you saying, that I'm a ps3 fanboy because I want to play haze? Did you even read what I wrote before expressing your hypocrisy?

squarejawhero: Fair enough.

“You're wrong about bioshock though. It's a fantastic story that is told in a great theatrical method. Technically, the way they tell the story is 100% solid.”

Maybe it gets significantly better as the game progresses but I was completely underwhelmed by the start:
- The whole plane crash thing, being surrounded by fire on all sides except where the entrance to Rapture is, is rather hilarious
- You arrive in Rapture, a splicer kills someone in front of the bathysphere, hits it and then lets you get out and find a weapon first
- When the little sister and big daddy are introduced the game doesn’t allow you to use weapons for a short period (and personally, making them little girls so it would create a moral hazard when having to decide whether to kill them or not is so contrived and not working at all)
- You find a syringe and without knowing what it’ll do inject it immediately into your arm
- As you are unconscious creatures intent on killing you leave you alone
- Lots of people get killed but for some reason there are vitachambers that only resurrect you if you die


Didn’t get to the end of the demo because it crashed after my PC woke up from standby but couldn’t really be bothered TBH. Maybe it gets better and there’s an explanation for all this further down the story but the start for me was very disappointing. Especially after it was hyped so much: I’ve played many games that were better in telling a story. E.g. currently playing HL: Source and that is much more engaging.

Am I the only one who was disappointed by the fact that Bioshock never game you the opportunity to soak up the environment?
There were ALWAYS enemies lurking. You had to move, and move fast, constantly. If you'd ask me to draw a map of Rapture, I wouldn't know where to start.

But I still know the layout of System Shock 1.

Apart from that, great game. Room for improvement, but great none the less.

Oh I'm sorry, I mistook you for someone who actually played the game.

Yeah, All those things that Les seems to find strange are part of and explained by the games' story.

But is suppose the internet is all about talking rubbish with regards to things you don't know anything about, amirite!?

Haze huh? Load of old rubbish. Will also definitely make you gay.

Jesus, Les. It's a game, not real life.

Hmm...i'd like to play it...middling shooters of this gen tend to be a lot of fun still...shame it's single plat imo it has to hurt their sales, oh well

@ Daxxy

So essentially, people could just lie motionless from a distance and just keep firing on the mantel soldiers, and they would never see them as they are motionless "corpses" on the ground? O_o

I guess camouflage isn't a concern for futuristic soldiers? Those bright yellow helmets are like a big target.

The problem with Haze for me is not its exclusive to PS3, it's that it's just another FPS. These days it's gotta be something really special to interest me (thanks for that IW!). For me Haze has never looked anything other than just another FPS just like all the others that have come along in 2007 and 2008 that are saturating the genre. Besides anyone who has actually played it have not really raved about it anyway.

To be honest I am so tired of FPS games that apart from Condemned 2 I really don't think I'll be buying an FPS for quite a while no matter the platform and no matter how well received it is.

Oh dear, headbog you really are a sad person aren't you. So what's next? The "I was only baiting routine"?

rarely have i read a preview, or first impressions, on eurogamer where it was so clear the author was unimpressed, and struggling to find something, anything, positive to say. to be honest, i can't see anything to suggest this isn't going to be an immensely derivative shooter, devoid of anything new or innovative. the only hook they have is a suit that pumps some sort of drug into you to enhance your performance, that must be used tactically in case of overuse...now where have i head that before???

it's a shame really, but i suspect this isn't going to be very good. (i have a PS3, BTW)

Wasn't nectar just called a "power up" in other games? I remember even sonic turning to "nectar sonic" on the mega drive.