Haze not in HD, has 4GB install Comments by Robert Purchese

@Apologie

GTAIV is 720p on the 360 so its pretty much in HD.

The demo put a nail in the coffin for me, on any interest in Haze at all.

Utterly horrible in every way, from the "jock" style banter between the AI to the crappy visuals and pointless Nectar (that promised such innovative gameplay and in reality was nothing clever at all), it was a total "meh" on the awesome scale.

Glad my initial ambivalence towards the demo has been echoed here - I thought I may have missed something. Clearly, it was just the gameplay that was missing.

It is odd how this potential poster-boy for the PS3 has turned out so averagely, both in terms of technology and in gameplay. Is the PS3 hard to code for or has Free Radical just been found out?

The xbox 360 fanboys are strong in this comments section.

@Weezer, i always thought that Timesplitters was overrated, so not so much "finding them out" as making it bleeding obvious!

The Timesplitters games were fun in co-op.. Maybe that's what will save Haze?

i believe it will better on 360.anyway i downloaded the demo from PSN and i didnt like it at all.pure crap.

dsmx: Sorry, but you can't blame them after all the hyperbole that comes from the PS3 camp, HD gaming and all that. I'm still waiting for the game that gets my PS3 switched on! Haze ain't it...

So are the PS3 fanboys. Apologie has never played Halo 3. Thats for sure. Halo 3 looks better than most PS3 games and you cant compare it to the Haze demo. COD4 looks pretty good on the PS3 and even better on the 360 btw.

I'm very surprised that it's running in 576p internally. Yes it looks a bit blurry but does a better job of hiding the low-res than Halo 3 and COD and does not have massive jaggies which I would have expected. However Haze does have some slowdown and some ugly texture-pop in later which is not apparent in the demo... I have the full game btw ;)

Overall the game still looks nice due to some great effects - comparing it to Black is just silly.


"COD4 looks pretty good on the PS3 and even better on the 360 btw. "

No they are identical.

Free Rads have been living off the "3 of us worked on Goldeneye" rep for too long now. Three (poorer) clones of Goldeneye and a me'h 3rd person title since then and now what sounds like their poorest game yet... I did enjoy Timesplitters 2 and 3 a little but they weren't as good as Goldeneye was at the time. That style of linear FPS should have died by now...and their alternative (Haze) is no better either, it just looks like such a "me too" game...

Everyone talks about them like they've produced a string of classics. More like a string of above average shooters. Wait for Edge to give their friend Mr Doak at least a 7 though, bless them.

Weezer

Glad my initial ambivalence towards the demo has been echoed here - I thought I may have missed something. Clearly, it was just the gameplay that was missing.

It is odd how this potential poster-boy for the PS3 has turned out so averagely, both in terms of technology and in gameplay. Is the PS3 hard to code for or has Free Radical just been found out?

------------------------------

Yes, it's hard, but if you spend time enough to know the machine you can pull games like MGS4, GT Prologue, Uncharted etc... it only depends on the dev's... uncharted and GT have the best graphics i've ever seen in consoles, and both run on the Ps3 with very smooth frame rate... as i said before, if Haze can deliver good multiplayer, and an intresting gameplay, these discussion about graphics will be over in a minute (altough there is no excuse for them not to bring a better game in that department).

@designerheadace - Yeah, me too! Just never really got Timesplitters. Always just felt very average to me.

I was reaching one leg off the PS3 fence for HAZE and MGS4, unfortuneatley the demo has put me right back up there.

/swings legs

"Yes, it's hard, but if you spend time enough to know the machine you can pull games like MGS4, GT Prologue, Uncharted etc... it only depends on the dev's... uncharted and GT have the best graphics i've ever seen in consoles, and both run on the Ps3 with very smooth frame rate."

Agree about GT (I'd download GT-P if it wasn't £25); really can't agree about Drake. Not a patch on Assassin's Creed to my eyes.

I couldn't give a fuck about the resomalutions or indeed the five minutes waiting for a one time install as long as the game is fun to play.

@ evilfoxhound

MGS4 is only one game still not enough to make me take the plunge.

Thats one game in my opinion! before you all 'list' me to death.

@Mashum

Since it's NOT fun to play, that's you sorted then.

@LeD: Have you tried the full game or just trolling?

I don't bother about mandatory install as long as it improves the performance of the game, wich is not the case... Haze have medium quality graphics, some good effects and details, yes, but overall it's just mediocre. Now, 4GB??? that is a lot to install, i understand if games like GTAIV need it, or MGS4 but Haze??? give me a break, i really hope these game can compensate on gameplay and multiplayer.

@Darren:

Just so you know, Halo 3 has 4 player co-op over live. So it's certainly not that!

Haze is now looking simply as a rental to me. Didnt really like the demo and we cannot always blame the devs, its also about the hardware, tools, support, middleware and so on. Seem too many devs are having probs with PS3 you cannot put them all on the firing line.

Would have thought with Haze, Free Radical be better off sticking to Time Splitter next gen (with SD resolution!).

Likewise looking forward to MSG4.

Ugh, this generation sucks.

wow, the game doesn't even look that great graphically. i'm very surprised they couldn't get it running at 720p. i mean it's a PS3 exclusive, they have spent all their time programming it to run just for the PS3.

GTA on PS3 and Halo 3 both ran at 640x somthing which is still HD as the second number was higer, over all giving the same amount of detail. But this is quite bad, for a title that was hyped so much. 4GB Install as well, no thanks.

@Beano - IMO Halo 3 is by the far the jaggiest looking game on the two big HD consoles so at least Haze avoids that dubious honour. However, whatever post-production effects Free Radical are doing to mask the 576p resolution in Haze has resulted in a game that looks way too blurry. IMO PS3 games of late have a tendency to look either blurry like this and GTA IV or excessively jaggy (most multiformat games), all symptoms of what I perceive to be a weakness for doing decent anti-aliasing.

I own both consoles, so I feel im qualified to say that everyone who has posted in this thread should be put on the sex offenders register.

Well, I finally bit the bullet and decided to upgrade that tiny 40 GB HDD - with the frequent, large mandatory game installs (now Haze as well) I was getting a bit tired of having to hit the delete button on a regular basis.

I just put in a 250 GB Seagate disk ten minutes ago and it really is a three or four minute operation even if you're cursed with ten thumbs (I've got around eight and a half :p).
Well, not counting 40 minutes to back up 20+ GB of data and another half hour to restore them, which it's doing right now :).

And with a 250 GB HDD not costing much more than a game, I imagine this do-it-yourself approach is probably preferable to whatever exorbitant price you could imagine Sony might choose to charge for a PS3 with a drive of that size pre-installed.

"GTAIV is 720p on the 360 so its pretty much in HD."

And H3 more or less renders the same image twice.

"HAlo3 graphics are shit"

You never played it so htf should you know.

if you spend time enough to know the machine you can pull games like MGS4, GT Prologue, Uncharted etc...

Well, MGS4 isn't out yet. GT Prologue is a demo. I guess from what I've seen Uncharted is pretty good, if not brilliant, so what does the 'etc...' comprise of? The Haze demo looks (and plays) utterly unremarkable, and no one can whine about parallel 360 development holding it back in the graphics department. Even Apologie sounds down at heel.

Wanted to like this but found it very underwhelming.

Poor AI, no real feel of power in any of the weapons (even with upgrades) and found myself shouting abuse at the inane dialogue uttered by my squad mates. I know they're not meant to be deep thinkers but made GOW sound like Chekhov!

@Beano

I've played enough of it to know that I don't want to play another minute of it, thanks.

is it me or has apology adjusted his blinkers slightly?

Sony should be ashamed of themselves for the hyperbole they've been putting around since the run up to the PS2 launch.
Emotion Engine, Cell chip, HD (only when we say ) etc

I remember when they changed the gaming world with original PS.... what happened to that company?

i mean it's a PS3 exclusive, they have spent all their time programming it to run just for the PS3.

Not originally it wasn't.
The whole thing stinks of a botched development, like it's been shoehorned onto the PS3 in the last six months and punted out the door before it gets delayed even further.

"I'd be surprised if you're qualified enough to move from the fries fryer to the burger grill."

Your mother wasnt complaining last night when I paid her in Happy Meals.

@nickthegun - Since you've also posted in here several times I presume you're including yourself or are you trying to confess to something...? ;)

The demo was really pretty poor and did nothing to sell the full game to me. And I don't just mean graphically, it was just generally a bit dull to play.

TBH I think it's pretty clear that Haze was coded as a cross-platform game and has simply been made 'exclusive' for marketing reasons - and that probably helps to explain why they weren't able to do anything particularly impressive with the engine.

I am, actually, already on the sex offenders register.

Guess what for? I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.

"I've played enough of it to know that I don't want to play another minute of it, thanks. "

The demo was way to short to make any conslusion... good or bad.

"MGS4 comes out in less than a month. Now THAT is the PS3's system seller"

After the failure of gta to sky-rocket ps3/360 sales I think that we can safely assume that there are no system sellers this generation for those two platforms.

Anyway, who cares about resolution. Better a low res game with loads of details and gameplay than a stale highres one.

@nickthegun - I don't think I want to know, thanks, but I'm thinking something along the lines of "flashing one's firmware"! ;) LOL

Anyone else got the ridiculously oversized "free" Haze tin from GAME yet (minus game obviously) along with the equally pointless yellow glowstick? Mine came this morning at 7:30am and to think the postman woke me up to hand me that piece of crap... I mean why not have a tin case the same size as a normal PS3 game a la Devil May Cry 4 not something that is 50% bigger?!? Duh and indeed duh! LOL

@Xerx3s - Haze doesn't have any detail though... the overdone blurring effect sees to that! ;)

Uncharted is a great game but anyone claiming the graphics are the "best" or the framerate is stable is. . .wrong.
Great game. Love it. But lets try and keep at least one or two facts straight here?
No?
Eh?
Oh I give up then :P

Personally, I'm shocked by the uninspiring nature of Free Radical's development: the creative and artistic direction isn't exciting. Now technical expertise is in question. I can extend a little sympathy, what with the troubled dev process and little prior knowledge of the host platform, but really, after CoD4, they could have done better. The fanboy's will hold the platform accountable, but really, it's a dev issue if you ask me. Again, look at CoD4.

it's a bit of a shame if this sucks for the ps3 owners.
haze will be the ps3's too human ;)

Xerx3s: "After the failure of gta to sky-rocket ps3/360 sales I think that we can safely assume that there are no system sellers this generation for those two platforms."

If that game had launched during Christmas do you think it would still be the same situation? I don't. GTA is a system seller, just not during the summer when the masses would rather spend their time outdoors.

The "gameplay over graphics" posters here are missing the point. Yes its true. Give me a good game and I don't care what resolution its in.

But Sony have made a rod for their own back with their overblown claims of this machines power and its "true HD"-ness and the all-conquering CELL that was supposed to do the graphics as well but oops never mind chuck an off-the-shelf GPU in there and add some sellotape. . .

So when a headline PS3 exclusive appears in PAL resolution (albeit progressive) then you have to expect a bit of a kicking. And if they've sacrificed resolution for a stable frame-rate and STILL drop frames as some poster claims, well, PS3lol anyone?

Fwing, I didn't know Sony were responsible for Haze???

GTA is a system seller, just not during the summer when the masses would rather spend their time outdoors.
Hmm, the Wii outselling both by a massive margin during the same month says otherwise.