Haze writer responds to review score Comments by Robert Purchese

I was not impressed by the demo, thought it wasnt a good demo (e.g would have been better to have alittle story to it). I read some information about the game online and watched a couple of videos about it and was going to get it Friday (it reminded me of a story of an old amiga game and really made me interested). I don't normally get put off but with Grid and Overlord coming out, and having just got WiiFat and GTA, I kinda think it's not worth the money right now. I think i will wait a while before taking the risk of buying it (maybe rent it), just too much risk.

Of course you shouldn't put all faith in online reviewers as some of them really lose the plot... but if it is true then this is a disappointment for the PS3. You expect an exclusive to be on the better end (8+ out of 10), from a developers point of view its harder to make a game on multiple platforms, so to be making a game on one, they have less hassles. So I think Sony and anyone who likes the PS3 will proably hope this game sinks quicker than the Titanic if its that bad.

Right, so...

Factor 5 cocked up on PS3 with Lair and are now making Kid Icarus on the Wii.

Free Radical cocked up on the PS3 with Haze and so will be making Time Splitters 4 on Wii?

Okay, admittedly, TS4 with be multiplatform, without a doubt, but a good Wii version would make me happy (even though The Conduit looks promising for some fun generic shooter action).

Shame about this game though, could have been good. If they were going to bring it to PC I'd have been interested, I remember watching the first ever trailer and thinking it looked awesome. But then that's how I felt about Lair and Red Steel...

Tis a sad day indeed for Free Radical. I hope they come up trumps next time.

: [

Of bleeding course for stating the obvious that Goldeneye being released today against the leading lights would sink much so far faster than Haze's prospects of winning the best game (or any of the awards) on PS3 of 2008!

The point was Goldeneye was groundbreaking at the time, and we had fondness with Free Radicals because of that same association, the people who were involved are the one at Free Radicals.

Sure it is heartbreaking to see such association being so tainted, Timesplitters were great fun and sure it will do far better. Would Free Radical be burned for attempting the exclusivity and reputation suffered as Factor 5 did? Every great devs have a bad patch but do seem to be a sort of a curse or summat!!

the 1st Sony Defense Force site was from wi60 people then it died but I think the new site is run by sony fans like the sony protection group
http://www.sonypg.com/forum/index.php

/facepalm

@Benno:

"So haze is not only running in low def, its actually shit as well?

Bad times sony, bad times..."



Just like halo 3 then?

That Rob. Funny guy. But this does smell like damage control.

The stuff I played at E3 and presstrips, gave me the same impression as the demo.
Gamepla kinda been there, done that, and graphics... lets just say FRD is much better at doing cartoon kinda stuff, like TimeSplitters and Second Sight (I loved those)

Still, Rob here was going to make all that worthwhile, with "exelent writing", and I believed him...


...untill I played the demo and saw the cutscene where your character walks up to the pilot in the crashed plane, and says: "are you hurt". ... I was like: dude, half the forest is gone, he's the only surviving Mantel guy, and he's hanging out of the cockpit. "are you hurt" is about as bad as writing can get.

Seriously, Rob, I hope that writing of yours picks up later on...

@ MKorkia : SDF is run by the same guys as Wii60, you fail.

@ Egster & Unclebenny: I know SDF is a fake site but it is still raging funny! :D

11 reviews on metacritic with an average of 54. Thats not good. The comparisons to Golden Eye are pure stupidity.

"Rubbish. I owned a PC at the same time and GE was better than anything on it. Including Half Life, Quake or UT. Simply had more fun with it. "

Clearly you live in a different universe. GE was fantastic because of it's splitscreen MP but as an fps game it is extremely primitive compared to it's pc counterparts. The likes of Q2 easily crush it.

I think the biggest problem that haze seems to have is that it is exclusive. On it's own it seems to be a pretty competent game - which would have been fine for multiplatform releases - but as an exclusive people expect it to be stellar. I think that this is amplified by the fact that FRD have been actively pushing their game on forums such as EG's and when they need to be there the most they are absent (which I can understand with an eye on company secrecy/pr).

Anyway, can we drop the myth now that "all talent from rare went to FRD"?

Anyway, can we drop the myth now that "all talent from rare went to FRD"?

yep....

Some more reviews in
40 G4TV
40 Giant Bomb
40 Gamespy

not looking good on metacritic

http://www.metacritic.com/games/platform...

In their defence, FRD has more than one team in-house.
The guys who made Haze did Second Sight before that.
And the TimeSplitters guys are working on Star Wars Battleront 3 at this moment.

I'm guessing FRD made 4 good games, releases a stinker now, and then gets its act together for this generation, and releases some more good stuff. The talent is still there, imo. If you really want to compare them to Rare... rare's last four games where all sub standard.

Viva Pinata may be an acquired taste but it's certainly not sub-standard.

@DanWhiteHead

Comparing it to the stuff Rare used to do (Banjo, DiddyKong Racing...), its substandard. (but then again, your oppinion is worth as much as mine)

And I laughed with the Giant Bomb subtitle.
Winners don't use drugs.

That Gerstmann, fat and unemployed, but damn funny.

Comparing it to the stuff Rare used to do (Banjo, DiddyKong Racing...), its substandard. (but then again, your oppinion is worth as much as mine)

If you're going to use words like "substandard" then opinion doesn't really enter into it. Viva Pinata is as technically accomplished as anything Rare have ever made and certainly contains more fresh ideas than, say, Diddy Kong Racing. What exactly is the standard that it fails to reach?

As for all this nonsense about Goldeneye being "wank" or "overrated spunk" when compared to modern console FPS games...a little perspective, please? Maybe a little context? If modern console shooters are better than Goldeneye, it's because both the technology and genre have evolved since then. And how did it evolve? Through games like Goldeneye, without which the genre never would have taken off on consoles.

It's as stupid as saying that the Model T Ford is a shit car because it can't go as fast as a Lamborghini, or that Gutenberg's printing press was crap because it couldn't print ten thousand magazines in an hour.

I seldom pay much attention to reviews, instead preferring to make my own mind up about a game. This has led to me buying some really crippled software in the past, but has also sent me on to play games which I'm glad I didn't ignore and am happy to have experienced. ( Examples of which are, on 360- Hour of Victory was, appallingly bugged to the point where the game got you stuck in the third mission and would not progress,whereas Two Worlds ran like a two legged cow but played like a dream).

I'm not convinced about any review until I try the game myself anyways, if it appeals I usually try it.

So Haze...future war, extreme violence, macho and pointless character behaviour...GOW anyone?

I'll try Haze methinks.

@DanWhitehead

You said it. I agree 100%.

I completed Golden Eye on all difficulty settings and played hundreds of hours splitscreen with my friends. Its actually my favourite game of all time i think. Viva Pinata is in the top ten games this generation imo. Its actually underrated even though it got good scores from the critics.

I only played it once for an hour or two...

Well then your insistence that one of the seminal games of its time is wank and bollocks and spunk doesn't really carry much weight, does it?

In general i dislike that people state their opinions on games they bearly played. 1-2 hours of playing time is not enough to have a valid opinion in most cases.

"It does if the game wasn't good enough to keep my interest. There's a reason I played it for only an hour or two, and the reason was that it was wank"

This is actually a very common statement from people that dislikes Ninja Gaiden.

Regarding Goldeneye your in the absolute minority. Your fully allowed to have a different opinion of course.

Has anyone here played more than 1-2 hours of Turning point? Probably.
Does the world universally agree it's utter utter garbage? Yes.

(I liked - not loved - Goldeneye BTW)

A couple of hours is generally enough time to decide if you, personally, enjoy a game. It's not, however, enough time to justify sweeping statements about the legacy of games that are widely - and justifiably - held up as classics of their genre.

I may not like Goldeneye, but I wouldn't insult it to put it in that league.

"the original goldeneye was overrated WANK."

"It was overrated when it first came out, now it's truly wank compared to most FPS, even the worst ones like Turok show it up for the overrated spunk it always has been."

@farticusmaximus & JSPOOLE

Thats very different because Turning Point is lackluster technically compared to other games in this generattion. Nobody can say that about Goldeneye cause its not the case any way you see it.

"I cannot remember Goldeneye receiving that low a mark; everybody raved about it."

Yep, I believe he pulled that one out of nowhere in defence of Haze. Goldeneye had great reviews overall, and if it did receive 4/10 from somewhere, then it certainly wasn't from a magazine or website that mattered, since gamers would have remembered (especially when compared to the reviews from everywhere else).

http://readerreviews.ign.com/rrview/game...

http://readerreviews.ign.com/rrobj/game/...

"http://readerreviews.ign.com/rrview/game...

Best review EVER, EG you should get this guy on board! ;)

"...although some reviews say the framerate is solid, while others complain about it jittering badly..."

I can confirm that statement. I have the retail game and the framerate is quite bad later on - even when there's nothing major going on and the game is rendered in low resolution (576p). Looks very poor and a big letdown because the demo was promising IMO.

Sad to se a bad game like this from Free Radical Design which I had high regards for. Looks like a game which was released 6-9 months to early.

Is the SDF site a piss-take or are they genuinely serious with all of that bollocks?

....also.... it amazes me that the game could get thru test and QA without Sony, FRD, or reviewers who tried the game early, rasing the alarm. Looks the game just had to be released no matter what state it was in.

Hahahahaa! That reader review on IGN is constructed entirely from pure, undiluted win. I really hate biastism too!

BTW, that guy must surely be Apologie and swams lovechild.

lol at the person who said resistance2 looks crap!

I am loving this from the IGN reader's reviews:

Once I downloaded it and started up the demo I was impressed by the menu and customizable controls/icon. As soon as I started playing the demo I was hooked. It was like a good version of Halo just more creative and interactive.