Exclusive: Haze - Cutscenes

oh no...

oh dear

Hurry and post the review, EG. It's not like you to be so late... the UK review embargo was lifted a day or so back I believe...

/craig david

Can I get a rreeeeeeeeeeeeview?

I'm not detecting any irony . . .

Just let it die already!

its hard to believe that a game would come along and make the scripting in gears of war look mature

disclaimer - i LOVE gears of war, but the scripting was a little weak

hmmm bad

"...giving you a chance to judge its success for yourselves."

Well, we'll have to without a review....

Aha, Bee Movie's out on DVD, no?

Actually given how appalling the characterisation and story were in Gears of War, I'm surprised anyone has complained about Haze's. I can't imagine for one second that it's actually any worst... Gears was so gung-ho, American and in yer face that I had to take nausea pills to play it right through to the end! :P

darren, to be fair, Gears wasn't the greatest, but you could at least crack a smile sometimes. It was no war and peace, but from what i've seen of haze, i'd say gears was better.

i know i can't comment properly without playing the game, but i'm not buying a ps3 to play haze, and even if i had a ps3, i dont hink i'd be buying haze

but come on, didnt you smile at least a few times during gears

and i know some people say cole was racist, but i thought he was very funny, and actually i really liked his character

It's terrible, unfortunately. Talk about using a sledgehammer to crack a nut...

"Actually given how appalling the characterisation and story were in Gears of War, I'm surprised anyone has complained about Haze's. I can't imagine for one second that it's actually any worst... Gears was so gung-ho, American and in yer face that I had to take nausea pills to play it right through to the end! :P"

As bad as Gears was it was still cheesy fun a la 80s action movies like Predator. This is just plain old shit.

The UK review embargo for HAZE is Friday. IGN were just given an exclusive.

im not sure why all the numptees of the internet are comparing the story and script to Gears o wars. It's abundantly clear Gears was a celebration or tribute to macho badboy posturing while Haze VERY obviously is a criticism of the same mentality.

This of course may have no barring on broken AI and uneven gameplay... oop

Ubi dropped the embargo earlier in the week. Presumably they hoped the average score would be a bit higher than IGN's so there could be some damage limitation.

"It abundantly clear Gears was a celebration or tribute to macho badboy posturing while Haze VERY obviously is a criticism of the same mentality."

I agree competely.

But aren't the Mantel dialogues supposed to be over the top and suck?

I agree that they might have taken it a bit too far though.

edit: Bah, late again!

@ illusiondance - good points

@deepo i think they are meant to be, but satire is very hard to pull of. do it well, and you're entertaining and proving a point. do it bad, as haze appears to do, and all you've done is create something worse than the subject you're laughing at

the haze cinematic just don't appear to be taking the piss, they just seem bad

The "I've got wood" bit is just cringingly awful.

Patience good readers, a review is inconceivably imminent. Well, not entirely inconceivably. But very, very soon.

"Hurry and post the review, EG. It's not like you to be so late... the UK review embargo was lifted a day or so back I believe..."

The original embargo was Friday, but Ubisoft lifted it. We only received the game on Monday, so we wanted to make sure we'd seen it through before putting anything down. It'll be up today though.

Alas, Free Radical! I knew them, Eurogamer: A dev team
of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: they hath
borne me on their games a thousand times; and now, how
abhorred in my imagination they are...

Oh come on, the demo is no worse than any other generic Space shooter. It controls really well and is as smooth as you like, so it seems better than a lot of other similar games to me.

Thanks Mugwum. I've got the game at home but I'm really looking forward to hearing what EG make of it as your reviews are usually well-written and extremely entertaining! :)

@Charm

BOOSH!

I don't suppose anybodies interested in commenting on what this games says about modern warfare. Haze I think seems like an appropriate title, but not the for reasons the reason's some here might suggest. I'm intrigated to read Edge's review...

@mem - Did you really have to shout that out... you've given me earache now! ;)

I can't believe this is a Free Radical game. This is writing in the same "league" as Resident Evil 1, unbelievable.

"Oh come on, the demo is no worse than any other generic Space shooter."

But the full game is much worse that the demo (first level) indicated. I liked the demo (seemed like a simple but fun shooter), but the full game is so boring and poorly done.

Rule No1 of posting on the internet, anyone who uses caps for there entire post is an idiot and should be ignored.

And people take the piss out of Gears of War!? GoW is a Merchant-Ivory masterpiece compared to this shit.

Terrible!

@Beano

Bummer:(

"I can't believe this is a Free Radical game. This is writing in the same "league" as Resident Evil 1, unbelievable. "

At least Resident Evil had an excuse, the first game was near enough a word for word translation from the Japanese version, which is why some of it came off sounding so bad.

Jeez that looked kind of awful, I guess it's another PS3 exclusive that I'm pretty happy for it to keep, doesn't look like 360 owners are missing out on too much.
And similarities can be drawn between the script in this and GeOW, but like a couple of you have said GeOW seemed more self aware of it's rediculousness.
Fuckin' BOOSH!

If you have a killer song, you can get away with trite lyrics. Same with games and their scripts. Outside of GTA4 I can't really think of any decent game stories that aren't just macho cheese fests.

Drakes Fortune, heavenly sword, Bioshock... um

MEGAOWCH

hahaahaa

Doesn't look too bad tbf.

One thing that bothers me - and this is a more general thing in fps games - is that all characters are the same build and height. This is very unnatural.

@Widge. Yeah they are alright but it's hardly bookworthy stuff is it. Mind you nor is GTA4. I can't comment on Bioshock, not played it. Anyway, is Haze really that much worse? I have played Heavenly Sword and although the cut scenes were lovely the dialogue was generic tosh.

Do you know.... what I used to do... before I joined Free radical.....

I, I was a writer... semi-pro...

urrrrgh......

I really liked the cinematics of Heavenly Sword, the bit where you face off against the huge brute with the shell on his back. You feel for him when his ferocious 'pets' get killed, and even more when he gets all the abuse off Bohan! Just some lumbering soft fool who doesn't really want to face off against Nariko and gets loads of grief when he starts to lose. You can tell that Nariko doesn't want to fight him either. A good piece of emotional attachment in the game.

I've only played the intro section of Bioshock, but you can tell from that its not your average military escapade.

Also like the way Rockstar continually explore new narratives. They did the mafia thing, then the urban hip hop thing (which Saints Row seems happy to clone indefinitely) and now moved onto the Eastern Bloc immigrant thing. And as for Drake, just nice to see someone who isn't a Bio-suit grunt fighting his way through a jungle. In a movie context, he's a typical cheeky action chappy, but you don't get many like that really in games whatsoever. It seriously does often end up being some gruff voiced military type.

well it looks like the internet has spoken.... and it says "No to unsubtle socio political commentary please! one wants rofl-tastic gravel voiced meat shields!!"
in caps probably...

was just trying a little halflife 2 again yesterday.
thats how to write narrative in FPs.
any other examples?

what, as in no narrative at all?
Halflife 2 is devoid of any purpose beyond the opening excellence apart from belting in a straight line from one set of people who tell you to go see another set of people.

Bizarrely enough, reading a wiki on it, the story is fascinating, its just not present in any shape or form in the main game (apart, as it has been pointed out to me, by wandering off to read newspaper clippings). Good gameplay engine of course, but I found Halo 1/2 much more compelling to play through as far as a story goes.

yikes...

well it looks like the internet has spoken.... and it says "No to unsubtle socio political commentary please! one wants rofl-tastic gravel voiced meat shields!!"
in caps probably...

That's the problem: the lack of subtlety. The core idea is good, you play as part of squad of soldiers who are essentailly drug addicts. The synthetic chemical that turns them into super soldiers does weird things to the mind.
But it's done in such a poorly written, down right anoying way that it turns the concept from interesting to crap.