Basic errors annihilate any promise that the game has.
* Pretty world
* Constant variety in what you're supposed to be doing (first level at least)
Minus:
* Vague weapon control and lack of aiming
* Erratic object collision
* Non-reversible camera controls
* Camera which has a mind of its own. Also jumps and gets jammed easily
* Death penalty big penalty - wasted time
* No in-game tutorial and general lack of purpose
* Some really annoying sound effects
* Controller deadzone set too small
I have to admit that i only got as far as the start of the second level because the game's annoyances completely defeated my resilience in giving a game a fair chance.
I gave it 2 hours, most of one of those hours was spent redoing sections i'd already done due to the death penalty reset.
It's a shame because looking at the box blurb and pictures, you're given high hopes for Haven. It just completely fails to capitalise on its promise. The first failing is the lack of any meaningful intro, it goes something like this:
Apparently a guy called Haven is having dreams and must be found, you then switch to the Haven fellow who builds a robot then runs off to work, an accident occurs and he wakes up in town, where you then take over in order to collect cogs and enter a mine. There is no tutorial in how you go about this, nor what the reason for going into the mine is, you just have to.
At this point you'd read the manual and discover everything that you need to know in order to play. Programming a tutorial was evidently too hard for the Developers.
As was having an option to reverse the camera controls.
Ah the camera, something we take for granted in well-written games. It follows your character around and can be freely adjusted to give you the best view of what you need to do. Not so much in Haven. Instead it can be adjusted to a point (if you've remembered that left is right and right is left - ugh), and then just moves around of its own accord depending on how you're moving and how close to an obstacle you are. In short; it's terrible.
And again it seems as though Traveller's Tales didn't know how to fix it and so included a shortcut option of pressing L2 + R2 to centre the camera behind your character. You use this a LOT, but it doesn't always work as rather than simply resetting the camera, it has to rotate it round to this position. And this method doesn't skip the risk of the camera getting jammed on the scenery and saying "no i can't do it".
Can you see a theme developing here?
As with most other 3d platform/adventure games you have weapons, and objects that can be broken for cash/collectibles. Then you run into the other big problem with the game: It's impossible to aim your weapon. Your basic tool is a yo-yo which Haven flings out in front of him to hit enemies or destroy urns. Unfortunately there's some weird collision-detection going on or Haven is blind in one eye and has no depth perception. You'll often take several attempts to destroy 1 urn because you haven't quite managed to line it up perfectly and/or your character just missed on purpose.
This can be especially annoying when destroying exploding crates as if you get too close then you get injured by the explosion.
And that conveniently leads us on to the reason why i put the controller down and said "life's too short" after 2 hours play.
You die often, mainly due to a combination of the jittery camera and non-existent aiming. Every time you die you're sent back to a checkpoint at the start of the room/area you were in; which is fine, most games of the type do this. Where Haven differs however is all the foes you killed and all the items you collected are reset so you have to do it all again. Imagine having 90% of what you need and then running into an exploding barrel you didn't see because the camera wasn't behaving as usual, then respawning with 0% of what you had effectively saying you wasted the past 15mins of your life. With this you have a game which scores highly on the frustration scale.
What about the good points i mentioned? Yes it looks nice, but is there a game of this type which doesn't? The one level i fought my way through had constantly-changing challenges; plenty of variety in the game. And in the book it says there are planes and boats and cars and things to come later.
I for one won't be getting that far.
Was Haven rushed to meet a deadline? Were the playtesters stupid? Or did the developers just not know how to fix the problems that completely ruin the game?
I suspect a combination of the three, and i've had to endure this mess so that you don't have to. Stay away from Haven.