Time to go back to Rehab.
I played the demo and thought it was fantastic, and based upon that would score the game a little higher, however when playing the final product and finding how irritating a lot of aspects of the game were, I began doubting how incredible Haze was actually going to be.
It suffers from many diseases such as American Hoo-Ha Jock Syndrome. A lot like the mildly impressive Turok recently, it feature big guys with an big American attitude. Extremely unintelectual dialogue that makes Andy from Little Britain like a scientific genius. Yeah I Know. They have that stereotypical American way of cheering eccstatically when something goes boom and Yee-hawing constantly, crashing chests and generally disintergrating into something very similar to an American Football Squad. They are big but unfortunately not very clever.
Which brings me onto the horrific dialogue of the entire game which is genuinely dreadful, more squirmly awful than the "actor" Haiden Christainson. There is no emotion what so ever, so much so you 99% of the time break up laughing when something fairly serious has happened.
This isn't at all helped by the terrible character animations, which for a PS3 game are shameful. Reactions are non existant and due to this nothing ever feels threatening or real. It feels like a retro shooter, a lot like Doom, which in the day was phenomenal, but today it just doesn't quite cut it.
So they've added the use of Nectar, a drug which uber-fies your soldier and makes him mega, which makes the game become incredibly easier and again, denies any threat of enemies as your are all powerful and nothing can really stop you. Until you swap sides where things become more tactical and use the term tactical very loosely.
The irritating thing is as soon as you're getting used to the Nectar it swaps you over to The Promise Hand (sorry, that is such a **** name) and power is stripped right down and the game totally changes, from bad to worse. How I would have done it is offer two separate campaigns, one for the Rebels and one for the Troopers, all the same story, but told from different points of view, and that way you get a good feel for each side. However, this switch in the middle cuts short what could have potentially evolved into something incredible into something barely credible.
This was supposed to be a system seller for PS3, in the state it's in, it won't be. Graphically is just beats Black on PS2, every FPS on the console looks better than it (apart from Conflict Denied Ops and Blacksite) the idea of enemy swamped jungles could have looked awesome but they look bland and washed out in comparison to the lush greeness of Uncharted.
On the up side though the campaign is multiplayer for up to 4 players, a rarity these days and well worth a play through as there are a few set pieces that are quite phenomenal, and where Haze makes up a lot of lost ground. The shooting is spot on, as it should be from the legendary TimeSplitters team and online and multiplayer options are plentiful if a little lacking.
However, Haze is game that had so much potential, a great concept, a fantastic developer and incredible ideas that could have blown everyone away and caught them by surprise. Which it did - by not fufilling any of these. The story is awkwardly told, the acting is stiff and wooden and it's graphically lacking. Nectar doesn't pack the punch it should have done.
But after playing it and establishing my opinion of the game I still have one major concern. TimeSplitters 4. It's running on the Haze engine which is a slight worry as explained, Haze is visually as exciting as a Jacob's cream cracker, and with the expectations of TS4 the can not afford to fail, Again. And its going to be hyped even more than Haze was. Free Radical, make TS4 good and we may just forget about this Haze business - for the love of harry Tipper - don't ruin it!