Consolation Prize

Due to be released this Friday (23rd May, UK) a demo of the eagerly anticipated PS3 exclusive game Haze can be downloaded from the Playstation Network, weighing in at a mighty 1.57GB.

For its huge download size the actual demo is really quite short. You play a soldier from the Mantle Corporation and along with your fellow squad members are dropped into the jungle and tasked with locating a downed transport craft and securing its valuable cargo of Nectar. All in all you can blast through the level in about 15 minutes and even quicker on successive runs and this level merely acts as a tutorial for the controls and the effects of Nectar on your combat skills.

As a Mantle trooper you have access to the performance enhancing drug Nectar. When coursing through your blood Nectar enhances your vision allowing you to easily pick out enemies, increases your strength, and improves the body’s ability to recover from wounds.

So impressions… The demo looks decent enough, if not breathtaking and with some noticable texture pop-in on characters. The environment is competently rendered and along with the excellent use of background sound effects it actually feels like you’re in a jungle. The music score is appropriately used, successfully lingering in the background barely perceptible but pumping up the volume and pace when engaged in a fire fight, and the sound of your heartbeat thumping away as you administer Nectar and then gradually fading as the drug wears off is a neat little touch.

However, even though Haze looks and sounds great this alone doesn’t guarantee that it’s going to be a good game. There has to be something a bit more substantial to the gameplay, something that makes it really stand out from the overcrowded FPS genre, and based on the demo I can’t really see what Haze is going to offer that hasn’t been done before. The weapons felt run of the mill, enemy AI seemed a bit lackadaisical, employing the “rush straight at the player” approach, and the demo didn’t showcase much (if any) of the storyline.

Haze just feels like a by-the-numbers shooter and is missing that “je-ne-sais-quois” that elevates a game from average to great. Yes it’s a demo, but it has to prove to me why I should part with my cash.