Free Radical’s new FPS might just take the leap as being the first that really showcases the horror of war.  We got to experience it for ourselves when we sat down with a February build of the game at Play.com Live.

The fact that the Mantel PMC in Haze pushes Nectar onto its soldiers as an enhancing drug is well known. It sounds simple enough, but the allegory here is relevant to war veterans who were fed drugs to make them fearless and unquestioning; because Nectar, as it turns out, is both a blessing and a curse.

Nectar wasn’t so useful when we were stuck inside closed underground environments, but when you’re fighting in dense foliage, you’ll wonder how you ever managed without it.

The big thing when you tank up on Nectar is enhancements to your vision. Rebels shine brightly as if they were being viewed through thermal goggles. If a grenade is thrown, a sixth sense kicks in and sends out a pulse from where it lands, giving you just enough time to get out of the way; or at least avoid the brunt of the damage. We saw the same happen with rockfalls. It also boosts your speed. But it’s still not a patch on Timesplitters.

Just to prove the point of how essential it is, you can even siphon more off from other members of your squad. But as with any drug it’s possible to overdose on the stuff, which as Patrick pointed out, is rather disorientating.

The larger the OD, the greater the effect. It starts off with a little bit of screen blurring, ending up with a total loss of control. Friend and foe alike become indistinguishable black silhouettes and your movement and shooting becomes random for a fixed period.

There also appear to be drawbacks to using Nectar in the form of a ‘bloodstream abnormality’, which appear to be scripted, causing your vision to distort slightly as with a mild overdose.

There’s no reason that you would OD intentionally of course, but as a tactical element, Nectar packs are physically represented on Mantel soldiers - shooting them will have the same effect.

We thought it would be fine if we just stayed in cover – and we were - but the Promised Hand rebels have an unnerving knack of hitting your team mates’ packs, which means that they go into a blind rage. And I don’t mean they stand still and fire blindly – they pursue with intent. That killed us far more frequently than the rebels themselves.

That problem would probably be non-existent if you were playing multiplayer co-op of course. Otherwise, your AI companions are pretty good at flanking and taking people out. It’s just a pity there’s no map to tell you where they all are. 

In the second part of the game you realise that Mantel isn’t a particularly ethical employer and quit the force to join the rebels. You see, Nectar distorts the reality around you so much that it hides dead bodies and blood from view. At that point – our Ubisoft rep tells us – ammo is a lot scarcer, so Nectar it becomes the weapon of choice.

Let’s say you’re faced with a group of Mantel soldiers. Shoot one of their packs and he’ll start taking his team out. Even better, you could lob a Nectar bomb their way and send the whole lot bananas. All you have to do is mop up. No bullets? Apparently you can do the same by dipping throwing knives in Nectar.

But for all its illusionary properties, Nectar can’t change the way you see Haze, because it looks graphically average. One look at the wall textures will tell you that. Likewise the heated flamethrower death was more reminiscent of a stream of crepe paper.  Naturally since this is not the final build, improvements here can be expected.  Oh and the framerate, it’s a solid 30fps, with narry a drop below.

Meanwhile, the environments are selectively destructible. In one underground complex we were able to shoot a fire extinguisher clean off a wall, but we were damned if we could make the thing leak.

Realtime cutscenes had entertaining and well performed voice-overs, with sufficiently expressive movements from the characters.  Nonetheless, when talking about facial expressions and lip movements Haze left a lot to be desired.

The real horror, with Nectar given such a prominence, will be if Haze turns out to be a bit of a one trick pony – but then we weren’t able to try the four player co-op which is such a massive part of the package. We did want to play more, but our Ubisoft rep wouldn’t attempt to jump to a latter level.  A shame, but understandable.

However, we did notice that the Haze box in our demo pod had a sticker with a 10/10 review score and the quotation; “The Best Playstation 3 game yet” . Ah wait, it hasn’t been reviewed yet. Freed Radical are cheeky scamps.

Tags: Free-Radical, Haze, mantel, thermal_goggles, underground_environments

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