Sweet Nectar…
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Members of the Mantel force are suited up in full body armor trimmed in bright yellow and wear helmets with shiny yellow face shields that give the appearance of giant bumblebees. No doubt the game's developers saw the irony between the soldiers' appearance and the drug, Nectar. The Nectar used by Mantel is contained in packs worn on the soldiers' backs and is injected intravenously into the back of their necks. In the game, players are given a tutorial on the use of Nectar, instructing how to give your character a shot, or boost, of the drug. While the drug is continuously administered into the blood stream, a boost of it will fill the Nectar bar in the game's HUD.
Boosts of Nectar allow the player to move faster, take less damage, and view enemies much easier as they emit an orange glow. This works like night vision or infrared goggles, but affects enemies only. Each of the six Nectar boosts you can carry at once deplete over the course of a minute or so when used. However, each kill you make before your indictor bar drains completely refills it a little. With that in mind, it's entirely possible to keep a single boost going until the an is cleared of enemies. While these are welcome enhancements, the use of Nectar is not without its negative effects.
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Like most drugs, Nectar comes with a disclaimer. Here's ours.
While using Nectar, do not overfill the capacity of your Nectar bar. Overdoses of Nectar may cause the inability to distinguish your enemies from your own squad. Most common side effects found in those who use Nectar include, but are not limited to, hysteria, dizziness, blurred vision, extreme paranoia, hallucinating, temporary deafness, or spontaneously bursting into flames. Those suffering from the most extreme side effects should consult a physician immediately, or simply run and hide while shaking your Sixaxis controller vigilantly.
Soldiers who have overdosed are recognized by their bright red face shields, erratic behavior, and red clouds of Nectar that leak from the containers on the soldiers' backs. The drug is also used as a brainwashing agent. Unlike Haley Joel Osment in The Sixth Sense, Mantel soldiers cannot see dead people. This of course is to protect them from the realities of the war at hand.
While the use of Nectar appears to be the star of this show, disappointment inevitably comes when players no longer have the ability to use it after the first couple of hours into the game. At this point, you learn that Mantel's real agenda is not so desirable, thus causing your character to switch sides and begin fighting alongside the members of The Promised Hand. With this turn of events come a few new abilities, such as swiftly dodging enemy fire and feigning death. While playing dead, Mantel's troopers cannot see you, which is odd since you're not actually dead. It is a welcome feature nonetheless and one that you'll use to your advantage from time to time.
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shabby - Monday, May 26, 2008 - link
I see you guys missed that haze actually runs at 576p rather than 720p, would of been nice to mention.JarredWalton - Monday, May 26, 2008 - link
Not owning a PS3, I can't really say either way, but would rendering at 1024x576 and then stretching to 1280x720 result in a sort of "anti-aliasing"?Furen - Monday, May 26, 2008 - link
A simple strech would actually amplify aliasing, since you would stretch the edges even more. I'm pretty sure that the upscaling algorithms used probably are the equivalent of some of the higher-quality upscaling methods we see in DVD players, so the effect may actually be decent--but nowhere near what it would be if you rendered in HD natively. So much for Sony's "every game will run at 1080p" BS...mmntech - Monday, May 26, 2008 - link
Keep in mind that this is a third party title, being distributed by UBIsoft, a company who has earned my ire many times over on many different platforms. The developer takes the blame for this one since the graphics in Haze aren't exactly going to tax the system. Given that it's a PS3 exclusive built from the ground up, that's particularly disgraceful. If nobody at the company can program for the Cell (I assume this will be their excuse), fire them and hire someone who can. All other PS3 games run fine at 720p or 1080p. Sony does take some blame though since in the PS blog they said Haze would run at 720p when in reality it's only being upscaled to 720p. That is deceitful. If you're using a display with non-standard resolutions higher than 720p (say a 16:10 computer monitor like I do), the image quality further deteriorates since it's being upscaled twice.Technicals aside, Haze seemed like a pretty generic dystopian future first person shooter to me after I played the demo. There's nothing spectacular about it. You go around shooting terrorists while doing drugs. It's like Vietnam except with fancy yellow and black suits. It's not a bad game but it's not great. Over hyped and under substance. I'd rent it but I wouldn't fork out $60 to buy it.
ats - Thursday, May 29, 2008 - link
Very Very few games for either PS3 or XB360 actually render to 720P let alone 1080P.Neither of the consoles have either the graphics power or memory to really support heavy shading and textures at real HD resolutions.
Slash3 - Tuesday, May 27, 2008 - link
No other comment on what you've already said, but here are a few other titles that do not run at 720p or higher resolution on the PS3:Lair: 800x1080 (no, really)
COD4: 1024x600
Dark Sector: 1152x640
Metal Gear Online: 1024x768
Haze is 1024x576
MGS4 is rumored to be 1024x768 as well.
The downside is that through the low rendered resolution + upscaling, you lose a lot of fine detail. It still looks great in motion, since you retain the modern particles, lighting and rendering passes for effects such as depth of field, HDR lighting and such, but you lose definition - literally.
I honestly don't think it would be such a big deal if people hadn't been force fed the notion that this console generation would deliver all content in 720p or 1080p format when it's simply not the case.
slashbinslashbash - Monday, May 26, 2008 - link
Reading the review, the game sounds a lot like Halo, although it seems Halo has a better weapons selection and a better multiplayer experience. I would have liked to see more explicit comparisions of each mode: single-player, multiplayer, and coop. Also comparisons of graphics, sound, etc. Halo 3, like it or not, is the standard-bearer of console sci-fi FPS gaming (distinguishing from historical or more-or-less realistic depictions like CoD). Not to mention, Halo 3 is exclusive to Xbox 360 and thus seems to form the most perfect competitor to Haze (bring on the "Hazo" comments). I, being mostly happy with Halo 3 and the 360, and not owning a PS3, would like to know how Haze fares in comparison.I'm not trying to be snide or anything, it just seems that this game is squarely aimed at the same niche that Halo 3 occupies.... like probably someone at Sony decided to come up with a Halo competitor. Nothing wrong with that, but since the comparison seems so obvious, I would like to see someone actually do the comparison in a review, despite the flak they will take from fanboys on both sides. I know that I will own a PS3 eventually, and I owned all 3 (4, if you count the Dreamcast) of the last-gen systems.
EddieTurner - Tuesday, May 27, 2008 - link
Aside from being a FPS and having a four letter title beginning with the letters H and A. there is really no similarity between the two. Haze is a story about conflict between humans and just doesn't give off that Halo vibe at all. I don't think that was the direction the devs were going with this. But I agree, Halo is a fine game that has set some standards in console FPS's.