Haze – Left me in a Daze From Lack of Delivering as Promised

If you have been reading my prior posts than you already know how I feel about games that are surrounded by hype but that in the end fail to adequately deliver on their over hyped nature. And nothing makes me angrier when I am duped into buying into the hype and playing a game, only to realize that it entirely fails to deliver whatsoever. So this notion once again rings the liberty bell in my mind, that ring saying, hyped and not able to deliver equals a game that makes me mad. And fortunately for me, I only had to waste a few hours playing this sucker to realize that indeed it was what it was: just another shooter game with a large advertising budget from its maker, Ubisoft, and one that totally fails to deliver as promised. And considering that this game saw a mid May of 2008 release, it should have delivered a whole lot more than we could have expected, which it clearly did not do.

The semi free world boards offered okay graphics, but nothing near the graphics that Ubisoft promised in the many commercials that preceded the release of this game. The same console cooperative play and the online coop were also lauded but in reality are sluggish and don’t truly deliver as promised. The only thing, in fact, that Haze actually delivers is another lackluster shooter game that had lots of promise but that ultimately flopped on the store shelves because they talked it up way too much in advance. So on to the game scoop, shall we dear reader buddies? Okay, if you insist.

The game takes place in the future in the year of 2048, where you are part of an advanced special forces unit that is called up to quell a rebelling in South America. And while the graphics are supposed to be great, slow frame rates (lots slower than Ubisoft promised) and clipping will torment you the entire way along your path. And Ubisoft claimed that the graphics in this game were as good as Halo – which they clearly are not.

I will offer them up kudos for entirely customizable controls, but that does not detract any way from the factor of suck that this game lives up to perfectly. The storyline, plot and narrative center around the rebellion, as you clamber through jungles and forests in South America fighting off hordes of rebellion troops. The weapon sets are the standard fare of carbon copy weapons found in every shooter. And with ten whole weapons to choose from, I was not impressed. When the buck stops rolling, and it always does, there is nothing special at all that I can really say about Haze. The only cool thing they got right was the same player split screen play – and that’s about it.

“Bad graphics that are over hyped and don’t live up to it, and lame boards, a weak plot and nothing really special at all is what you will find in Haze.”

My Score: 5 out of 10