Posted By: Jeremy Stearns Posted On: 11/27/07 (Viewed 363 times)
Haze
Published By: Ubisoft Developed By: Free Radical Design Release Date: 05/20/08 Genre: Modern First Person Shooter Players: 1-4; 4 online ESRB Rating: M more product info »
Imagine for one second that our government is running low on human power to support our armies. The only option left for them to do is to outsource the rest of our armies to private corporations. What kind of world would we be living in? Apparently a world full of super soldiers being drugged up, as depicted by the developer Free Radical Design in their new first person shooter, Haze.
Haze takes you through the life of Shane, a soldier who is working for the mega-corporation Mantel Global Industries in the year 2048. Shane is enlisted as a super soldier and has been assigned to South America to deal with a rebel force naming itself the Promised Hand. Just like most first person shooters, there is sometimes a storyline twist and in Haze, Shane has changed sides from the Mantel to the Promise Hand through a portion of the game. Apparently everything on the Mantel side wasn’t all peaches and cream.
Of course you may be asking yourself, what ingredients do you need to make a super soldier? Well it takes one part soldier and another part drugs. This drug is being used by the Mantel and it is called Nectar. The drug is being pumped through all their soldiers and it has ability enhancing chemicals that will affect how Mantel soldiers perform. Some of these abilities involve greater resistance to damage and higher speeds. Also it contributes some special abilities, such as better perception so you can spot enemies easier or higher focus for even better accuracy than normal humans. So through most of the game you will come in contact with drug pumped soldiers and like most druggies, they are not happy.
Now remember, you were once a Mantel soldier in the beginning. So in the first portion of the game you will experience what these soldiers have been bestowed with. You will indulge yourself with the higher speeds and resistance to damage. But once you switch sides to the Promise Hand, you will lose it all. That is when the gameplay mechanics actually change for the first time. All those wonderful benefits you experienced for the first time are gone and you are back to a mere human. But like most drugs in the real world, there are negative effects that will affect the user. You will be able to use these effects to your advantage when you come across Mantel soldiers. The first and should be the most obvious attack to any Mantel soldier is to shoot the tube that feeds the Nectar to them. Doing this will rupture the chemical and will make the soldier go into a frenzy, confused state where they will shoot anyone coming near them, even their own allies.
Throughout most the game, Nectar does play a good part on how you will confront the Mantel soldiers. Using the drug to your advantage should be a top priority in Haze, unlike most first person shooters where weapons are your first priority. Of course you won’t notice any slowdown since the world is seamless, meaning there are no load times involved. With such lush environments this would be hard to understand, but the power of the Playstation 3 can make this possible.
Haze is scheduled to be released later this year and should give everyone something to enjoy. Boasting online multiplayer, there will be plenty of Nectar to pass around.
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