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Wednesday, 21 May 2008

Free Radical, what have you done!

I don't know whether to be surprised or shocked at the general news rolling in about Free Radical's new post modern shooter 'Haze'. Originally, the game appeared to be a very promising interesting shooter, with a interesting story, characters and generally, looked like an advancement on one of the PS3's first FPS's Resistance: Fall of Man. That was a while ago though.

It go delayed, which doesn't always mean bad news, but tends to tell you that the developer is having some issues with the hardware. After being told it was definitely a PS3 exclusive, we just believed it was the typical PS3 teething problems. After all, Free Radical Design are good developers, they made the Timesplitters series (after leaving Rare, hence most of the developers working on a certain game called 'Goldeneye') and appeared to understand FPS....Obviously not.

imageHaze, for those that don't know, follows basically a soldier working for a PMC (Private Military Company) called Mantel, who use a drug called nectar to heighten their senses and make them better soldiers, but overdosing kind of sends the person crazy. Now to give you a not so massive spoiler, less than half way through the game, you switch sides and start working for the 'terrorist cell' called Promise Hand, who exploit the weaknesses of this drug etc etc.

Now whilst Timesplitters 3 was published by EA, this one was done by Ubisoft, and boy was it hyped, which has kind of led to its downfall. I am not going to comment on the game itself, as this ain't a review, and I have not played the full game, but the demo let me down massively. AI was shoddy, graphics were more suited to the original Xbox than a next Gen platform, and some of the rubbish that spurted out of the mouths. Any excuse to shout macho idiotic comments that the Mantel soldier have, they will shout, like Nectar Tourettes or something similar.

"Its like taking candy from a crippled baby"
(a Mantel soldier)

imageTactful ain't it. The game appears to be trying to show the effect of drugs, and the effect of propaganda etc in a modern day/future world. Which could work fine, if the game wasn't simply a 'tick the first person shooter requirements sheet to make the developers happy' game. Now I recommend always not looking at individual review to get the general feel of a game, but to use a website like Metacritic to see the overall score. Most of them have been average, with one of the harshest (or not) scores being given by IGN, a 4.5, which appears to upset Free Radical.

Whatever happens to Haze, it appears Free Radical will come out it with a slightly tarnished reputation and made it clear that they can't yet develop well on the PS3. Hopefully, a Timesplitters 4 won't be like this at all...

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