Haze (Playstation 3, 2008)

Haze was beat up pretty well by all of the profesional reviewers. I on the other hand enjoyed this title by Ubisoft very much. The story is: you are a guy named Carpenter working as a soldier for a company called Mantel. Mantel makes this revolutionary drug called Nectar that enhances a persons abaility to heal and perform in combat. What mantel doesn't tell the soldiers that are working for them is the drug is highly adictive and alters a persons view of reality and after longer term use of the drug it will cause you to die a painful death. Rebels are stealing Mantels Nectar so you are sent in to stop the rebels from stealing the nectar. The rebels want to destroy the nectar because they are aware of the side effects. The first 1/4 of the game you play as a Mantel soldier killing rebels. I enjoyed this part of the game because you can self administer Nectar and your targets are lit up and glow and is fun and easy to target and hit. Of course the rest of the game you grow a concious and realize that Mantel is a corupt corporation. After this you no longer can use Nectar. The rest of the game is fun just not the same without nectar. However the rest of the game does make up for this in other aspects. The game is rated mature and even though I am not a believer in the video game is killing our youth movement. I would strongly suggest evaluating this game if a younger person will be playing this game. There are scenes of mass graves and dead soldiers and the usually blood and alot of cursing as well as suecide. The graphics are great as you would expect. The controls are completely mapable which I like. Checkpoints are easily achieved so your next save point is always close. The weapons selection is good, however you can only have 2 weapons at one particular time. The amo situation is sometimes frustrating. Someties it will collect amo automaticaly and sometimes you have to collect it yourself. There are vehicles but they are pointless and take away from the game. The enemy and squad A.I is inconsistent. Sometimes your squad is helpfull and sometimes not as well with the enemies A.I. sometimes they are very aggresive and sometimes they just sit there for you to kill. But all in all in thought it worked well. This game offers about 30hrs of play per level. The voice overs are very annoying it's always the same thing over and over again at some point you almost want your squad to get killed just to shut them up. I only encountered 1 bug in the game and that was close to the end. So all in all not a great game but a solid game and well worth the time you spend on it. As far a s value I would never buy it at full price but @$30 is a good value.