Haze was touted as a great PS3 exclusive from a developer well versed in first-person shooter mechanics. While Free Radical does have a solid pedigree, Haze does not live up to the company's reputation thanks to a horrible plot, weak gameplay mechanics and visuals that are truly underwhelming. While playing with friends is enjoyable, not even those are enough to bring this lackluster title around.4.5 Presentation
Who's gonna buy this? Cmon, this is Lair 2008. I'm about to go buy a PS3 just for this game alone.
:lol Please post impressions or something. I need a nice laugh.
IGN are a too harsh on PS3 exclusives at times.
Okay, it's after midnight so the embargo is lifted on the review copies of Haze that went out last week.
I've played through the whole thing and as much as it pains me to say this -- I've loved most everything these developers have been doing, and I wish them all the success in the world -- Haze is utter and complete tripe. If I can prevent just one of you from throwing away money on this underdone turd of a shooter, I will be happy.
I'll have a full review online somewhere in about a week, but I care enough about you guys, and I know that enough of you guys are Timesplitters fans like me, that I just had to warn you, before it was too late. Heck, get Dark Sector, or that cool Viking game, or that cool time travel one whose name I can never remember. But trust me: this is not the shooter you're looking for.
With early reviews for Haze looking good (Famitsu 34/40 and Italian PSM 9/10), it came as a bit of a shock when IGN bestowed a dreaded 4.5/10 on the game in their review this morning. In curiosity, PSU.com contacted Rob Yescombe of Free Radical to hear what he had to say.
"My thoughts are "Owch". No, wait - MEGAowch," wrote Yescombe. "Haze has had mixed reviews, but even GoldenEye got a 4/10 when it first came out. With a 9/10 in the Italian PSM, and an extremely positive review in Famitsu, we're looking forward to people playing Haze and making a judgment for themselves."
Why did people care so much about this game to begin with? It looks like the definition of generic FPS...
"It's about what's happening in the world today - it's ludicrous, and how can you make something that doesn't reflect that? Well, you could bury your head in the sand and make Halo 3, but the fact of the matter is there are more important things at stake." -- Rob Yescombe, Haze scriptwriter
It's ok guys, this may still be a monster hit. GoldenEye got a 4/10 too back in the day!!!whatdog.gifQuoteWith early reviews for Haze looking good (Famitsu 34/40 and Italian PSM 9/10), it came as a bit of a shock when IGN bestowed a dreaded 4.5/10 on the game in their review this morning. In curiosity, PSU.com contacted Rob Yescombe of Free Radical to hear what he had to say.
"My thoughts are "Owch". No, wait - MEGAowch," wrote Yescombe. "Haze has had mixed reviews, but even GoldenEye got a 4/10 when it first came out. With a 9/10 in the Italian PSM, and an extremely positive review in Famitsu, we're looking forward to people playing Haze and making a judgment for themselves."
[img]http://i30.tinypic.com/2r6fjw8.gif[img]
McDragon, did you make that gif?nope.
(http://i30.tinypic.com/2r6fjw8.gif)
Where's duckman at, this is ultimate ownage, I bet you wish you could erase all your past posts
Holy shit, what's going on at Free Radical? How could they make such a bad game?
On the upside, maybe Yescombe won't be allowed to be the company spokesperson from here on.
I think they have been working on that for a while. Not that I care, I've never liked Timesplitters. But at least that's familiar territory for the developer.
Who is Tom Chick?Do you think David "I made God of War" Jaffe would have been capable of doing that? I agree with you that a serious minded critical shooter is very hard to pull off.
And yeah, apparent tech issues aside, it seems like FRD plain doesn't have what it takes to make the transition from goofy kill-em-down FPS to a serious-minded "critical eye on the horrors and media exploitation of war" type of shooter in a graceful manner. Even disregarding the IGN review, the demo suggested as much. Still, these guys should at least be capable of designing fun (if dumb) multi-player stuff in their sleep, so I don't know what in the hell went wrong here.
Oh well, back to dreaming about what could have been with Heartland, hadn't it been ditched by the bigwigs.
I didn't think the demo was that bad. Even graphically it didn't seem like it deserved a sub-5 score; although some of the videos from that western map looked worse than PS2 graphically, so maybe that jungle was the best part. I didn't find it insultingly horrible to play like I did the Timeshift demo or Red Steel.
I hope it bombs just enough so it doesn't get a sequel, but not so much to the point where Timesplitters 4 needs to be on the Wii.
Do you think David "I made God of War" Jaffe would have been capable of doing that? I agree with you that a serious minded critical shooter is very hard to pull off.
well, at least GameStop will sell it to you for free for a week
Year of the PS3 still going strong. :bow2
Year of the PS3 still going strong. :bow2
Recycled GAFish garbage commentary still going strong
I didn't really expect that. I haven't been keeping up with the game though, maybe others saw it a mile away.
Haze attempts to deal with the concept of wartime propaganda and how troop morale is the most important thing an army can have. But it does it in such a blatant way that it’s hard to care about the point the game’s story is trying to make. Tack on a short campaign, dull weapons, lame enemy artificial intelligence, and lackluster multiplayer options and you’re left with a game that occasionally looks nice, but not much else.
Year of the PS3 still going strong. :bow2
Recycled GAFish garbage commentary still going strong
Year of the PS3 apologist still going strong :bow2
X-Play gave Haze 2/5.
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By the way, can someone with NeoGAF posting abilities remind the backtracking little Judas here that before he tries to wash his hands on this and hide behind others in order to avoid the flames, he should probably change his fucking avatar?
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=11261267&postcount=917
The graphics in the demo didn't seem that terrible though,
Since playing almost everything at 1920x1200 with at least 4x anti-aliasing on my PC, I haven't really cared much about graphics on consoles.
Everything on consoles just looks kinda low tech and murky.
By the way, can someone with NeoGAF posting abilities remind the backtracking little Judas here that before he tries to wash his hands on this and hide behind others in order to avoid the flames, he should probably change his fucking avatar?
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=11261267&postcount=917
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=11263743&postcount=944You forgot to point out the avatar.
yeah, no one thought it would be great....
QuoteI am weary - but I have enjoyed other 6.0 shooters such as Jericho and generally like to play something different.
erm.... isn't the whole complaint that it's totally -not- different?
It's fitting that Haze's gameplay would embrace such extremes, because its entire fiction is built around shallow absolutes. One faction embodies unlikeable and unredeeming lowbrow sensibilities without a hint of irony; the other embraces its ethical, sympathetic cause with angelically high morals. This is a shooter both easy to love and easy to hate, and you'll probably find yourself feeling both emotions within moments of each other.
edit: ah Darunia did it! good job!
Quotebut yet reviewers and most people take it seriously
that might have something to do with the developers saying it was a mature take/view on war.
So yeah, i think it's just bad rather than parody
:bow Power of CELL :bow2
:bow rendering fire effects like it was some Riva TNT bitch :bow2
It sounds like an easy cop out for "you thought it was terrible!? that part was the parody! trick's on you! we're actually geniuses!"Quotebut yet reviewers and most people take it seriously
that might have something to do with the developers saying it was a mature take/view on war.
So yeah, i think it's just bad rather than parody
it's mostly parody intertwined with seriousness
Quotebut yet reviewers and most people take it seriously
that might have something to do with the developers saying it was a mature take/view on war.
So yeah, i think it's just bad rather than parody
it's mostly parody intertwined with seriousness
Since playing almost everything at 1920x1200 with at least 4x anti-aliasing on my PC, I haven't really cared much about graphics on consoles.Resolution is overrated.
Everything on consoles just looks kinda low tech and murky.
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=11263743&postcount=944
yeah, no one thought it would be great....
Oh gawd.... I can't stand the whole thing.... and it's not just for this game. The whole " haha, your game sucks!" *points fingers, snickers, epenis enlargement* stand is so juvenile..... so elementary school playground little girl cheer leading.I kind of agree with that. It's one thing to discuss while you dislike something, but it's another to basically dance and sing on the grave of something that didn't turn out well. I feel bad for the guys that worked on this game. People seem genuinely happy that the game is of poor quality.
The whole division of gamers now days. It's like gaming is a religoun and software is the scripture. And like all religoun, differences in scripture is the difference between the believers and the infidels. So fucking sad.
Resolution is overrated.
Blacksite involved Harvey Smith and quite a few people from Ion Storm. They worked on Deus Ex and Invisible War. IW was incredibly disappointing as a sequel, but it was still a solid game while DX is one of my favorites. If anything, their pedigree was much more significant to me than that of Free Radical.QuoteGames such as Blacksite, TimeShift, Jericho, and the like did not receive anywhere NEAR this much negative attention.
hooooold on there, none of those games are made by anyone of the standing as Free Radical.
I have no idea why everyone feels they have to back track on this one so heavily. I'm somewhat sick of seeing people say "well, no one expected this to be good anyways" - yup... no one expected the makers of Timesplitters to make a good FPS....
lowering your standards these days?If your gaming display is an LCD it is YOU that is lowering your standards. My standards have not budged. I've never been a resolution whore and always feel that lowering resolution should be done before anything else. This has nothing to do with Haze, really, but rather the comment that 1920x1200 is "the only way to play".
No matter what game you can enjoy on those two clown PCs you can enjoy the same game at much higher resoultion (at least 4x more), framerate and GFX quality on a PC provided the game gets ported....because it doesn't make a huge difference? A high quality CRT displaying 1280x720 will produce an image superior to an LCD displaying 1920x1080. When driving a PC game at 720p, it becomes easy for nearly every game to run at 60 fps without ANY slowdown. Even Crysis can run smoothly with maximum detail.
How can you underrate that?
Man the SDF Recon Squad is in full force this morningConsider me the NSDTDF (non shitty display technology defense force)...
Between you and Duckman2000 all I see is sony fandom!Oh? Where am I defending Sony in this thread?
I was talking about console ports, not Crysis. You yourself should know (and You KNOW it) that most of the console ports behave REALLY amazing on high-end PCs and playing them @ 1080p, 60fps is NOT OUT OF QUESTION.In general, this is reasonably true, but I've found that 1080p does introduce slowdown on my rig. For instance, Lost Planet and DiRT both hold 60 fps at all times in 720p mode (with 4x AA) while 1080p results in slowdown at various points. They'll both still generally hit 60 fps, but it becomes a slightly unstable 60 fps. Of course, since I use a CRT, such a high resolutions become worthless anyways. 720p looks incredible. Seriously.
Also please reply to my post about Haze.Oh, I see. Yes, I believe Haze deserves some shit for failing to deliver. I'm simply disturbed by just how vicious people are towards the game. I feel bad for the guys that spent years working on it even if they didn't exactly deliver a great game. Their punishment for failure will be poor sales anyways.
Anyway dark1x to furhter prove my point about ABSOLUTE PC superiority when it comes to playing multiplatform games (for a HEFTY price, though):Those benchmarks just don't work, however. They list average numbers. When I benchmark at high resolutions I also get similar numbers. It's about slowdown.
personally, i can't stand LCDs either -- especially when playing something as shitty looking as the wii. i've since bought a 50" 1080p plasma and i don't think i can go back. for a while i've wanted to buy a 16:9 Flat CRT HDTV just for gaming (and to improve the IQ of the wii) but it seems like even those are becoming extinct. the drawback of those is the weight and size. even the 32" version is over 100lbs if i recall.
I *did* the same actions on Pariah back when Xbox 1 was still around and Xbox fanboys was hyping that through the roof.Heh, great mention there. I had forgotten about it, but Haze reminds me very much of Pariah.
QuoteGames such as Blacksite, TimeShift, Jericho, and the like did not receive anywhere NEAR this much negative attention.
hooooold on there, none of those games are made by anyone of the standing as Free Radical.
I have no idea why everyone feels they have to back track on this one so heavily. I'm somewhat sick of seeing people say "well, no one expected this to be good anyways" - yup... no one expected the makers of Timesplitters to make a good FPS....
QuoteAnyway dark1x to furhter prove my point about ABSOLUTE PC superiority when it comes to playing multiplatform games (for a HEFTY price, though):Those benchmarks just don't work, however. They list average numbers. When I benchmark at high resolutions I also get similar numbers. It's about slowdown.
Lower resolutions generally mean that you will be able to achieve 60 fps without EVER encountering ANY slowdown. At 1080p, slowdown begins to creep in. Some ports can't even manage that (Assassin's Creed). AC is the type of port that I can't enjoy as holding 60 fps seems difficult, yet it constantly jumps around. If they provided a 30 fps lock, that would help.
What's up with those COD4 numbers? I mean, there is no reason why a 9800 in SLI should EVER drop below 60 fps, but there it is. That type of slowdown IS bothersome. On my 8800GT I can achieve a 100% flawless 60 fps in 1360x768, but at 1080p, slowdown begins to occur regularly enough.
UE3 ports are also less impressive than they should be. For instance, Bioshock mostly runs at 60 fps, but for some reason, there are times when the framerate drops. It's distracting and strange. Then you have Gears of War which has awful stuttering while moving through certain areas (even with 4gb ram + ultra fast HDD). It's a bug in the game, not the PC. Other games such as Blacksite have slowdown while Turok adds loading screens (console versions were streamed). Stranglehold is jaggy as hell and won't use AA at all (no DX10 option available). So, yeah, UE3 PC ports have been generally disappointing.
QuoteGames such as Blacksite, TimeShift, Jericho, and the like did not receive anywhere NEAR this much negative attention.
hooooold on there, none of those games are made by anyone of the standing as Free Radical.
I have no idea why everyone feels they have to back track on this one so heavily. I'm somewhat sick of seeing people say "well, no one expected this to be good anyways" - yup... no one expected the makers of Timesplitters to make a good FPS....
poppycock i say!
Resolution has a massive impact on performance in many cases.
...because it doesn't make a huge difference? A high quality CRT displaying 1280x720 will produce an image superior to an LCD displaying 1920x1080. When driving a PC game at 720p, it becomes easy for nearly every game to run at 60 fps without ANY slowdown. Even Crysis can run smoothly with maximum detail.
I'd imagine that, in most cases, people gaming at 1920x1200 with 4x AA are not seeing a flawless 60 fps. You know, the type of framerate that NEVER budges. I can run games at high resolutions and still achieve playable framerates that generally reach 60, but the additional slowdown that occurs simply isn't worth it.
Again, my argument has nothing to do with the PS3. If a PC version of a game is available, I'm generally going to select it. I much prefer playing on the PC. I'm simply getting a laugh out of people who believe they have "high standards" and then turn around and use an LCD. What a joke.
QuoteAnyway dark1x to furhter prove my point about ABSOLUTE PC superiority when it comes to playing multiplatform games (for a HEFTY price, though):Those benchmarks just don't work, however. They list average numbers. When I benchmark at high resolutions I also get similar numbers. It's about slowdown.
Lower resolutions generally mean that you will be able to achieve 60 fps without EVER encountering ANY slowdown. At 1080p, slowdown begins to creep in. Some ports can't even manage that (Assassin's Creed). AC is the type of port that I can't enjoy as holding 60 fps seems difficult, yet it constantly jumps around. If they provided a 30 fps lock, that would help.
What's up with those COD4 numbers? I mean, there is no reason why a 9800 in SLI should EVER drop below 60 fps, but there it is. That type of slowdown IS bothersome. On my 8800GT I can achieve a 100% flawless 60 fps in 1360x768, but at 1080p, slowdown begins to occur regularly enough.
UE3 ports are also less impressive than they should be. For instance, Bioshock mostly runs at 60 fps, but for some reason, there are times when the framerate drops. It's distracting and strange. Then you have Gears of War which has awful stuttering while moving through certain areas (even with 4gb ram + ultra fast HDD). It's a bug in the game, not the PC. Other games such as Blacksite have slowdown while Turok adds loading screens (console versions were streamed). Stranglehold is jaggy as hell and won't use AA at all (no DX10 option available). So, yeah, UE3 PC ports have been generally disappointing.
Recent multiplatform games like COD4, MOH:Airborne, Lost Planet, Grid all run at a constant 60fps at 1920x1200 w/max settings + 4x AA on my PC.Oh, so despite the fact that the benchmarks above prove that a 9800GTX in SLI is unable to hold 60 fps 100% of the time in CoD4, you have a magical machine that can?
Don't be making assumptions about high res gaming on PCs because you're gaming like a dirty poor.
It's just silly to imply that it's not possible to get a flawless 60fps at 1920x1200 on modern PCs.Quite frankly, I believe people have a different definition of "flawless".
Also, I don't know why Dark1x keeps bringing up the CRT vs LCD issue. It's not like anyone is still making CRT monitors anymore.That's my problem. LCDs killed off CRTs and I remain bitter. I'm using a nice NEC Mitsubishi CRT at the moment, but when it eventually dies, I don't know what I will do. I literally can't stand using an LCD for gaming. They rock for general PC usage (very clear), but fall apart when gaming.
No difference. The exclusive PC gaming market is pretty much dead after Crysis "bombed" (didn't sell 3M copies at least).
Oh, so despite the fact that the benchmarks above prove that a 9800GTX in SLI is unable to hold 60 fps 100% of the time in CoD4, you have a magical machine that can?
I'm not sporting the fastest hardware out there, but it can still holds its own. I'm using a Core2Duo at 3.2 GHz + 8800GT + 4gb ram with a Vista 64/XP 32 dual boot config. I'm making no assumptions.
What are your specs? I'm extremely skeptical that you are able to run Lost Planet at 60 fps 100% of the time at such a resolution. Heck, even at 720p, the game still occasionally slows down on my PC when explosions are near the player. Benchmarks have supported my findings.
Why not benchmark the game on your PC and post a screenshot to prove that your minimum framerate never dips below 60 fps. You must also enable vertical sync and use the highest detail settings.
You seem to be be saying that gaming in True HD is worthless because the framerate might drop to "only" 40FPS for 5% or less of the game.Why on earth do you continue to bring PS3 into this? That has nothing to do with this. I will tell you right now, however, that I much prefer a solid framerate to one that slows down. A rock solid 30 fps is superior to 60 fps with slowdown. That said, I do find that most console games deliver poor performance and it does frustrate me.
That's a ludicrous argument from someone who's tolerated the low framerates in almost every PS3 game.
Oh gawd.... I can't stand the whole thing.... and it's not just for this game. The whole " haha, your game sucks!" *points fingers, snickers, epenis enlargement* stand is so juvenile..... so elementary school playground little girl cheer leading.I kind of agree with that. It's one thing to discuss while you dislike something, but it's another to basically dance and sing on the grave of something that didn't turn out well. I feel bad for the guys that worked on this game. People seem genuinely happy that the game is of poor quality.
The whole division of gamers now days. It's like gaming is a religoun and software is the scripture. And like all religoun, differences in scripture is the difference between the believers and the infidels. So fucking sad.
Haze is not hugely hyped by most people. There are some people who were optimistic about the game, no doubt, but it's not as if most people were expecting this to become the next Halo. Games such as Blacksite, TimeShift, Jericho, and the like did not receive anywhere NEAR this much negative attention. I suppose its marketing campaign was bound to draw more attention, but it's out of control.
I somehow doubt that your PC is four times faster than the one I'm using.
In spite of this brainlessness, Haze offers the occasional golden nugget of utter brilliance, and most of those moments come courtesy of some intelligently designed levels that are too good for the AI that inhabits them. Two on-rails sequences are exceptionally thrilling. In one, you defend a village from behind the turret of an aircraft; in another, you race alongside an enormous land carrier while trying to take down its defenses. The carrier sequence in particular is a total rush, pulverizing you with its sense of breakneck speed and using scripted camera adjustments to enhance the thrill. A few other levels are equally enjoyable in spite of the shortcomings, such as a climb toward an observatory and a tense village battle capped by the destruction of a rocket-launching tank.
Actually, it's more than 4x when you're bandwidth and memory limited at high resolutions.Based on benchmarks, I'm not seeing a massive difference between the 8800GT 512 I'm using and dual GTXs. There is certainly improvement there, but it doesn't seem like night and day by any means.
Sadly pretty much ZERO. Almost every exciting game that comes to the PC in the next 6-12 months is going to be a console port. That means, yeah you will be able to play it SMOOTHER than on consoles but it won't take advantage of your PC power. Crysis was the last grand PC exclusive game that pushed the graphics forward. I think a game like Crysis will never happen again. Even John Carmack from id software said that you won't see any game pushing the PC platform forward again. That means it will run @ 200 fps in 720p (whereas @ 30 on PS3/ 360) but it won't have bigger levels, better geometry, better textures, better lighting etc. All that power of your PC is going to be wasted on rendering pretty simple stuff hundreds of times a second.
Yes, I'm using Vsync.Do you have a shot displaying the benchmarks stats? I'm still very interested in that. 54 fps seems like a strange result even when triple buffering is enabled.
Come on dark just drop it. There's no point in defending "locked" 24 fps (that drop here and there even more every once in a while) and 570p resolution that is in the overwhelming majority of PS3 and 360 games.I suppose on the PC side, the fact that you can modify settings causes it to become slightly irritating at times. On a console, if you encounter framerate issues, you realize that there isn't a damn thing you can do about it and just play on. It still annoys me, but I can generally deal with it well enough. I suppose in a way, it's akin to those using LCDs. They suck, but you just learn to live with them. Of course, LCDs impact EVERYTHING you view.
Yeah, PC games often drop to 54 fps.
Pathetic PC gaming. Can't even keep up constant 60 fps!
Sure, it has a consistent framerate and no loadtimes (thanks to its four gigabyte install)