This week I've been playing one of those games that defines a console, defines a genre, even defines a generation. It's an FPS that features a protagonist with a crisis of alliegance, a group of chemically altered warriors with golden visors on their high-tech armour. It's vehicular combat is second to none. If I say that it's title is a simple four-letter word, and the first two letters are H and A, then I'm sure you will be able to figure out what game I'm talking about. That's right, Haze.
And you'll probably also be able to figure out that the last paragraph is riddled with sarcasm, as Haze is one of the most offensive pieces of garbage I've ever had to play. For those of you lucky enough to not know, Haze is a below average PS3-exclusive shooter developed by Free Radical (who, with the Timesplitters series under their belts, and with ex-Goldeneye developers on the team, should have known better) that's major downfall was it's overhyped pre-release. Upon seeing the yellow visor splashed all over the promotional material, everyone and their gran made the Halo connection, and thus was born the "it's Halo on PS3" stigma was born, and expectations were raised to a level that Haze was never going to deliver. When put into words like that, the fate of Haze sounds quite sad, but the truth is, it would have still gotten those piss-poor reviews without the Halo comparisons. It just wouldn't have been pushed into the limelight as much.
Haze begins with you in the shoes of Shane Carpenter, who works for an American military group known as Mantel, who dose up on a hallucinogenic chemical known as Nectar before each conflict. Nectar dulls the soldier to the horrors of war, making things such as blood, injuries and even dead bodies invisible, and making morally wrong actions (like throwing babies in fires, as we find out) seem all in a day's work. On your first mission, naturally to rough up some ethnic minorities, your Nectar Administrator malfunctions and you realise that you're on the wrong side and that your enemy, a supposed vicious dictator and cannibal known as Skin Coat is actually quite a nice guy, and that the reason the Matel are invading their apparently very religious country (Somewhere in South America by the looks of things) is to harvest the plant that Nectar is refined from. So you set off and join him instead, and the rest, as they say, is history.
The story, as well as being a not-so-subtle dig at current events in the middle east, is actually one of the only redeeming features of Haze (the other being that you can switch it off), It kept me interested enough to put myself through the horror of the game. Texture pop-in is a term that really doesn't apply here, the textures fade in is if they were hoping that you wouldn't notice. Each scene starts off looking like a PS2 game, and gradually becomes a sub-par PS3 game. I have also never seen clipping issues quite so bad since the last generation either. Okay, so graphics don't really matter. What about controls then? The reload button, for one, is entirely in the wrong place at Triangle, when it should be Square. There's no dash either, so you have to saunter everywhere, meaning quite often I resorted to driving across some of the open areas to save time. Well, I wouldn't call it driving, not with the handling that's casually thrown into the game. The vehicles are controlled as they would be in a racing game, as opposed to the Halo/Mass Effect twin-stick driving method. But instead of R2 being the accelerator, it's R1, meaning you have two speeds: A billion miles per hour, or standing still. There's a nitro boost that can be activated with the X button that doesn't alter your speed at all, and the vehicles corner like a wet turd on a frozen lake. Just typing about it pisses me off.
Because I like to do things a little differently around here, I'm going to finish off my Haze rant by comparing it, and it's PS3 FPS brethren to, what else, the Baldwin Brothers. Killzone would be Alec Baldwin, strongest and most successful of the brothers. Resistance would be Billy Baldwin, still good, but lacks the edge of it's older brother. Haze, alas, is Stephen Baldwin: Short, ugly, boring and spouts religious nonsense at every opportunity. To perfectly sum it up, here's a video of a Mantel soldier being a very naughty boy indeed.
The week hasn't been all bad though, as my fantastic wife brightened up my Valentine's Day with a copy of Tatsunoko vs. Capcom: Ultimate All Stars on the Wii last weekend, and it is absolutely brilliant.
Tatsunoko vs. Capcom is the latest in a long series of fighting games putting Capcom's greatest warriors up against, well, everyone really. The series started with X-Men vs. Street Fighter, and Capcom have since gone on to fight the expanded Marvel universe, SNK and (in Japan only) Namco, until most recently coming to blows with 1970s' anime label Tatsunoko.
Now, I'd be lying if I said I knew anything about Tatsunoko. I remember watching Battle of the Planets (the American dub of Science Ninja Team Gatchaman) as a kid, so characters like Ken the Eagle, Jun the Swan and Joe the Condor are recognisable to me, albeit with different names to what I remember them as. But aside from that, I'm still learning. But I do love the Capcom vs. Series, and I love seeing characters that I know and love outside of their surroundings, and the Capcom side of the roster does not disappoint. Whereas every one of the vs. Series up to this point has been 2D and mostly made using recycled sprites from other games, TvC features fully 3D graphics, and has given Capcom and excuse to port some other under-used characters over, like Batsu from Rival Schools, and PTX-40A, the giant robotic suit from Lost Planet. But the real star of the show, for me anyway, is Dead Rising's Frank West, who comes with some suitably "Faaaaantastic" moves, from throwing a Zombie in a shopping trolley at his opponent, to slamming a Servbot mask on them and faceplanting them into the ground, all in the comfort of his own stage at Willamette Mall (the game actually prompted me to play Dead Rising for a bit this week. It hasn't stood the test of time very well). The game also features characters like Darkstalkers' Morrigan and Street Fighter III's Alex, featured for the first time in 3D.
The whole game is about excess. The special moves, similar to Marvel vs. Capcom, often fill the screen, and whenever a combo is executed on your enemy, instead of a damage percentage being shown, it will tell you you've done 12.874 billion points of damage or something, which is completely bonkers. Then there's the screen-filling enemies like the aforementioned PTX and Tatsunoko's Gold Lightan, who are so big the camera has to zoom out. I absolutely love it.
To complement TvC, I also picked up the new Classic Controller Pro for the Wii, which is a great controller. The arms and the repositioned shoulder buttons improve the controller to no end, and the glossy finish makes it look really smart. The lack of vibration places a downer on things, but I still hold it as the best Nintendo joypad I've ever used. Obviously a sentiment echoed by others too, as I think I picked up the last one in the whole of Sheffield.
Right, I'll drop it at that. I finished ObsCure, and after dragging my characters kicking an screaming through the game without a single fatality, one of them died in the climactic boss battle, much to my annoyance. And as I had read, the game took me little over three hours to finish, which is also a bit of a downer. And, for those who didn't know, Street Fighter III's Ibuki, Makoto and Dudley have been announced for Super Street Fighter IV. I've been wanting some SFIII characters for SFIV since it was first announced, so with that news I put in a preorder. Next week's post could be a little late, as I might be too busy playing Heavy Rain to write anything. I'll do my best.
No Baldwins were harmed during the making of this Blog.
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