While my buddies, Doc and Dave are galavanting around Los Angeles, I was stuck here… playing Haze. I played it all the way through. I may be the only person at Sarcasticgamer.com that did play it all the way through. Well, here’s some breaking news: Haze sucks. Sucky, suck, suck, sucks.

Oh my god, Haze sucks. Let me count the ways, after the jump.

Lets get to it. Why Haze sucks so hard.

Haze sucks so hard because from top to bottom, it’s ugly, stupid, pointless and not fun. I couldn’t believe that a game could be as bad as it was. I’ve heard people rag on it and I just couldn’t believe it. So, I decided to try it out for myself.

I’m not going to rehash the story for you, but basically you’re supposed to shoot dudes with yellow helmets. That’s all you need to know. Quite honestly, I have no idea what the story is besides that, because the story sucks. There’s a bad corporation called Mantel that’s killing the good guys, blah, blah, blah. You’re the savior/hero that can save them all, blah, blah, blah…

The main character, that you play as, is a whiny sounding bitch. He’s a puppet. He takes orders and never questions them in a game that attempts to get the player to question why you’re doing what you do. Why are Mantel soldiers killing everyone? What is nectar? Who is the rebel leader, Gabriel “Skin Coat” Merino? (yes, the dude’s nickname is Skin Coat, that’s how bad this game is.) What is Merino after? Your avatar whines and whines throughout the game while attempting to find out, but never does anything about it. This especially infuriated me at the end of the game. When you’ve finally killed off the last of Mantel and you’ve won, your rebel leader, Merino, decides to take and use Nectar, the same drug that made the Mantel soldiers so evil, to control his own troops.

What do you do about it? Nothing. The game just ends… Oh, I’m sorry, did I spoil it for you? Like you were going to play this piece of crap anyway. I just saved you 10 hours and 60 bucks. You should be thanking me.

Anyway, back to the game. The level design is possibly the worst I have ever experienced in a video game. There are hallways that lead to dead ends, for no discernible reason. Houses with no rooms. Mortar emplacements shooting at nothing. Bad guys littered everywhere, guarding nothing in particular.

For instance, you’ll travel to a land locked Freighter. Why? Who knows. There’s no real reason to go to the Freighter, other than the fact that it’s there. Once you’re in, you find a bunch of bad guys already there. Why? No reason. They’re not guarding anything of importance, but you’re forced to fight your way to the bowels of the ship, and then fight your way back out. Why? No reason. Another example of poor level design.

One example sticks in my mind. On the Freighter, while trying to exit the ship, you enter a room that’s like a crawl space, except you don’t have to crawl. Above, through destructable grates, are Mantel troops. At first I thought, “okay, I need to blow the grating up, get up there and kill these guys because the stairs or door is up there.” So, I did that. After, I climbed up and wandered around for a few minutes until I realized that there was no door, ladder or stairway out of this room. The room, before destroying the grating that served as the flooring of the room, had no discernable entrance or exit. Yet there were four bad guys in this room…

How did they get in that room?

Why were they in that room?

What is the point?

Turns out, if I had walked another few feet under the grating, I would have seen the exit that was on the same level, beneath the room. I never had to shoot the guys, or destroy the grating, because I could just walk past them.

The game is like the example I gave above. It’s possible to simply run past bad guys to different checkpoints throughout. While this is nothing new to the pantheon of crappy level design in video games, it just adds to the overall level of crap that Haze is.

Other than sucky level design, the weapons suck. The rebels and Mantel both have the same exact weapons. Both have shotguns, sniper rifles and assault rifles. The rebels also have flame throwers and chain guns, while Mantel troops have rocket launchers. Yes the flame throwers and chain guns were a nice change of pace, but you really only get to use them once in the game. Once. There are on-rails parts where you use a chain gun to shoot stuff, but other than that, you’re stuck with the same weapons over and over for the entire game, which bored the crap out of me.

The vehicles suck too. There’s only three driveable vehicles, a four wheeler and Mantel and rebel versions of trucks. The vehicle physics suck and the controls are so touchy, it’s almost impossible to drive in a straight line, let alone execute any type of maneuver that would steer you successfully out of harms way during any hairy firefight. The sucky controls and boring vehicle design made these sections of the game a real chore.

The graphics suck. I would be embarrassed to show this game off as an example of the PS3’s graphical prowess. It looks like an Xbox game. Textures are non existent and the explosion effects are really crappy. The smoke effects were good and that’s it. For a game to look worse than PS3 launch titles is unfathomable. There’s really no excuse. It was PS3 exclusive. They had years to make this game. What a waste.

This game is terrible. There are no redeemable qualities. Not even achievements could have saved this game. The story sucks, the graphics suck, the weapons suck, the vehicles suck and the level design is fu*king terrible.

Avoid.

Worst shooter of the year? Yes. Worst game of the year? Yup.

Worst game ever? Quite possibly.

It’s confirmed: Haze sucks.

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