Haze

by noodles on Monday, July 27th, 2009 at 14:27 - Comments: 0

An interesting faction-mechanic hidden in a haze of terrible story, characters and mediocre gameplay.

Wearing the suit of Shane Carpenter, you're a sergeant in Mantel Corp's military. On a mission to clean out insurgents and capture the notorious "Skin Coat", a guerilla leader so nicknamed by the rumor that he wears a coat made from the skin of his enemies, somewhat à la Silence of the Lambs. To help you is your squad, made up of characters that really go out of their way to make you dislike them. Not you, as a character, but you as a player. Their frat-boy manner and moronic commentary seem to be drawn directly from a antagonist quarterback from a college-movie; you know, the one that treats his "girlfriend" like crap, drives his dad's SUV, and makes a sport out of hitting nerds in the head with beer-cans while discussing how much they want to join the army so they get to fire guns at terrorists. Luckily, you don't have to suffer their sub-intellectual behavior for long, as you'll switch faction to the rebels after only a few hours.
Oh did I spoil the story for you? No, wait, I didn't, because it says so on the friggin' box! After some questions that any school-child that has a problem with authority would ask, Skin Coat converts you to fight for his cause instead. One might hope that this would be a safe refuge from the idiots at Mantel, but the beer-powered chants and boasts are replaced with latino comments about how the rebels will be victorious and killing soldiers is a justified payback. Suffice to say that the worst part about the game is the soldiers; on both sides.

The whole story centers around the performance-enhancing drug, Nectar, that all Mantel troops are involuntary fed. Aside from preventing the soldiers from seeing casualties and dead bodies, things that ACTUAL war contains, and keeping their cannon fodder in their barbaric state of mind, it can be administered to boosts their reflexes, perceptive senses and physical strength. Game-wise this means that enemies start glowing bright, your aim improves and your melee does more damage. Aside from having a mind-controlling dose regulated from a central command, as a Mantel soldier you can tap your tanks for Nectar whenever needed, given that you have any charges. If consumed in too large doses, however, the user looses control, can't distinguish between friend or foe, and fires their weapon randomly.

When fighting for Mantel you have, as stated, Nectar, on your side. Along with this comes a standard array of generic weapons: pistol, shotgun, automatic rifle, sniper rifle, rocket launcher and grenades, and you're limited to carrying two at a time, not counting grenades. The rebels sport the same hardware with some minor changes to reload-times, ammo and damage, along with the addition of knives and the rocket launcher being replaced by a flame-thrower. To compensate for the lack of Nectar, the rebels have some different mechanics to work with. The first being the ability to play dead, as the Mantel can't see dead people. The others utilize the Nectar against the Mantel troops. By either infusing a grenade with the drug, shooting the administration-pack at the neck of the soldier, or by cutting the regulation-line with a knife they can send their opponent into overdose-mode, making him more of a threat to his peers than you. As a bonus, they can steal the enemies weapon after stunning them with a melee-attack, and salvage bullets for their weapons by scavenging other dropped weapons. Logic is present though, as you can't convert regular bullets to fuel for your flamethrower.

The game is short enough to not get too boring, but the problem is that it's not that fun to start out with. Switching sides and getting the new abilities and mechanics is more entertaining than pumping mind-altering narcotics into your bloodstream, but it's not enough to raise the title as a whole. The story is shallow, the characters are annoying, and the gameplay is average. Keep in mind though that the word is "average", not bad. The game is not terrible, it's just not very good either. If you have nothing better to do and would appreciate totally numbing experience of soldiers yelling how their side is better than the opposing faction, then you might even get two nights out of a rent. Just don't expect to gain some quick trophies, like Terminator: Salvation, for there are none.

tags: haze average nectar mantel