Haze (PS3)

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Vehicles seem to play a significant part in the gameplay

Time to take revenge on the rebels. Here, you get your first taste of Haze's vehicles. The motor available is a hulking metal beast which looks a bit like Gears of War's UV-light blasting car. There's room for a driver, someone to man a turret and two hangers on. Driving the vehicle through narrow winding, mountain roads is a lot of fun, a lot more fun than using the turret or firing your rifle at the blur that is the scenery from the side. Haze can be quite hard, so more often than not you'll find your vehicle ticking, indicating it's damaged so much that it's going to blow up. You'll have to jump out and wait for it to explode when this happens. Conveniently, a brand-spanking new vehicle is usually never more than half a minute's jog away.

Haze's hook is that it's something of a moral dilemma. Although what I'm about to say is a potential spoiler (look away now if you don't want to know), it's already been announced by Free Radical and is pretty much essential to understanding what to expect in the game. Half-way through you learn the truth about the Mantel corporation and Nectar, and decide to join the rebels, changing the way Haze plays for the remaining period of the game.

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As a rebel member of the Promise Hand, you'll be free from the side-effects of Nectar, but you'll also be free from its power-giving properties. But you do have some unique skills which help you turn the tide. The most useful is the ability to roll, by double-tapping X, which helps you get out of trouble quickly. You'll also be able to play dead by tapping L2 - Nectar sanitises war for Mantel soldiers, so they can't see dead bodies or blood. Once they think you've vanished you can spring up and shoot them in the back. Nice.

As a rebel you'll also be able to set traps, steal weapons and, most interestingly, make Nectar grenades and Nectar knifes by standing over a dead Mantel soldier and ripping the yellow stuff from his back. Nectar grenades explode in a shower of yellow haze, driving anyone within range mad. Throwing the Nectar knife will have a similar effect on a single target. Playing as a member of the Promise Hand is all about turning Nectar, the very stuff you spent four levels injecting into your veins, against your old buddies.

A Nectar overdose can make you see things

There is no doubt that Haze's campaign will be a blast with three friends online. Indeed most FPS games with online co-op, or split screen co-op, are better when played this way. This is no intense single-player corridor shooter after all. We love the fact that co-op is supported by some nice tech which allows seamless drop in and out campaign co-op gameplay, too. Haze is shaping up nicely - while it's not a graphical powerhouse it does have its moments, and its own unique look. We're getting a bit bored of identikit Unreal Engine 3 shooters, so Haze's aesthetic should prove to be a selling point. There's little revolutionary in terms of gameplay going on in the campaign, but it should keep PS3-owning shooters happy until big-hopes Resistance 2 and Killzone 2 arrive later in the year. The popularity of the switch from Mantel soldier to rebel will no doubt have less to do with being engaged with the story and more to do with how fun both are to play. My initial impressions are that most people will prefer the Mantel at first, but there's more sneaky fun to be had as a rebel. Colour us yellow.

Want more info on Haze? Head over to our video preview where you'll also find plenty of new in-game gameplay footage.

Haze is due out in May 2008 on PS3 only.

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