Free Radical takes us deeper into the future of war
Free Radical is concerned about Haze. With the developer's much-quoted leanings toward more mature gaming, challenging censorship boundaries and raging against monkeys, it's worried that we might be forgetting to ask some important questions.
What about leading man Shane Carpenter's defection halfway through the game? And what impact does his switch of sides, from super-tech Mantel Corp. army to rebel force The Promise Hand, have on the gameplay? We've been shipped up to Free Rad's HQ to see the answers in action.
Haze's world is a nightmarish future where war is run by bean-counting businessmen and fought by salary-banking corporate mercenaries. As Shane, you're initially pressed into battle as a soldier for Mantel Corp., tasked with flushing out ominously titled rebel leader Skin Coat. Which, with the company's combat-enhancing drug Nectar coursing through your veins, is a straightforward but satisfying task.
You can read our previous experiences with Haze to discover how Nectar's 'nutritional supplement' works. But it's worth noting that watching in-house scriptwriter Rob Yescombe blast through an early stage left us positive that Nectar is more than just a bullet-time style gimmick. It's so addictively enhancing, in fact, that we were left wondering how we'd ever live without it.
Thankfully you're no less lethal once you've deserted Mantel and its Nectar suits to join up with Skin Coat, and The Promise Hand have a few tricks of their own to turn the tables on Mantel's mercs.
Rebels are far more agile than the mercenaries, making for faster, hit-and-run combat. Without an armoured suit wrapped around you, it's possible to roll to evade gunfire, dive or leap between rooftops. Making yourself harder to hit is an obviously vital skill, but a rebel's swiftness also encourages a more up close and personal approach to battling your enemies - get to melee distance and it's possible to disarm a Mantel soldier, then blast him with the business end of his own rifle.
The images on the right illustrate the many cunning combat moves available to The Promise Hand insurgents. Neat tricks include being able to set mines to trap approaching Mantel soldiers, or employing a guerrilla fighter's ingenuity to scavenge ammo so that it will fit any weapon, from rifle to pistol, meaning you'll never find your offensive assaults reduced to hurling insulting words if you can find a fallen enemy.
But more gripping is abusing the Mantel soldiers and their Nectar dependency. Ambush a mercenary, blast his back-mounted Nectar pouch and he'll overdose instantly - becoming a crazed, trigger-happy pyschopath in the process and creating yourself a temporary and unwilling ally.
You can achieve this better by using the rebel's play dead skill, fooling the enemy into thinking you're no longer a threat. Then once his back is turned you can leap up (by nailing the X button during a simple and effective mini-game) and there'll be one less name on the Mantel payroll.
Brilliantly, you can also turn the drug into an offensive weapon itself. Smear a downed soldier's Nectar on your knife and you've another overdose-inducer, either thrown or in hand-to-hand. Finally it's possible to turn the Nectar pouch into a grenade with an overdose effect that spews the drug over a wide area. Yescombe likes to think of it as "an offensive smoke grenade". But the rebel diffence isn't simply limited to a selection of new moves.
Haze takes place over three days without interruption, Half-Life style, so there's no mission screens or the like. Scripted events like vehicle chases will 'bookend' the flow of action, but the story will unfold in a pleasingly continuous fashion. The lack of interruptions gives even greater impact to the game's gripping atmosphere and clever visual trickery.
Without giving too much away, it's safe to suggest that Mantel isn't all it seems. From the very beginning, airdropped under rebel fire into a sunny glade dotted with delicately flowering plants, your war as a corporate soldier is eerily bloodless and unsoiled. Corpses phase out of existence. Napalm strikes leave craters and wreckage, but no victims. Previous sites of heavy fighting are swept improbably clean of any evidence of the claret-spattered violence that took place.
As our guide Yescombe continued to blast his way through an early assault, however, the pleasing gloss began to peel away. Stalking over the aforementioned napalm-hit wreckage, the strangely inoffensive scene was fleetingly replaced by a gritty, ash-choked nightmare where smoking corpses lay strewn and charred like used matches.
In a later area, a similar scene shot into vision. The glare of bright sunshine vanished, plunging us into rain-lashed gloom. Where a second ago there had been body bags, now there were scattered bodies and bloody smears over walls. We actually jumped. Mantel clearly has its hands dirty in the development of more than mere combat-enhancing drugs.
But as a rebel without Mantel's subversive technology running the show, war is constantly bloodier, nastier and more arresting. Bodies no longer vanish into thin air. Enemies bleed, and screech in pain. It's a world of difference, stressed by your own change in abilities. This wholehearted switch in gameplay, from techno-warrior to cunning guerrilla fighter, offers decidedly different challenges, and promises to keep you involved and pushing through to Haze's final moments.
The true blue test of Haze's ambition will be our first hands on next week at the Leipzig Games Convention. For now, though, Free Radical can rest assured that even if our eyes are still caught by quotes and headlines, our heads are already sold on Haze's solid and satisfying gameplay.
Haze: Rebel action revealed
Linear Mode
