History VideoGame / Haze

Initially planned to be a key multi-platform title, ''Haze'' suddenly narrowed to the UsefulNotes/PlayStation3 alone and was briefly built up as the [=PS3=]'s ''Franchise/{{Halo}}''-killer. Marketed as a hard-hitting {{Deconstruction}} of modern shooters, the game was initially quite hyped. Upon release, critics quickly declared it to be an average shooter with mediocre gameplay and graphics, combined with over-the-top voice acting and dialogue. The critical pummeling it got on release and its devastatingly low sales made it a [[CreatorKiller disaster for its creators]]. Free Radical went into financial administration within months of the game's release and was later acquired by [[VideoGame/{{Crysis}} Crytek]], thus becoming Crytek UK, before finally closing their doors in 2014.

* PsychopathicManchild: The Mantel troopers in general.
* PsychoSerum: Nectar.

* UndeathlyPallor: Once you're taken off Nectar, you'll see unmasked Mantel troopers like Duvall have corpse-pale skin and tiny red sores around their face, in contrast to the healthy appearance Nectar makes you perceive them as. This emmphasizes that Nectar slowly kills its users, and makes the Mantel troopers more resemble soldiers of [[VideoGame/HalfLife2 the Combine]] or [[VideoGame/{{Killzone}} the Helghast]] rather than the U.S. Military.

* UnbrokenFirstPersonPerspective: All cutscenes take place from Shane's perspective, and the game also makes a point of not magically teleporting you to new locations between levels; when you're required to go to a new area of the country, you either get there by helicopter (and experience the whole ride), or actually have to drive or walk there in gameplay.

* HarderThanHard: Very Hard difficulty; enemies have about twice as much health or more, ''much'' better aim, and deal more damage. At long range the game is still manageable, but you die almost instantly if an enemy shoots you at close range or in the back. Ironically, on this difficulty the game feels more like the intended experience; as a Mantel trooper, you're reliant on your Nectar powers to overcome your enemies, and as a Rebel squirrelly survival tactics and assistance from your squad become mandatory as trying to just go toe-to-toe and trade damage with a bullet-spongy super-soldier just results in you getting mowed down and them using your corpse as an outhouse.

* ASpaceMarineIsYou: But only in the first half. Afterwards, you're a SpaceMarine with much less health and a slightly less silly costume.

* AwesomeButImpractical: Nectar knives and the overdose mechanic. You can make soldiers overdose and attack each other, but it's rather less convoluted to just shoot them.

* EasilyForgiven: Despite the fact that he mows down scores of Promise Hand soldiers during the game's first half, Shane is still welcomed with open arms when he defects to their side.
* EliteMooks: Mantel Black Ops, professional soldiers covertly used by Mantel to cover up their dirty deeds by eliminating any standard RedShirt stormtroopers who get out of line (such as yourself). They've got twice the durability of standard troops, don't have the immature frat boy comm chatter the regular troops do, and are immune to Nectar overdose mechanics. They're introduced by having a group fastrope down onto a cablecar you're riding, followed by, in all likelihood, at least half of them walking off the sides and falling to their deaths. Boosh?

* HandCannon: The Mantel pistol is about the same in terms of power as the sniper rifle, and Shane handles the recoil so badly it's like he's ''trying'' to get a stovepipe jam.
* HandWave: The game never really establishes any ground rules for what Nectar can and can't do, leading to gaping {{plot hole}}s and inconsistencies.
* HarderThanHard: Very Hard difficulty; enemies have about twice as much health and deal more damage. At long range the game is still manageable, but you die almost instantly if an enemy shoots you at close range or in the back. Ironically, on this difficulty the game feels more like the intended experience; as a Mantel trooper, you're reliant on your Nectar powers to overcome your enemies, and as a Rebel squirrelly survival tactics become mandatory as trying to just go toe-to-toe and trade damage with a bullet-spongy super-soldier just results in you getting mowed down and them using your corpse as an outhouse.

* ImperialStormtrooperMarksmanshipAcademy: While the normal soldiers you fight have respectable aim, Mantel snipers are amazingly bad shots, usually only hitting the player in one out of every ten shots or so, while the player is ''standing still.'' Subverted in that they tend to have REALLY good aim when throwing grenades.

* MadeOfIron: Sgt. Duvall can withstand a little over two full mags of assault rifle fire, simply because he's the final boss. By comparison, the basic Mantel trooper goes down after only 4 bullets and even the EliteMooks only take 7 or 8 bullets to kill.

* SniperPistol: All your weapons have a scope zoom function, presumably built into your suit, while playing as a Mantel trooper. This combined with the {{Handcannon}} nature of the Mantel pistol makes it essentially a sniper rifle.

* ArmCannon: In multiplayer, the rocket launcher is wielded as a ''huge'' wrist-mounted device. In single-player, the armored troopers that specialize in the rocket launcher use it as a more typical shoulder-fired weapon.

* TheEnemyWeaponsAreBetter: Since enemies only drop ammo for their own guns, you're best off using the guns of the opposing faction rather than your own if you want to stay stocked up on ammo. While playing as Mantel your ammo does mysteriously replenish itself to full when using your alternate weapon, though this may not be reliable, and as a rebel you can scavenge ammo for whatever gun you're carrying by looting enemy bodies, but this is tedious and time consuming while grabbing ammo from dropped weapons is fast and automatic.

* VagueHitPoints: As a Mantel trooper, you have a health bar in your helmet [=HUD=] that tells you exactly how much health you have. Once you lose your helmet and switch sides, this disappears and the game relies on the usual ''VideoGame/CallOfDuty'' style [[DutyCalls bloody screen, so real]] to let you know you're injured.

* GunsDoNotWorkThatWay: When you mount a red-dot reflex sight on a weapon you're generally supposed to turn it on. Oddly, this exact error was also in ''Haze's'' cousin ''Blacksite''. The guns in ''Haze'' in general are deliberately made "incorrectly" and not based on existing firearms; the 3D modeler in charge of making them found the increasing realism with which firearms were being depicted in games at the time to be disturbing and distasteful, stating he didn't want a 12-year old to learn how to operate an AK-47 from playing his game.

* EliteMooks: Mantel Black Ops, professional soldiers covertly used by Mantel to cover up their dirty deeds by eliminating any standard RedShirt stormtroopers who get out of line (such as yourself). They're introduced by having a group fastrope down onto a cablecar you're riding, followed by, in all likelihood, at least half of them walking off the sides and falling to their deaths. Boosh?

* GunsDoNotWorkThatWay: When you mount a red-dot reflex sight on a weapon you're generally supposed to turn it on. Oddly, this exact error was also in ''Haze's'' cousin ''Blacksite''.

* VideogameFlamethrowersSuck: ''Haze'' has an absolutely ''terrible'' flamethrower; the range is woeful, it's hideous to look at, the fire effect is comically 2D, ammo is fairly rare, and all told you might as well just pack a shotgun. Also, the flamethrower is disproportionally more dangerous to you than the enemies, since being caught on fire requires you to extinguish yourself with the sixaxis, whose detection is rather finicky in this game.

* UniversalAmmunition: With a button press, you can take ammo from any gun on the ground to replenish your current gun's supply, even if you're using an assault rifle and the gun on the ground is a shotgun.
* VideogameFlamethrowersSuck: ''Haze'' has an absolutely ''terrible'' flamethrower; the range is woeful, it's hideous to look at, the fire effect is comically 2D, ammo is fairly rare, and all told you might as well just pack a shotgun.

* BaseOnWheels: The Land Carrier is a mobile helicopter carrier.
* BananaRepublic: The goal Of Mantel is to secure the region and make the natives grow Nectar plants for the consumption of the people back home.

[[quoteright:259:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/70267_games_review_haze_ps3_image2_lwjk0nkd6e.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:259:He already looks pretty bad but he's even worse!]]