Haze is a blurry mess

Variety's review of "Haze" is online and it's one of the harshest we have run in a while. Our critic Matt Peckham calls it a "dull, dimwitted experience filled with stale stretches punctuated by underused innovations and utilitarian visuals."

It's a real shame, since based on what I saw at E3 last year, I was really excited. It seemed like a solid shooter hat integrated a cool gameplay mechanic -- the "nectar" that soldiers can inject themselves with for a rush that increases power and blurs out anything unpleasant about battle -- with a story that hits on heavy issues about pharmaceutical and military power.

Turns out, not so much. As Matt wrote: 

"Haze" dunks its half-baked allegory about pharmaceutical/military depravity in a tub of shoot-em-up blandness that doesn't stand a chance against better alternatives in a saturated genre.

Matt did have a few nice things to say about the atmosphere and sounds, but not much. This is the graf that really clinched it for me as a reader and potential player:

Levels are an amateur compilation of mission cliches like "drive through a minefield," "defeat a gunship," "escort a vehicle," and "blow up a bridge." Choice never factors, so whatever moral complexity the game teases at the outset ends up compromised by a fatal inflexibility for the player. When the endgame arrives after less than 10 hours, it's an anticlimactic groaner that feels like the designers just shrugged and threw in the towel.

You can read the whole review here.