You had one job: Deliver a system-selling FPS on Sony consoles. After Halo landed on consoles and ushered in the first-person revolution, Sony was looking to label anything as a "Halo-killer." It was a great buzzword and sounded suitably badass to any fanboys wanting to lay their eggs in the big blue Sony basket, but when the first games labelled with that term were the supremely boring Killzone titles, all eyes then shifted to Free Radical's Haze to deliver the goods. Once again the label proved to be the kiss of death as the former Timesplitters developer kicked out a game that was caked in terrible textures, a barely-engaging plot and an overall 'feel' that didn't even begin to make the most of the powers that were advertised. It was a shame, because people really wanted to get into Haze. It had a pretty slick aesthetic with some neat armour setups, and with the core gameplay mechanic revolving around jacking up on a substance called 'Nectar', in the game's lore it blocked out all sorts of nasty visuals. You could play dead to avoid being seen - before then jacking up yourself to jump higher, reigning death down from above in glorious slow-motion. Sadly when the final product played like a tech demo, that description was more fun to read than Haze ever was to play, and Free Radical would go on to become acquired by Crytek, redeeming themselves somewhat by helping out on both Crysis 2 and 3.
