Here is the plot for Haze: you are Shane Carpenter an employee/soldier of Mantel Global Industries an outsourced military force sent in to bring control to a world in chaos. In order to help you become a trained killer you must take Nectar, a stimulating drug invented to increase a soldier’s sense and make him the best possible soldier.

When you take Nectar everything in the environment changes and you have better aim, can run faster, hit harder and see all of your enemies no matter how hidden they are. When on Nectar the enemies will glow yellow, think Predator style where you can see their heat signatures. In total you can carry 6 shots of Nectar to take during battles and can take Nectar from your AI friends while in battle. You can overdose on Nectar and pretty much going crazy and having your visor turn red denote this.

Nectar is probably the best part of the game, which is ironic because it is a game that promotes being on drugs in order to have fun. Your computer controlled partners I think have been hitting the Nectar far too much and at times you wonder if they have any brain cells left at all. The AI in the game just runs around and does not help you one bit. The controls for Haze are straightforward and when you are controlling Shane Carpenter feel adequate, now when you are controlling vehicles that is a different story. Driving the Haze equivalent of the Warthog feels horrible and although they put a turbo boost on it, feels terribly slow.

There is one gameplay mechanism that I found hilarious, if you are ever set on fire you have to shake your controller to put yourself out, great utilization of the Six-Axis. For the most part Haze comes off as a standard FPS with nothing really all that outstanding to offer. Graphically it did not push the bar as I thought it might, sound and voice acting is horrible, multiplayer is about par to the course and innovation is pretty low aside form Nectar usage.

Nothing in Haze drew me into the story or made me care what happens to the main character or squad. In fact the lines that you hear the squad use while taking to one another make you want to throw the controller at the television. Originally I had thought the Korn making exclusive songs for Haze was pretty cool, but the music in Haze is nothing special and is often heard only in the background.

Co-op play for you and 3 friends is a nice touch but not enough to bring this poor title back into my good graces. Haze, what happened? You were supposed to be a contender instead you turned into a Nectar using, ear biting, has been. Haze was supposed to be a monster title for the PS3 but instead just turned out being a poor excuse for a FPS.

Overall: 5 out of 10