There are two sides to the fighting in Haze - the nectar pumped Mantel troopers, and the guerillas of the Promised Hand. It’s not much of a spoiler to reveal that during the course of the game, you switch from one side to the other, in a typical shooter plot twist.

The action doesn’t get much better when you switch sides, however. Sure, you don’t have to deal with day-glo guerilla whack-a-mole and screaming frat-boy buddies anymore, but you’re just exchanging it for a pack of overly gimmicky special moves. Oh, and your irritating team-mates will now speak with a Latin accent, so there’s that, too.

As a Promised Hand guerilla, you lose access to nectar, but gain throwing knives, gimmick grenades, the ability to set booby traps and play dead. Mantel Troopers on a ‘nectar high’ can’t see dead bodies, apparently. Oddly, though, once you start fighting against those Mantel troopers, nectar doesn’t seem so impressive anymore. None of your Mantel enemies have the nigh-invulnerability you possessed, and they don’t seem particularly good at seeing through cover, either. They still yell the same annoying crap they did when they were on your side, they still run into things and shoot each other like idiots. Then again, so do your new allies. Friendly fire is all too real in Haze – almost to the point of absurdity.

Haze carried a lot of buzz and a massive ad campaign from UbiSoft but do yourself a favor and skip it—there are simply far better games worth buying or even renting. Every developer is allowed to lay an egg, and this is definitely Free Radical’s turn to drop one.

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