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Multiplayer
Multiplayer is one area where Free Radical has excelled in the past, and there are multiplayer aspects of Haze which continue that tradition.It's possible to play Haze as a co-op game, either as a split-screen game or with up to four players online. Co-op is very welcome as an option, since it takes away the problem of your teammates' flawed AI – and if you still have problems with your teammates' intelligence, then perhaps it's time to get some new friends.
The stakes are upped in a co-op game, and you get flashes of how the single-player game should perform, but it's still let down by dodgy AI and a limited selection of weapons.
You can invite friends to join you at any point in the game though through an easy to use selection in the options screen, which makes games very fun and easy to set up. In addition to the co-op game, there are also online multiplayer matches. Up to 16 players can play in Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch or Assault modes.
The first two modes play the same as any other deathmatch games and bring nothing new to the arena.
Assault, however, is the most interesting online game Haze has to offer. This mode pitches two teams against each other with opposing objectives. There are a number of different objectives for the rebels, such as stealing crates of Nectar within a given timescale, while Mantel forces are always tasked with preventing the rebels from achieving their objective.
Unfortunately, the end result is that most people only ever want to play on the Rebel side because it’s here where all the fun objectives are. Mantel Soldiers always have the same missions, the same weapons and the same routes to run down. They always just have to fight, where as the rebels are the ones who are actually fighting for something – even if that goal is just to steal a box of nasty chems.
At the end of each multiplayer game, you are rewarded with merit points depending on your performance in the game. You can also get additional merit points for performing certain feats, such as playing dead as a rebel, or stealing an enemy weapon and killing him with it.
While some of these merits are worth chasing though, the flaw is that there is never any real reward to actually winning them. There’s no extra content unlocked by scoring a hundred headshots or whatever the merit happens to be – all it does it help level you up for ranked missions, which will make it mostly useless to all except the hardcore players.
Free Radical Design has built a good history out of creating smooth, fluid and enjoyable multiplayer games. The company was founded by developers who worked at Rare on GoldenEye and Perfect Dark for the Nintendo 64 and since going rogue the company created TimeSplitters, a fast paced shooter where everyone wants to play as a monkey with pistols akimbo.
Unfortunately, Haze doesn’t managed to offer that quality of experience and while the multiplayer game isn’t actually all that bad, it is definitely a shallow experience and deathmatch is something you’ll likely soon tire of. Co-op manages to take the singleplayer campaign to a more enjoyable level, but even that is still a little uninspired.