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As an FPS, Haze is essentially what you would expect. However, it has very few good qualities and plenty of problems.
The background educational audio bits in the observatory level and particularly in the tram car were cool. If the content is accurate, that is actually very impressive. I was looking down over the river and the valley and seeing the mountains off to the left, all with a guided audio tour telling me about the region. More games based on a realistic earth should do that.
The constant, repetitive gunshot effect from the heavy guns going off while I was circling the observatory was incredibly annoying. Same with the AA guns when leaving the area.
There is something terribly wrong with the lighting in Haze. It was painfully obvious in the observatory level, where moving in/out of dark areas would blacken the whole screen. Way way wrong.
Combat chatter was overused. Too few quips and sound bytes played far too frequently. Worse, they would have one guy say things from completely different actors, so it didn't even sound consistent.
One main character was hard to understand during combat, so i turned on subtitles. I found them to be out of sync, making it difficult to focus on the scene in front of me while following the dialog.
Speaking of dialog, I am not convinced that having my character talk in an FPS makes sense. Almost every time my guy would chime in with something, I was looking around to try and figure out who just said the last line. I was pretty far along in the game before I became familiar with my own voice and recognized that it was me speaking. The problem is that the only cue given the player is the audio and until the player is familiar with the sound of the voice, he will not know it is his own character talking.
Lastly on dialog and story, the idiotic quips from the Mantel soldiers (e.g. "Yeeeaaahhh Boyeeeeee!"). I do not want to spoil the story, so I will tread carefully here. Taken at face value, they are stupid and sound amateur and childish. Granted. They are, however, a component of the story. A somewhat poorly communicated one, for sure, but part of the larger whole nonetheless.
In the end, Haze tries to do a few things to differentiate itself from the FPS crowd, but it doesn't nail the fundamentals. The result is a mediocre experience that should be no more than a weekend rental.
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