During our assignments in covering E3, some of us were coaxed into a display exhibit which looked like an Army tent. Bewildered, confused, and even more concerned that we had accidentally entered a recruitment office, a burly marine sergeant came out and shouted at the top of his lungs, “ARE YOU READY FOR HAZE?” Not having the slightest idea of what he was talking about, we immediately shouted back, “YES SIR!” Evidently, he was pleased with our response and went on to show us a video-about the video game, Haze.
The lights went down and our heartbeats went up as we wondered what was about to transpire. Soon, graphs and charts appeared on the screen describing various statistics and figures regarding the state of affairs of a certain fictional company whose name has since faded from memory.
As we watched in fascination as to what this all meant, the visuals suddenly switched to game action as the “marine sergeant” shouted again, “GET THAT OFF THE SCREEN!” Of course, the whole incident was an elaborate act to feature the game.
Just what is Haze? If the name of the title is any indication of the game, it truly is a haze, as in unclear. The game showed the typical military shooter elements in which a soldier with a high powered assault rifle mowed down enemies and very dumb enemies at that. The soldier was able to circumvent around, behind, and in front of the enemy shooters with ease. Target after target was mercilessly blasted to pieces without any strong resistance.
The setting seemed to be in a nondescript foreign country, but the mission goals were not made clear, besides blasting the enemy. The five minute demo of the game started to feel like hours and mercifully, the lights went up.
The sergeant screamed again, but this time on deaf ears as we shuffled out of the tent. When we were out of hearing range of the game tent, we whispered to each other, “The A.I is sure dumb.” It,s hard to gauge what a game like this is really like in such a short video demo, but one thing for sure, the presentation of the game definitely left us in a haze.
