HAZE is a futuristic shooter being developed by Free Radical, those blokes behind the Time Splitters series, and Ubisoft.  As a big shooter fan I’m always searching for the next hit.  The one that’s going to take me on a high I’ve never experienced before.  It’s not often that a shooter offers up such promise.  And then I met David Doak, co-founder of Free Radical, and he gave me my first taste of the NECTAR.

You begin the game in as uber-soldier Shane Carpenter working for Mantel – the military organization that has replaced NATO in the year 2048 – to dismantle a rebellion in an unspecified South American country.  Mantel’s forces are quite high-tech with futuristic armor and weapons at their disposal.  But one weapon at their disposal may very well spell their own demise – NECTAR.

NECTAR is a performance enhancing drug that is self-administered within the Mantel combat suit.  Its effects imbue the user with enhanced strength and vision, improved perception – making it easier  to see targets one may have normally missed, and a sort of ‘sixth-sense’ or premonition  - allowing one to detect nearby threats like grenades. Overdose on NECTAR however, and your breathing rate will go supersonic, your vision will blur and your ability to tell friend from foe will be severely handicapped. That’s not the only problem with NECTAR though, and it’s what you don’t know that may just kill you.

As Haze’s story unfolds Shane becomes aware that perhaps he’s not serving the right cause.  The exact details of this hinge factor have yet to be revealed, but suffice it to say the rebel cause in a certain South American country may just benefit from Shane’s defection.  But first Shane must detox and get himself off the NECTAR - and with sobriety comes clarity of vision.  Shane starts to realize, with the help of the Rebels, that NECTAR has its flaws and he will learn to exploit each and every one of them.

Mantel soldiers, when jacked up, don’t see blood…or bodies, for example.  The NECTAR wipes these artifacts of war from their field of vision allowing them to detach themselves and become less affected by the ‘human stain.’  This ‘improvement’ can be exploited by ‘playing dead’ and lying in wait for the appropriate moment to spring your trap upon an unsuspecting NECTAR addict.

Mantel soldiers are naturally more aggressive and arrogant.  Their ‘enhanced’ combat performance enables them to believe they don’t need to work as a team – they are nothing more than rogue warriors – no squad ethic exists for these soldiers.  The Rebels on the other hand work well together and Shane’s new squad mates will give audible clues to one another on the field applying a more tactical approach to warfare.

But ultimately it is the drug itself that will be the downfall of Mantel as Shane will learn to use NECTAR against his former allies.  Stealing some NECTAR from a fallen Mantel soldier’s combat suit and combining it with a grenade attack can cause the recipients to ‘trip out’ – visually keyed by the change in suit color from orange to red- and it is in this state they become more of a threat to themselves and their teammates than to you.  I watched one Mantel soldier who was, as Dave put it, “off his tits on NECTAR”, freak out – kill his teammates - and then proceed to frag himself with a grenade.  Bad trip, dude.

It is the duality of the meaning behind the title HAZE that attracts me to the game.  It is not only an exploration of morality in choosing right from wrong, but the quest to gain the wisdom to know the difference. Is that one of the twelve steps? Dave explained the concept behind the team’s approach to HAZE like this, “Early war games and shooters had you charging into battle, but in a box, like a John Wayne film – you’re in a war and off you go to be the hero.  War cinema changed post Vietnam showing a much darker side [of the conflict.]  This is what we wanted to achieve with Haze. “ 

I dig it brother, I dig.

Haze releases for PC, PS3 and X360 this November.