Time heals everything ! HAZE and LAIR ! Should I give them a try?

[RenegadeRocks]

Looking Back ! HAZE and LAIR ! Should I give them a try?

I was thinking of giving HAZE a try, if I can find a used copy.
What Say?
Now that all the -ve hype surrounding the ps3 and its games is gone, maybe I will enjoy it a little !
I want to give LAIR a try too, though I suck at flying games, but Flower felt good. Would like to see what LAIR feels like !

What are your opinions on it? Do you think now that ps3 is not considered a "suckfest" anymore, will they fell different now? I think the media, as well as, the mood of majority of the internet community was anti-ps3 and it did affect lots of judgments and experiences of the time.
Sometimes a game is criticized just because the hype around it created expectations which, maybe, were not part of the game's intention at all. I see some people giving HAZE low scores because it did not deliver a story that questioned or commented on War in a mature way "as was expected from it". What if the goal of the game was never quite that. Does it hold up then?

Is the game FUN, if we strip away the promises that were made and not met(in case of HAZE)?
Is the game FUN, if we take some time and embrace the mechanics the game asks us to follow(in case of LAIR) ?

Unbiased, meaningful discussion might bring out points we never considered before !

 

[DrJay24]

Haze is bearable in co-op (most shooters are). Lair is fine with the patch.

 

[nightshade]

I was thinking the same,never bought these two games before & judging by the demo I thought that Haze was pretty good in doing the shooting right & Lair got a patch for analogue controls last year, I'll do try to give these games a chance or two.

Time indeed heals stuffs.

 

[patsu]

Ahem... Time heals by making people forget about the problems. Proceed at your own caution. Lair is an interesting game, but it has game design issues (and some implementation problems) as it stands. IMHO, the SIXAXIS control scheme was never the real problem. Try the sea serpent demo if it's still available. I think that's the highlight of the game. The game music is awesome too. I have it in my PS3 Music folder.

 

[RenegadeRocks]

Changed the main post . Lets say we don't forget the problems with this one !
Can you elaborate patsu , about the design and implementation issues? Are yousaying some of the level designs were flawed/not tested.
Did the patch solve the bugs in the game too?

For HAZE, I think they had a very good vision when they set out to make the game, but it doesn't seem to have translated well into the game. The demo felt fine, like an old school shooter to me. I think they wanted to be the Crysis of the consoles with huge draw distances on a island and stuff. (Look at the co-incidence, they have Cryengine 2 at their disposal now ! ) They did not showcase the rebel gameplay in that demo, though. There must be levels in the game where all the design mechanics come together and play well. Or is it like , the combination of special moves of Rebels+Enhanced Suit of Troopers never worked at all? Was it imbalanced or was it like the game design/level design never brought out the fun of using those special mechanics?

I just want to hear what exactly felt wrong while playing these games !

 

[patsu]

Changed the main post . Lets say we don't forget the problems with this one !
Can you elaborate patsu , about the design and implementation issues? Are yousaying some of the level designs were flawed/not tested.

Yes, not enough testing would be my first feedback. It doesn't crash on me at all (which made me respect Factor 5 a lot since the game clearly needed time to "cook"). The issue is occasionally, at designated spots, the game events got messed up. e.g., I was "teleported" to a location in front of me after a premature cutscene.

Second is the level design + UI. Very often you need to clear all the enemies before the next stage. But the play area is huge ! The enemies can be invisible (too far away), or just a dot. You have to scan the sky constantly (1080p ftw !) to look for your prey. There is no "radar". If you missed a few, it's game over. The left over meanies will kill your convoy eventually.

The last one is also UI related. When you grab and throw an enemy, the game will cut very abruptly to an "enemy-fall-out-of-the-sky" animation. It's really distracting because the cutscene totally breaks the flow of the flight (Huh, wait where am I now ?)

Other than these issues, I personally enjoyed Lair. Have fired it up after a few months to check things out.

Did the patch solve the bugs in the game too?

The patch only addressed the SIXAXIS control scheme (refined it and made it optional).

 

[slider]

I quite liked the Haze demo but with the internet up in arms I avoided the retail release. I'm not qualified to comment on the quality of the story but, from the demo at least, I was intrigued.

I saw mention of a Lair demo in Paranoia's thread. Curiosity will probably force me to hunt it down.

 

[tuna]

I played four missions in Lair. Loved the music, setting and story, hated the levels and thought the game play was confusing. Spend your time on something better (like the first season of Lost or something!)

 

[DrJay24]

I just want to hear what exactly felt wrong while playing these games !

I finished both games...

Haze is fine at first, but the weapons and enemies never get more interesting, just more of the same until the end. The script is pretty bad "boosh" as are most of the grphics. The gun play and co-op work really well.

It is still more fun to play Haze co-op with a friend than generic B level FPS like Turok and Timeshift.

Lair just had issues with the dash and 180 for motion gestures, with the patch they are mapped to the D pad. The story and level design was pretty good, though some levels were pretty hard. Killing crap with a dragon is just really cool, I loved landing in the middle of the infantry and setting them on fire and eating them.

The patch only addressed the SIXAXIS control scheme (refined it and made it optional).

It also added an aiming reticle.

 

[upnorthsox]

Yes, not enough testing would be my first feedback. It doesn't crash on me at all (which made me respect Factor 5 a lot since the game clearly needed time to "cook"). The issue is occasionally, at designated spots, the game events got messed up. e.g., I was "teleported" to a location in front of me after a premature cutscene.

Second is the level design + UI. Very often you need to clear all the enemies before the next stage. But the playing area is huge ! The enemies can be invisible (too far away), or just a dot. You have to scan the sky constantly (1080p ftw !) to look for your prey. There is no "radar". If you missed a few, it's game over. The left over meanies will kill your convoy eventually.

The last one is also UI related. When you grab and throw an enemy, the game will cut very abruptly to an "enemy-fall-out-of-the-sky" animation. It's really distracting because the cutscene totally breaks the flow of the flight (Huh, wait where am I now ?)

Other than these issues, I personally enjoyed Lair. Have fired it up after a few months to check things out.



The patch only addressed the SIXAXIS control scheme (refined it and made it optional).

I would have to echo Patsu's impressions though I'd add that mission objectives were often vague and it was appearent that objective cut scenes were added after focus testing (and they still didn't do the job). The direction indicator also didn't work most of the time, this you could live with if almost all of the missions weren't time based but they are and you often find yourself out of time just trying to figure out which way to go. I'd also add that an opportunity was missed when you basically aren't able to dismount even though almost all of the cut-scenes are not done on the back of a dragon.

Still, I see it on the gamestop shelves for under $10 and I think it's certainly worth that.

 

[Rolf N]

If you end up getting Haze, I recommend breezing through it once in the standard difficulty and be done with it. Stay away from hard difficulty. Usually challenge makes an fps more fun, but Haze has some severe issues with the checkpoints, and it'll get annoying to redo long stretches over and over.

The basic play mechanics are fine.

 

[betan]

I kinda enjoyed Haze for the mediocre game it's with a couple of nice ideas here and there.
Online gameplay was pretty good though, totally underrated probably because of the lobby based setup and lack of general interest in the game.

 

[RenegadeRocks]

What Iam gatheirng form the replies is that:

HAZE has bad graphics but gunplay is good, my impression is that the vehicles are bad. (That isn't bad if I can get this for cheap)

LAIR has good graphics but the game mission have rough edges and the experience feels kinda lost due to that.
I think some games deliberately put situation where you are not told what to do next, and you have to figure it out by trying everything you can think of and look at every pixel on the screen closely for a secret passage or something. I think Dark Sector does that. I think old Silent Hills also did that, but the story always had clues.

I am inferring from your replies that LIAR is not like that. It tells you what to do, but the implementation of how to accomplish that is flawed.
I think I can live with Dark Sector kindof "not knowing what to do", as , frankly speaking, many old games used to do that. You get stuck in a level for hours only for someone to point out that you had to press "x" on that little pixel in that corner to proceed. It doesn't feel so bad as we have grown up playing such games.
But, if you know that you have to press"x" at a pixel, but the game controls or mechanics are such that the chance of correctly pressing "x" at that pixel while double jumping sideways are one in a thousand, then i am frustrated. I hope I am not too confusing !

PS: I have not played Dark Sector either, but friends have told me and even in the demo, I had no idea how to kill that monster.

 

[Cheezdoodles]

Haze is terrible. Time just makes it even worse. Unless the game was a classic to begin with, old games just get worse, contrary to your topic statement. Haze was terrible when it came out, and now its even more terrible compared to whats out there.

 

[Iron Tiger]

I bought Lair a couple of months ago, played 1 mission and was done. It felt too much like the Rogue Squadron games without having any of the thematic appeal. The menus, the controls, the combat, etc. were all ripped from Rogue Leader and had fantasy dragony junk shoehorned in. There was nothing organic or smooth about the way the music or menus transitioned, the dragons controlled, or anything. It really seemed like they were onto something different and special with that first tech demo that showed the dragon blinking his eye in the rain. I really wanted to be in control of that living creature in whatever fantastic environment he inhabited, but somewhere in the development cycle they decided to just go with what they knew, and make an animatronic amusement park ride.

I've been wanting some sci-fi FPS action to bide my time until Halo 3: ODST drops. Is Perfect Dark Zero worth a look? I wasn't fond of the original PD, but I loved Goldeneye. The resolution won't be an issue, as I'll probably be playing it in SD on a hotel room TV.

 

[Nick Laslett]

On the Hong Kong PSN Store there is a demo for Lair with the analogue stick controls.

Personally, I couldn't be bothered to finish even this demo. I never actually liked the gameplay of Factor 5's Star Wars titles, so I was not surprised I didn't like the Lair demo.

I completed Haze's campaign mode with buddy playing on-line co-op. I would only recommend picking-up Haze for the online co-op play, but there are many better online co-op titles to play first.

At the time we were waiting for Resistance 2, so Haze filled a hole.

 

[Cheezdoodles]

I've been wanting some sci-fi FPS action to bide my time until Halo 3: ODST drops. Is Perfect Dark Zero worth a look? I wasn't fond of the original PD, but I loved Goldeneye. The resolution won't be an issue, as I'll probably be playing it in SD on a hotel room TV.

PD is terrible, it only got the ratings it did because it was a big launch title published by the mighty Microsoft (and thus giving it the 6\10 it deserves could ruin your chance of getting free games from microsoft to review).

The aiming is shit. (Similar to KZ2 pre patch but even worse). The AI is stupid. The levels are not particularly interesting. Story could be written by a dog and you wouldn't notice the difference. Overall pretty bad game, and has nothing of the charms that Goldeneye had.

 

[fearsomepirate]

The multiplayer in PDZ is horrible, too. Bad controls plus lame weapons plus stupid maps plus butt-ugly graphics. I don't think we'll ever know why this absolute dogpile of a game scored in the 9's. Maybe it was because the reviewers had never played a PC FPS before and were blown away by 720p resolution. Or maybe it was because the first time seeing hi-res textures caused a complete loss of sanity. Or maybe it was because deep, deep nostalgia for the original game and Goldeneye made reviewers blind to the suck. It's not even mediocre.

 

[DrJay24]

The multiplayer in PDZ is horrible, too. Bad controls plus lame weapons plus stupid maps plus butt-ugly graphics. I don't think we'll ever know why this absolute dogpile of a game scored in the 9's. Maybe it was because the reviewers had never played a PC FPS before and were blown away by 640p resolution. .

Fixed for ya