So you’ve given up gaming. Trouble is, you write for a damn gaming site, and you’re obligated to provide people with reviews. What a pickle.

But hold on! You’re a clever fellow, and modern games are pretty self-explanatory. Surely you can work out the plot of a game by looking at the screenshots, take educated guesses at the rest, and end up with something pretty close to the mark, right?

How hard can it be?

Out now for PS3

Price: £49.99

I’ve been going crazy for Haze ever since it was announced at E3 ‘06, and after playing through the game twice, I’m happy to say that it left me buzzing for more. Buzzing like a bee.

The year is 2097. Earth has been invaded by The Bee People, a vicious race of insectoid aliens whose aim is to steal all of the world’s flowers and take them back to space. Only one man can stop them. You.

Supported by the entire U.S. army.

Humans can get trapped in the sticky tendrils of the BeeCopter and eaten alive.

You play Brandon Keeper, a hard-assed colonel in the Marines who cares so much about protecting his country that it has made him entirely bald.

Price I’m willing to pay, Koslowski. A man as busy as me doesn’t have TIME for hair.

Your arch enemy is a Bee Person known only as Skincube.

They seek him here, they seek him there… that damned elusive Skincube.

The game begins with a flashback: six year earlier, the Bee People bioengineered one of their minions to resemble a human, taught him rudimentary politics, and had him elected President of America. Years passed. When people found out that President Harold J. Skincube was actually a bee, it was too late. They were already among us.

According to writer Ian Flossburger, the story of Haze contains several subtle layers of allegory. “It’s actually all about Commies”, he says. “Bees are just like your standard Communist. They have no respect for life, they’re all ‘drones’ to the ‘queen’ of their ideology, and they produce really shit cars”.

No fire without smoke

Luckily for humanity, the Bee People have one fatal weakness: smoke. It makes them so drowsy that they immediately stop what they’re doing and fall asleep like idiots.

No! Not smoke! Anything but… Smooooooooooke!

Realising that smoking the bees for long enough will make them all starve to death, the U.S. army formulates a daring plan to cover the entire world in smoke. By setting it on fire.

Gameplay

As Keeper, your mission is to blow up absolutely everything in the world that can be blown up, and then set everything else on fire. You have the full arsenal of the U.S. military at your disposal, which leads to some pretty awesome set-pieces as you and your squad-mates rain napalm down on third-world villages and drop ground-burst nuclear weapons on every city in the world in alphabetical order, all the while fighting off the evil Bee People, who will do anything to stop you – even kill you.

After successfully smoking a Bee base, Keeper lets off steam by firing at civilians.

Although this mechanic is hugely satisfying, the game isn’t without its flaws. The A.I. can be extremely erratic at times, with team-mates often forgetting what side they’re on. This can prove very distracting in the heat of battle.

Oh Christ, I’ve completely forgotten what I’m supposed to be doing! Better shoot at this cliff!

Also, we weren’t too enamoured of the game’s new “OnomatoPLAYER” system. As you can see in the screenshot below, every weapon hit is accompanied by a written “BAM” or “THUMP” in the corner of the screen, which is supposed to increase the emotional impact of the violence. This may be useful for deaf players or people who enjoy reading, but for the rest of us, these “helpful” words just come across as a little childish.

Come on, we’re all seasoned gamers here. We know what a guy’s crotch sounds like when you shoot it with a minigun. Seriously, guys, grow up a little.

A sting in the tail?

One of the most original parts of the game is when you are force-fed Royal CyberJelly by President Skincube in an effort to turn you against your own side. Instead, the plan backfires, and you gain special Bee Person powers – including the ability to fly.

Keeper hovers over an Indonesian medical complex, minigun in hand. Because of the Geneva Convention, you are only allowed to set fire to the hospital when all the patients are dead.

Multiplayer

The standard team vs. team game is called Butt Tag, and it’s pretty awesome. When a Bee player stings a human in mêlée combat, his anus detaches and remains stuck to the human’s body for the rest of the game. The aim is for the Bee side to sting every member of the human side at least once, but there’s no limit to the number of times you can sting an individual player. It can get pretty hilarious seeing a guy trying to hide behind a shrub when he’s covered from head to toe in asses.

This player remains anus-free… but for how long?

Conclusion

A.I. issues aside, Haze is an excellent title with some truly innovative gameplay, and a classic story that reverberates through the ages. If you’ve ever stepped outside your house on a starry night, stared up at the stars and dreamed of our planet being invaded by a vicious race of alien bees, this game is definitely for you.

And even if you haven’t, you certainly will soon!

OH NO! WHAT’S THAT BEE-HIND YOU!

Hehehe. Just kidding.

Dubious Review SCORE: 89%

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