Somehow I have returned. It’s been over a year since I abandoned not just Backlog Busting but Certified Fresh altogether. There were a few reasons for this that I won’t really get into, because the important thing is that I am back on a new platform. (Sayonara Substack) Why am I back? Because I’m currently unemployed and in the midst of navigating the horrors of job hunting, I’ve had the urge to get back to writing about things. (In a non-satirical fashion. For all my comedy writing, please visit GG Tribune and Hollywood Times. Two cool sites that pay their writers.)

Since I’m unemployed, I’ve become a lot stingier with money. I have basically purchased almost zero new video games in months. I’ve been playing through my backlog and only buying cheap retro games at my local store or dipping into the occasional Under $10 Steam deal. Playing all these has made me want to get back to writing Backlog Busting. And so, dear reader, Backlog Busting is back. Why am I marking the return of Cartifed Fresh and Backlog Busting with 2008’s Haze for the PS3? Because I’m unemployed and hate myself.

In the wake of Halo: Combat Evolved, almost any game that dared to be a sci-fi first-person shooter was called a “Halo Killer”. This was a clickbait term before clickbait was a thing. A nonsense, reductive term used to describe games in a way that would get curious gamers to buy a magazine or click on a 2004 website that didn’t even have a fun font. It was lazy and only ever accomplished making every game with such a label look bad, whether they deserved it or not. It was “Soulslike” for the 2000s, but worse because it wasn’t just a quick descriptor for people who couldn’t be bothered to comprehend an actual description. It was a challenge, except it wasn’t being made by the game makers or marketers; it was being made by journalists and bloggers. “Halo Killer” as a term was the equivalent of if Bernard from the mill personally went to the King and told him that Jerry the blacksmith said he could take his head and crown. Even if it was true, that’s not for Bernard to say, and frankly, he should mind his own business.

That brings us to Haze. Of all the games prophesied to kill Halo, Haze is THE “Halo Killer”. I mean, it’s got men in armor, and every gun has an ammo display. You can’t get more Halo than that. Haze is not the most famous “Halo Killer,” but it is the most infamous. Known for having an immense amount of hype and buzz before release, this is one of the biggest disasters in gaming history. While something like Killzone is still a decent game in its own right when you look at it on its own terms and not that ridiculous term, Haze had no chance regardless of any comparisons. Haze was known as a “Halo Killer,” but its legacy will forever be the Timesplitters Killer. And also the game that had more people using it as a PSN profile picture than it had people actually playing it.

Developed by Free Radical, the makers of Timesplitters, Haze has been infamous since its release. I knew I had to play it eventually. I had a PS3 growing up; the man in the yellow helmet is forever burned into my brain. Always in the back of my mind, like a gnawing urge that you know isn’t good for you, but you want anyway. It’s whispered to me like a siren, but not a particularly attractive one. “Play Haze. Play Haze. Play Haze.”

I never acted on those urges. I always knew deep down there were better things to spend my time and money on. Many years ago, I ended up buying a copy of Haze by happenstance. It was included in a bundle of PS3 games I bought simply because it was the best deal I could find for a copy of the 2007 Conan the Barbarian game. And so, on my shelf it went, never to be played. For despite the whispers, “Play Haze. Play Haze.” persisting, I just couldn’t be bothered, no matter how curious I was.

Then something happened. Amid their desperation for some goodwill amid layoffs, studio closures, AI use, helping a genocide, etc. XBOX announced a remake of Halo: Combat Evolved to try and get some good old-fashioned nostalgia pandering points. In honor of this, over at my gaming satire site, the GG Tribune, we decided to play a bunch of “Halo Killers” for our YouTube channel in the lead-up to the atrociously named Halo: Campaign Evolved. You can’t do a series playing “Halo Killers” without playing Haze. So I finally did. For one hour. It was…fine. It wasn’t necessarily good. But it wasn’t bad. It was fine.

After we recorded that first hour of gameplay, I pledged to continue playing. Then I did the opposite of that. You know how it is. You’re playing a couple other games already, and you want to finish those first, but then a game in your Steam wishlist goes on sale for $5, so you buy that and start playing. Then the Halo remake comes out, and you love Halo, so you start playing that. But after I finished the Halo remake (side note: it’s fine. You're better off playing the original), I decided now was the time for Haze. Now was the time to see for myself how a game that I deemed fine could have killed the team that made Timesplitters.

Turns out that first hour is the best that Haze gets. This game is an absolute mess of ideas that aren’t even half-baked; they’re raw. It’s unfathomable to me that the people who made Timesplitters, one of the most colorful, fun, and well-rounded FPS games ever, made a game so undercooked that Gordon Ramsey would have an aneurysm if you showed it to him.

It’s a shooter made by a team known for shooters, so let me get that out of the way first. It’s fine. It suffers from the same stiffness that most PS3 shooters suffer from. The DualShock 3 wasn’t a great controller to begin with, and shooting games really bring that to the forefront. But that’s a PS3 problem, so I won’t knock the game for it. But I can certainly knock everything else.

There’s definitely an interesting game in Haze. Bits and pieces of that game peek through the brownish/grey pile of shit that they are buried under. This could have been a good satirical story about the American military machine and its true corporate overlords. When it starts, you think that it will be. While it’s certainly about that, it’s the opposite of good. What could have been an interesting takedown of America’s warmongering in the name of increasing the profits of CEOs, something we don’t really get in video game storytelling. This is an industry much more interested in making blowing up enemy combatants with drone strikes feel fun than it is in examining the sinister reasons why you’re saying “Hoo-rah”. A satirical takedown of that complex made by the people behind the genuinely funny and well-written Timesplitters game should have been an easy win.

Then characters start to speak. I didn’t really notice it when I first played because I played it for a YouTube video and was talking over the whole thing. All I really truly experienced was the shooting, which is fine and remained fine. But once I went back and started a new game, since I was actually paying attention this time, I was forced to listen to atrocious dialogue delivered by awful voice acting. It’s like no one involved had ever heard a human speak before. I understand that because it’s a satire; some of the dialogue is dialed to 11, but it’s not just that what everyone is saying is ridiculous and they’re all unlikeable; it’s that it immediately gives away the point. Within 3 lines of dialogue, it’s clear that you are on the side of the bad guys, and then it’s pretty easy to guess that plot twist: you switch sides halfway through the game. It’s like if someone in Starship Troopers shouted “We are fascists” within the first 60 seconds of the movie.

Speaking of your character switching sides halfway through, this brings up another problem. The pacing is awful. Haze is about 6 hours. Your character is literally on his first mission after signing up. You complete that first mission after about 2 hours. Then your character switches sides. There’s no buildup; it just happens. There are some hints that what you’re doing and what your squad is doing are wrong, but it literally just plays out as an argument at the end of the mission, and then you switch sides. Not that it matters, I guess, since switching sides is obvious to anyone who has to listen to your squadmates say “BOOSH” as they inject themselves with performance-enhancing drugs.

A bad story I could look past if the gameplay is good. The gameplay of Haze is not good. The shooting is fine, and everything else sucks. The AI is dumber than Grok. All enemies ever do is rush you in a line. That’s it. Decent shooting mechanics don’t matter when enemies run into your line of fire like they’re suffering from the male loneliness epidemic and couldn’t find anyone to start a podcast with. Besides that, every gameplay mechanic introduced is useless. When you’re on the soldiers’ side, you can juice up, and that makes you stronger and highlights enemies but since the enemy AI has a death wish already, it doesn’t matter. Once you switch sides, you’re able to plant grenades like mines, which you’ll never do except once when required for a mission because it takes too long to be worth it and because, again, enemies just run into your bullets. You can also play dead when close to death, which makes enemies ignore you while you recharge health, but you won’t die often enough to have to do that. It has all these ideas for things, but it never expands on any of them, never develops any of them beyond a concept, and never makes any of them useful. So it just becomes boring.

Did I finish Haze? Yes, I did. Why? I honestly don’t know. Perhaps it’s because I want to maximize the games I play now since I can’t afford to buy other ones (side note: consider leaving a tip to help me buy food). Perhaps it’s because the infernal whisper of “Play Haze” has lived in the back of my brain for years, and playing till the end was the only thing to make it stop. Or maybe it’s just because I hate myself. Either way, I did it. Now I’m just sad about Timesplitters.