Okay, so we've had new looks at three different shooters withing the past few days --- Haze for the PS3 in the form of a demo, and Gears of War 2 for the Xbox 360 in the form of a small handful of videos, and the Metal Gear Online beta for the PS3 a while back. I've played the Haze demo and watched the Gears videos, so let's see what we have here.




First, Haze. For a 1.5-gig demo, it's pretty short, but the multiplayer completely makes up for this. I liked playing through it by myself, but it was infinitely better when I finally tried it in a 4-player online co-op session. I've played through it a couple times now, just to get the gist of how it plays, and I won't lie --- I like it. Visually, it's pretty average as far as shooters this generation go, but that's not saying it's bad. It's just no Call of Duty 4 or anything like that.

The Nectar mechanic is cool --- Inject yourself to make your character faster, stronger, and tougher. Overdose, and you lose control of your sight, and you start to fire your weapon all over the place without being able to stop yourself. Now, I kind of have a problem with this system --- Unless you absolutely suck at any and all video games, you'll never accidentally overdose on Nectar. It's very easy to stop injecting yourself whenever you'd like to, and I've never overdosed a single time, save for the times I did it just to see what different effects would happen. I thought that the more often you use Nectar the easier you'd overdose, but apparently not, which kind of takes away from the experience in my point of view. But I'll still pick it up, I'm sure. I can see the multiplayer experience outweighing any negatives in the campaign.




Now lets talk about Gears of War 2. Let it be known that although I don't have an X360 anymore, the first Gears was one of my favorite games on it, and I remember playing online multiplayer for countless hours. It's one of the only shooters I'm actually pretty decently good at when playing against other people. Once I bought my PS3, I tried Resistance immediately, and though I liked it a lot, it paled in comparison to Gears, both through the campaign and in online multiplayer.

After watching the new videos of Gears 2, I have mixed feelings. Visually, it really doesn't look that much better than the first game, especially when it comes to the character models, but then again, I'm all for gameplay over graphics (come on, the Wii was the first current-gen console I bought). The environment looks better, though, and I love how many things can be on the screen at once now. I also really liked the whole Metal Gear Solid-esque, use-a-body-to-shield-yourself-and-then-snap-his-neck mechanic. It's that kind of stuff that we need to make the game better. The chainsaw was also really nice, but aside from the dueling, I don't think those other moves are any different --- I think they're just added animations. I don't want to say that this looks like an expansion to the first game rather than a sequel, but it does look quite similar to the first one, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. I just feel that there are so many shooters on the market now that I always look for new gameplay and visuals, even in sequels. Maybe that's just me, though.

My point still stands, though, it looks awesome. If any game will push me over the edge to get a 360 again, this'll be it, but we'll have to see how the multiplayer is --- That's what I'd end up spending the most time with, but once Resistance 2 comes out around the same time, I have a feeling I won't be playing much else for a while.




Okay, so Metal Gear Online. I have problems with Metal Gear Online. It's not that it's a bad game --- It's just like Metal Gear, but online, and that's what the problems is. Metal Gear, ever since the first game on the MSX, has always been a stealth series. Slow-paced, hide-in-the-shadows kinda thing. In this online version, it seems to be run-and-gun. No one that I've played with hides, no one sneaks --- They all just take out machine guns and run straight into the enemy's base. It's a fun little shooter, but it just doesn't feel like Metal Gear to me. I think this is one of those games that should have just stayed offline. It's a good thing the Online Starter Pack thing comes with the actual Metal Gear Solid 4 game, because I don't see myself actually buying the full version when it releases.

So what do you guys thing of these games? Any likes, dislikes, or indifferences?