Haze, by all accounts, was not a successful game. The PS3 exclusive didn't sell well, and it was critically mauled with reviewers citing poorly executed combat, weak technical achievements, bad writing and ambitions that were never realized as incredible low points. The developers, however, believe that the PS3 itself played a significant part in Haze's failure.
"[Haze] had a lot of development issues which meant it wasn’t the game it should have been," explains Free Radical's Karl Hilton. "A lot of them were technical issues. The PS3 is a powerful machine but a difficult one to get the best out of. We spent more time trying get the game running properly and less time to design the game properly."
Free Radical is now Crytek UK, with the original firm going into administration following the release of Haze. However, now armed with the CryEngine, Hilton believes that the PS3 will be a happier platform for his team in future: "I don’t think we’ve seen the best out of the PS3 at all, and I definitely think one of the best things about Crytek and the CryEngine is that we’re now in the best position to get the most out of the hardware."
What do you think? Would Haze have fared better on another system, or was there far more than the PS3 going against Free Radical?
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Contest:
5:20 PM on 08.12.2009
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The bland overall level design and embarrassingly poor plot bespoke problems at the conceptual level, not the technical level.
This means that those developers whining about how hard it would be to develop for it can only blame their own inability for their failures.
Simple as that.
We don't know how proficient they where with the 360 either so who knows wether it would have turned out better.
Why blame it on the hardware when so many developers get it right?!
The game ran just fine on the PS3... if they had technical issues, fine - but don't blame technical issues for BAD dialogue and a rather mediocre plot. The levels were unimaginative and the game was just simply "average". I think that with all the hype surrounding the game it got unnecessarily bad reviews, which further hurt the game... because it was a solidly average shooter game not a "bad" game.
It did have co-op campaign (which was great)... and the online really was very imaginative... if they had brought some of this inventiveness into the game, it might have done a lot better.
At the absolute least, it's evident they released a game they believed was good enough, rather than bollocks. For me I think that was the problem.
Better that, then listen to someone blaming the tools. "Sorry, my hammer isn't good enough".
They loose even more credibility when Naughty Dog, Insomniac and those guys actually manage to make good games at their first try, first party developer or not.
Sorry, Free Radical just screwed up, if they can't handle the console, don't hype their game.
I bought this for $12 (TWELVE dollars) and I felt I spent too much. Good grphics would not have helped this game in ANYway shape or form!
Does the PS3 control the crappy story line and piss poor voice acting?
Sony thought this game was good.
Killzone 1 was dubbed the Halo Killer by the Media.
Haze was dubbed the Halo killer by Xbots.
Killzone 2 is the Halo killer.
My Comment was directed at Bwonk! *Fixed.
We've been waiting FOREVER!
we're three years into this gen. if devs haven't figured out how to deal with the PS3 by now then that's their own fault. They also chose to cancel the PC and 360 versions so they could've prove this point by picking those back up and releasing them. And I'm sorry but Uncharted was an exclusive launch title done by the guys who did Jak and Daxter. It's not that devs should be able to pick up something new right off the bat, it's just that when other companies have created great things (MGS4, Uncharted, Infamous, Killzone 2, Motor Storm) Free Radical saying the PS3 is too difficu;t just looks like they didn't put effort into trying.
Not that I believe a word I read up there.
Keep in mind that technical problems make absolutely every part of your game suffer. And while INNITIAL ideas can be good, they have to be thrown out in order to make things quickly that work.
Also: "If you're having problems, then don't release it early. Fix your mistakes."
You must be new to the industry. Here's how it works: Developer is given a time to finish a game by. This is not including pre-production. That time is flexible by a month or two, generally. If your game is not ready at that time, it is either A) thrown out entirely, or if it shows any promise B) it is released 'as is.' There's the additional 'C' of certain exclusives (Killzone) that are given extra YEARS to make it work.
So keep in mind that they MAY be telling the truth. I'm not defending them -- they very likely could have just screwed up -- but what they are saying is not IMPOSSIBLE.
Cry some more Free Radical.
Halo will live forever, I think, if something can live after selling its soul.
Is Konami owned by Sony? Just as much as Square-enix?
I didn't hear kojima whining about how terrible working on the PS3 is, like i don't hear anything of the sort from the Final Fantasy XIII team, just to make two examples. I don't hear it from Namco, that continues to develop PS3 exclusive titles (like the upcoming Gundam game that looks awesome) or from Capcom, that makes their PS3 multiplatform titles totally on par with the 360 ones, I don't hear it from the vast majority of developers.
That makes me guess that, most definitely, the problem doesn't lie in the console, but in a couple of western primadonna developers that can't be arsed learning a new system that gives great results to others. 'Nuff said.
They wern't lazy at all infact they probably bit off way more than they could chew at the time.
From the article I read here they don't sound bitter at all, did you not read the part which said
"I don’t think we’ve seen the best out of the PS3 at all, and I definitely think one of the best things about Crytek and the CryEngine is that we’re now in the best position to get the most out of the hardware."
Try and remember this was in the relativly early days of the PS3 aswell.
Don't get all butthurt.
So, one could make a case that if baseline functionality hadn't been so hard to achieve, more effort could have been put in the other aspects of the game. I think that's what the developers were getting at.