Without giving too much away, it's safe to suggest that Mantel isn't all it seems. From the very beginning, airdropped under rebel fire into a sunny glade dotted with delicately flowering plants, your war as a corporate soldier is eerily bloodless and unsoiled. Corpses phase out of existence. Napalm strikes leave craters and wreckage, but no victims. Previous sites of heavy fighting are swept improbably clean of any evidence of the claret-spattered violence that took place.
As our guide Yescombe continued to blast his way through an early assault, however, the pleasing gloss began to peel away. Stalking over the aforementioned napalm-hit wreckage, the strangely inoffensive scene was fleetingly replaced by a gritty, ash-choked nightmare where smoking corpses lay strewn and charred like used matches.
In a later area, a similar scene shot into vision. The glare of bright sunshine vanished, plunging us into rain-lashed gloom. Where a second ago there had been body bags, now there were scattered bodies and bloody smears over walls. We actually jumped. Mantel clearly has its hands dirty in the development of more than mere combat-enhancing drugs.
But as a rebel without Mantel's subversive technology running the show, war is constantly bloodier, nastier and more arresting. Bodies no longer vanish into thin air. Enemies bleed, and screech in pain. It's a world of difference, stressed by your own change in abilities. This wholehearted switch in gameplay, from techno-warrior to cunning guerrilla fighter, offers decidedly different challenges, and promises to keep you involved and pushing through to Haze's final moments.
The true blue test of Haze's ambition will be our first hands-on next week at the Leipzig Games Convention. For now, though, Free Radical can rest assured that even if our eyes are still caught by quotes and headlines, our heads are already sold on Haze's solid and satisfying gameplay.
