Previews// Haze Multi-Player Hands-On

I only managed to use my super strength melee attack (once again, courtesy of the drugs) once, but oooohhhh... it was satisfying. Gotta love the thwack of gun metal against a soft skull (haven't you?)

Then there's the zoom... The zoom, as a Mantel Trooper, is excellent. Any weapon becomes good for a bit of a snipe with your zoom engaged. Throw in the fact that your foes are luminescent and the murk of the swamp isn't going to give the rebels much chance of spotting you and you've got a sneaky-rat-bastard's wet dream. If you pick up an actual sniper rifle instead of just using one of the standard issue weapons then you're laughing like a diseased mad scientist. I imagine that's fine in your living room, but surrounded by other players in the PlayStation Rooms... I got some funny looks.

As a Promised Hand rebel in the swamp you're definitely disadvantaged by the all-pervading gloom. The map function, it must be said, doesn't help much. It can be accessed with the 'select' button, but it takes up the full screen, making you temporarily oblivious to what's going on around you. It will also only show you the whereabouts of your team mates – presumably so that having it doesn't negate the visual advantage provided to the Mantel Troopers by Nectar. The fact that the swamp looks a bit same-y really doesn't help matters.

There are, however, many fun things to be done with the rebels that make up for the disadvantage provided by the swamp. There are numerous ways to turn the Mantel Troopers' Nectar use against them. If you didn't know – an overdose on the stuff leads to them losing control and shooting at all and sundry. It's pretty handy for just straight-up increasing the other team's death toll, or at least giving yourself the opportunity to take pot-shots at them while they can't defend themselves.

A Nectar overdose can be brought about in a few different ways. The Nectar grenade is probably the most straightforward. Once you've downed one of the troopers you can grab his Nectar pack and strap it to a grenade, thus making its explosion produce a cloud of the yellow stuff. Even if it doesn't work, it still provides cover that the Mantel Troopers won't enter.

The next most straightforward option is a well placed shot to a Nectar pack. My first instinct when using this was to think, 'well, if I can land one shot on his back, I can probably manage five. Might as well kill him'. In a regular deathmatch I probably would have done just that, but as neurons started to fire in my sluggish brain it became apparent that a Nectar overdose was more use to me than a straightforward kill. It was rather delightful to discover, frankly.

Less useful to me was the option to dip your knife in Nectar and throw it or use it in a melee attack. As happened to me in the single-player and co-op, I kept brandishing it only to find no opportunity to use it. You can probably put that down to my lack of practice and/or ham-fistedness, though...