Crytek hopes Haze is remembered fondly
It "wasn't as bad as the reviews made out".
Crytek UK, the developer that rose from the ashes of the collapsed Free Radical Design, hopes that when gamers look back on PlayStation 3 exclusive Haze they'll remember it more fondly than they did at launch.
The ill-fated Haze was met with a 4/10 review score from Eurogamer upon its 2008 release.
It was the TimeSplitters creator's last game.
"We were surprised by how poorly it was received," admitted managing director Karl Hilton in an interview with Eurogamer conducted at the GameCity festival in Nottingham last week.
"We felt it had a lot of good elements in, which just didn't seem to get picked up at all. But it's a fickle industry and things move quickly. If you get a few things wrong and people pick up on it... And Haze wasn't a perfect product. Clearly it wasn't. But it wasn't as bad as some of the reviews and feedback made out."
Haze's problems are well documented.
"You really have to wonder how it all ended up this dreadful, especially after all the time and resource Ubisoft and Free Radical expended telling people the opposite," said Kristan Reed for Eurogamer.
"The combat's weak, the storyline's excruciating, it's technically deficient - Haze really is this year's most significant gaming disappointment."
Looking back, Hilton agreed that perhaps expectations were fuelled by the development team's heritage with classics GoldenEye and TimeSplitters.
"It's interesting. Obviously time will tell. Second Sight was another game we did that got pretty average reviews, but these days seems to be remembered very fondly. At the time when we launched that we were disappointed it didn't do better than it did because we felt it had a lot of good elements in it."
But will, once the dust has settled on this generation, Haze be remembered fondly?
"I don't think anyone will claim it was an unrecognised classic, but maybe they'll treat it a little more gently than it got treated when it was released. That would be nice."