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The first review has rolled in for Haze, the PS3 exclusive shooter from Free Radical, and it's IGN giving it a 4.5 out of 10.

It's not so surprising that the game has a mandatory 4GB install, and I doubt that affected the review. What is surprising is the litany of problems with the single player game that IGN found given how long the title was delayed. It's clear that Free Radical is no Epic Games, Incog, or Insomniac, but from the looks of this one they're not particularly Free Radical either. These are the folks best known for the TimeSplitters series. With Haze looking like a flop, will they have enough money to soldier on with a new chapter in either TimeSplitters or Haze to take a better crack at things?

That said, it's a shame that the game looks like it's pretty much dead on arrival because the multiplayer feature list looks rather good from a technical perspective. The online co-op mode seems to work as advertised, complete with full friends list integration, and the full details on the co-op game modes were posted on the PS Blog. That same post also detailed LAN game support, potentially making the game a mainstay of multi-PS3 environments. I immediately think of gaming centers and college dorms when I see LAN play, and if it will work when the servers are shut down could give the game something of a cult classic status if the multiplayer is good enough to shed the stigma of the single-player game's reviews.