Warning! Reading this intense and edgy review might make you faint from exhaustion or literally become a murderer. Proceed at your own risk!
I don’t really know what I expected from Hatred. You could tell from the first trailer that there wouldn’t be a whole lot going on behind the set dressing of the game many outlets have lovingly labeled as a “mass murder simulator”. The initial trailer shocked and horrified many, but like Miley Cyrus before it, most folks just eventually learned to stop being shocked and live with it. And now if Hatred were to straddle a giant inflatable penis on stage in Chile, we wouldn’t really think twice about it. I think my metaphor is getting away from me…
Hatred is an isometric shooter that places you in the role of a super dark and edgy character who has no name, background, or motive. What he does have is a whole lot of hate. He hates everything, he hates birds, he hates clouds, he hates NCIS, but mostly he hates people and that actually might have just been more exposition than you’re actually given before the game asks you to start cutting through crowds with an assault rifle.
Hatred clearly intends to provoke, but I think most players will find themselves unaffected as they mow down innocent civilians who all look identical and shout the same handful of terrible lines before death. “I’m bleeding. It hurts,” they scream with the same amount of emotion one might show after stubbing their toe or receiving McNuggets without sauce. The main character’s lines are equally repetitive and stilted. You’ll find that you frequently say things that might sound cool etched into a middle school desk but don’t actually have any discernible meaning.
Oftentimes the best course of action is to just hide out and let everyone come to you.
Dispatching enemies is primarily done via your firearms, you can carry three at a time and by my count there’s about seven different ones that you’ll come across by the game’s end. Flashbangs, molotov cocktails, and standard grenades are all available as well, and that’s about it. Civilians generally don’t pose a threat, although you’ll come across some who are willing to pick up an available gun and try to fight back. For the most part though your primary source of return fire will be law enforcement. One curious design decision is the way the game handles healing, there’s no regenerating health and no items to heal you, instead the only way to recover from being wounded is to perform an execution on an incapacitated victim.
Executions are problematic for a lot of reasons. The first is that each time you perform one the game will change its perspective to show your finishing move in as much detail as possible, none of the action stops during the execution so this gives enemies ample time to get close to you and fill you with bullets once the animation completes. You can get around this issue by disabling the animations in the options, and you’ll likely want to, especially after you realize there’s only like 5 or 6 to see. The second problem is that executions are only available on “disabled” targets, so if you’re using standard firearms executions are only an option a random percentage of the time, and if you’re using fire based weapons like the flamethrower or molotovs they won’t be available at all. This means the only guaranteed way to heal is to kick someone to the ground and then execute them, I found that the initial key mapping made kicking more troublesome than it needed to be, but after remapping it I found the game’s challenge diminished quite a bit.
Executions are more obnoxious than graphic.
I so disliked the default key mapping I initially considered switching to a controller. What a mistake that was. The fact that the game describes itself as a “twin stick shooter” on Steam is laughable. While it did address some of the issues I had throwing grenades and kicking opponents I found that aiming and firing became almost impossible to do effectively on a standard Xbox One controller.
But even fixing executions and controls wouldn’t address the horrendously boring level structure. For the most part each level works the same way, you’re first asked to kill a set number of civilians, and then when you’re done you’ll have to survive a wave of law enforcement before escaping the area. Each level contains several side objectives for you to perform. These objectives are usually no more complex than clearing out a particular building or pressing a button. Once a side task is completed you’ll gain the ability to respawn at that objective once. If you die without any respawns you’re forced to start the entire level over. I might not complain if levels maintained a consistent difficulty all the way through, but instead they basically all open with a mindless scavenger hunt to find civilians that you’ll have to repeat every time you die.
This train level features an unusual amount of civilians packing firearms. Surely it’s an intelligent and observant commentary on America’s gun culture.
To make matters worse, there’s a lot of cheap ways to die in Hatred. Cars will kill you with just the lightest tap, and don’t even think about getting in one of those deathtraps as they explode at the drop of a hat. Even the most armored cars aren’t usually worth hijacking. And don’t get me started on flashbangs, SWAT teams and soldiers throw them liberally and can often stunlock and kill you even when you’re at full health.
I can’t help but wonder if forcing you to restart levels so frequently is related to the game’s length. There are only seven levels to playthrough and even with a significant amount of restarts you can clear them all in about four to six hours tops. If the game had a more reasonable checkpoint system it’s perfectly likely it would have clocked in around the 2 hour mark at its base difficulty.
During their original press tour Destructive Creations touted Hatred as a way for gamers to “blow off steam”. For the most part they don’t imply there’s some deep meaning or that they were offering any kind of cultural commentary, so I don’t necessarily think it’s right to fault the game for failing to have anything insightful to say about mass murder. We can, however, certainly fault the game for being bland, repetitive and obnoxious. If the goal was to help gamers “blow off steam” perhaps it shouldn’t be saddled with such an egregious checkpoint system and so many cheap deaths.
This is how we stop the choo choo.
I’d love to tell you this is the worst game of 2015, but I don’t even think it’s that noteworthy. The most offensive thing about Hatred is how fantastically their marketing campaign worked. Most will play this game for the same reason they watched Seth Rogan and James Franco flail about in The Interview, and with any luck you’ll be able to forget Hatred at about the same rate.
