Hatred (2015) - PC/Steam

[Jizaboz]

This is a game I have had my eye on and been thinking about for months now. It was created by a Polish company. All of the initial reviews of it by main sites were very bad. Basically the tone was "It's a buggy mess" (I did manage to crash the game 15 minutes in so can't argue there), "It's not fun and the controls suck" (wrong), and generally that the game itself is morally awful. https://www.polygon.com/2014/10/16/6988 ... -innocents

However, when I noticed the game recently went on sale on Steam for 5.99 I also noticed the Steam ratings were actually very positive and the game was recommended to me based on other games I'd played. So, I decided to bite the bullet (heh-heh) and give the game a try.



You play as a dude that hates people and the world that always wanted to die a violent death. The main object of the game is killing innocent people in the most effective way possible, while cowardly using shoot and run techniques on the cops that intervene. One day you decide to just wipe your own neighborhood, and things obviously escalate from there. The game control style is almost identical to Hotline Miami. However, you do have more of a range of options here such as driving cars on a much more open map. Also, you have "execution moves" Basically, if you see someone in the main view of the game that isn't quite dead you move over them and hit Q or whatever key assigned for execution. You then get a brief cutscene dynamically generated at wherever location you are of you finishing the victim off as they beg for mercy.





Many times as this is done, your protagonist says things like "Fuck you..", "Shut the fuck up and die.", "Fucking worthless.", "Pathetic." in a Duke Nukem style voice. This is extremely satisfying, especially if they were dumb enough to shoot at you.

There are no healing items. Instead, you must perform executions to get lifeforce flowing in you again. This can get tricky when you have like 8 people mowing you down while trying not to completely kill someone near you so you can get a finishing move off. While you can't save your game at any point, I don't think that would work well in this game anyway. Plus, respawning after dying doesn't force you to do as much all over again like it did in the Hotline Miami games. You actually have to earn your respawns via reaching checkpoints of sorts (these checkpoints range from doing things like taking out everyone at a funeral procession to killing a group of redneck deer hunters that saw commotion and target you).

I'm now 2.5 hours into it and really enjoying it. As far as the moral element goes.. I mean, yeah I can see some complaint as we really don't have that many games where you play such a dark protagonist without a ton of fantasy element bullshit. The soundtrack is empty, droning, and I could see where it could make people feel uneasy. Some people will hear the pleas of the victims and laugh, others would feel sick to their stomach. However, when you look at games like GTAV and such it's not as if elements of all of this have never been done before.. but this is a first for actually putting those elements together properly to touch nerves.

Based on the first few levels, "Hatred" is getting a 8.5 out 10 stars from me.

P.S. Plz don't tell the cops about the drugged guy I have in the basement.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

Great review! I bought this soon after it came out. This is a classic example of bad journos seeing it "safe" to go after these guys with the 0-6 part of their otherwise 7-9 scale and then giving us their dipshit moralizing for the most part.

Oh JOURNO is it BAAAAAD to do the things in Hatred? It was bad to pick up every item not nailed down in Colossal Cave. Video game logic doesn't map to real world logic any more than asking why a waiter wouldn't just say something when Jack Tripper is at the same restaurant on a date with two girls at two different tables, going back and forth. These are fantasy games, it's fiction.

Point taken on crashes, but my time with this game was also positive. It's much, much better than Postal, which is a game sort of close to it. I remember the controls being almost Robotron-like? That's the thing: if the game was exactly the same but the families were robo hulks and bots, the weeping babies at online game mags wouldn't have said shit and given it their craven sevens.

[RealNC]

Game reviewers think they're the woke moral police. They have a duty to teach and educate us, because we're just randos, nobodies and dumbfucks. Not like them, famous, important and respected.

Like and subscribe and follow me on twitter and let me know in the comments down below and hit the bell and buy nord vpn.

[bryanb]

I think games like this WANT us to wrestle with the moral issues they bring up. That's kind of the point, isn't it? Is it OK to do horrible things if it's in a video game? Should we be enjoying this? Should we feel guilty? They're supposed to be provocative. They're supposed to be uncomfortable. I would say it's perfectly OK for reviewers to criticize a game for taking them to a place they didn't want to go just as it's OK for Jizaboz to say he enjoyed the experience and found it interesting. The game creators signed up for this controversy 100% and don't need to be coddled.

While they're not as polished as Postal and Hatred, I always think of Texas Chainsaw Massacre for the Atari 2600 and Jokela High Massacre, a Flash game formerly on Newgrounds, when this type of game is discussed. In TCM, you're hunting down and cutting up kids with a chainsaw for no reason whatsoever. It's not scary and is one of the least faithful movie video game adaptations ever plot-wise; the gameplay is just pure, unadulterated, brutal violence for the sake of violence. In Jokela High Massacre, you reenact the 2007 Jokela High School shootings. It places you in the role of school shooter Pekka-Eric Auvinen and invites you to feel his pain and his alienation. It dares you to sympathize with him. Inevitably, you go through with the shootings, kill some innocents (albeit some who might have bullied your character in the past, but it's not like you're really paying attention to who you gun down), and then face remorseless wave after wave of police who will inevitably take you down eventually. The primitive nature of these games fit the theme really well, and I think Jokela High Massacre in particular has a unique and arty aesthetic that I still remember vividly even though I haven't felt like playing it in years.

To me, playing this type of game while ignoring the moral issues they bring up means missing the point as badly as someone who reflexively criticizes them for being repugnant without considering their artistic merit.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

Point taken on the devs not needing to be coddled.

Let me provide an example of what I mean. This snippet of a review is on the first page of Hatred's Metacritic page. It's from a German site I won't name because who cares and the specifics don't matter:

Hatred
33%
I have to kill everbody. It works, but it's a primitive piece of garbage. It's so bad, it's almost funny.

The numeric score is 33% Wow! That's bad! Leaving aside the fact that the URL to the review is gone and there was a typo in the very first sentence of their review, let's look at another review snippet that is posted:

Gas Station Simulator
73%
A slightly different blue-collar simulator that often does not take itself too seriously and thus becomes unique.

"Gas Station Simulator" got a 73%, right in that 7-9 scale. The simulator games are shitware asset flip forgettable nonsense, but hey, the fact that it in particular scored so well from them probably doesn't mean anyt--

For 1,800 reviews, this publication has graded:
63% higher than the average critic
8% same as the average critic
29% lower than the average critic

So they can't suck enough mainstream video game cock, but they sure made sure to get personal with an indie game out of Poland, calling it "garbage." SO EDGY SO BRAVE. The two browsers their site works best on are EDGE and BRAVE.

They are just one example. This is all fresh in my mind because the same pile on happened with Duke Nukem Forever and I read a thread about DNF recently. I hate fake tough guys, if you want to be a real tough guy, go take a controversial stand against Halo: Infinite. I don't want anyone to think that the industry I work in - web apps - isn't terrible. My wife was on the phone with a web app company for 4.5 hours today, literally four and a half hours and they kept insisting that they sent her an email (they didn't; it was obvious to me that their interface with SendGrid was broken at that time) and this magic email was the only way to fix the issue at hand. So I am not saying my industry is better, but I am saying that game journalism as an industry when taken as a whole is just as bad.

[AArdvark]

If they made a game with explicit peace and love nobody would buy it. People don't need videogames to experience those behaviors, you can just go out ad DO it. That's the point these reviewers don't seem to get.

[Flack]

That was one of the big controversies surrounding Miami Hotline -- they made fun 2D graphics, filled the game with cool music, and then forced the player to bash people's heads in, leaving blood splattered on the walls and pooling below the hundreds of bodies on each level. The missions are performed by a series of characters with masks that you eventually learn was you all along. It's disturbing and elicits an emotional response, which is what games (and art) should strive to do.

[Jizaboz]

I think games like this WANT us to wrestle with the moral issues they bring up. That's kind of the point, isn't it? Is it OK to do horrible things if it's in a video game? Should we be enjoying this? Should we feel guilty? They're supposed to be provocative. They're supposed to be uncomfortable. I would say it's perfectly OK for reviewers to criticize a game for taking them to a place they didn't want to go just as it's OK for Jizaboz to say he enjoyed the experience and found it interesting. The game creators signed up for this controversy 100% and don't need to be coddled.

While they're not as polished as Postal and Hatred, I always think of Texas Chainsaw Massacre for the Atari 2600 and Jokela High Massacre, a Flash game formerly on Newgrounds, when this type of game is discussed. In TCM, you're hunting down and cutting up kids with a chainsaw for no reason whatsoever. It's not scary and is one of the least faithful movie video game adaptations ever plot-wise; the gameplay is just pure, unadulterated, brutal violence for the sake of violence. In Jokela High Massacre, you reenact the 2007 Jokela High School shootings. It places you in the role of school shooter Pekka-Eric Auvinen and invites you to feel his pain and his alienation. It dares you to sympathize with him. Inevitably, you go through with the shootings, kill some innocents (albeit some who might have bullied your character in the past, but it's not like you're really paying attention to who you gun down), and then face remorseless wave after wave of police who will inevitably take you down eventually. The primitive nature of these games fit the theme really well, and I think Jokela High Massacre in particular has a unique and arty aesthetic that I still remember vividly even though I haven't felt like playing it in years.

To me, playing this type of game while ignoring the moral issues they bring up means missing the point as badly as someone who reflexively criticizes them for being repugnant without considering their artistic merit.

I agree and disagree. Thanks Bryan. I think a lot of games DO want us to wrestle this sort of thing. However, from what I recall reading an interview with the Polish/other non American dudes that made the game they basically said they didn't want to imply that at all. They just wanted to create a "bad ass game" and most of them didn't know much about modern game dev beforehand. They went with the Unreal Engine just because that seemed like the easiest to create in for the effects they wanted. I played TCM on Atari 2600 and laughed so hard.. perhaps that will help you understand my fondness for this game lol Poor Franklin lolol

The only life lesson the devs of this game are getting across is the fantasy of taking bullet shots while doing all of this. If you try to pull this shit in real life for whatever stupid reason, you ain't gonna last long.

Great review! I bought this soon after it came out. This is a classic example of bad journos seeing it "safe" to go after these guys with the 0-6 part of their otherwise 7-9 scale and then giving us their dipshit moralizing for the most part.

Oh JOURNO is it BAAAAAD to do the things in Hatred? It was bad to pick up every item not nailed down in Colossal Cave. Video game logic doesn't map to real world logic any more than asking why a waiter wouldn't just say something when Jack Tripper is at the same restaurant on a date with two girls at two different tables, going back and forth. These are fantasy games, it's fiction.

Point taken on crashes, but my time with this game was also positive. It's much, much better than Postal, which is a game sort of close to it. I remember the controls being almost Robotron-like? That's the thing: if the game was exactly the same but the families were robo hulks and bots, the weeping babies at online game mags wouldn't have said shit and given it their craven sevens.

Thanks! I've actually never played "Postal" or "Manhunt" yet so I'm unsure how those measure up on the offensive or disturbing scale.

If they made a game with explicit peace and love nobody would buy it. People don't need videogames to experience those behaviors, you can just go out ad DO it. That's the point these reviewers don't seem to get.

Haha it's funny because as you said that I thought of the first "happy" game that popped in my mind.. Katamari Damacy. It's actually a happy game of rolling up buildings and terrified people/animals into enormous balls to create stars and shit.

Game reviewers think they're the woke moral police. They have a duty to teach and educate us, because we're just randos, nobodies and dumbfucks. Not like them, famous, important and respected.

Like and subscribe and follow me on twitter and let me know in the comments down below and hit the bell and buy nord vpn.

LOL like/sub/follow also Nord VPN

That was one of the big controversies surrounding Miami Hotline -- they made fun 2D graphics, filled the game with cool music, and then forced the player to bash people's heads in, leaving blood splattered on the walls and pooling below the hundreds of bodies on each level. The missions are performed by a series of characters with masks that you eventually learn was you all along. It's disturbing and elicits an emotional response, which is what games (and art) should strive to do.

Yes, many similarities with HLM. The music too totally nailed the experience. In Miami I felt like I was always fucked up or hung over with mixed messages in my head while killing Russian clubber assholes and cops for reasons I didn't really care about until the story kicked in. I never finished HLM2, but at least in the first one I really loved the scene where dude is in jail and asking the guard "Are you gonna answer the phone?" I had a moment of mischievous glee. Killing in that game was fast and satisfying, yet could be frustrating at times due to the more arcade-style and speed of the game. You would die over and over in certain levels almost as many times as trying to advance in Dark Souls as you learned the scripting and layout of each level.

Hatred is like Hotline Miami in many respects but not entirely. The fun beats have been replaced with droning, depressive/scary(?) tunes. There are no fancy colors. Instead, you see the world in the same way the protagonist does; in black and white (unless blood is spilled), even in the daytime. The entire world is a dark canvas, just as dark as the carcass of the world the maggots of mankind feast on. Rather than speedy "executions", the victims crawl along the floor begging for mercy and you can't help but chuckle every time you lift one up and finish them off either with a quick animation in isometric view or a dynamic one in camera mode (sort of like Friday the 13th for PS4). There are no real motives other than pure hatred for this sort of envisioning of the world. Before anyone accuses me of going Jack Straw here, let me remind you all this was the exact same motivation we had for Michael Myers in Halloween. No motivation. "Just PURE HATRED."

P.S. Earlier I finished the Train level. Mowed down a bunch of people in a long, steel coffin :)

[Jizaboz]

Just got to the "Military Base" level.

Jar heads totally mowed down my long-haired dude for 20 minutes until I decided to give up until another day haha

[Jizaboz]

Beat the main game today between a few brutal rounds of Cyberpunk 2077. Expected and satisfying ending. After that, I played around with the non-story modes. You can play as Maniac Cop in the non-story mode! Not removing from hard drive yet..