A game where you can’t hug your problems away, but you can shoot them!
All killer, no filter
A deep spiritual journey about emotional growth. I’m joking. Hatred is the video game incarnation of a highschool edge lord blasting Cannibal Corpse in front of a local Sunday school. An unnamed jet-black haired misfit arms himself to the teeth and decides that it’s now up to him to murder the entire planet! He doesn’t discriminate, everyone is equally fucked. If Hatred was a dish it would be maggot cheese (Unfortunately is a real thing). It’s gritty black-and-white filter sets the tone. Its basically Postal for people who had emo Myspace in 2007. Like anyone else, I had morbid curiosity due to the increasingly rare Ao-Rating (Adults Only 18+).
Our protagonist “Notim-Portant” (cheeky) decided the world has sealed its fate. Having nothing but a contempt for humanity as fiery as a thousand suns, he decides the only sensible course of action is to put a stop to every beating pulse in the way a beaver stops water flow. Armed and dangerous, he takes his bloodthirsty genocidal-crusade to the next level of absurdity. Taking the piss doesn’t even scratch the surface of this game. Notim-Portant is a one man army with ice in his veins and blood so cold it would make Mr. Freeze look like he’s having a heat stroke. What other game lets you skew a pregnant woman like a kebab and state “ two for price of one” (I’m deadass).
Gameplay is in the form of an isometric-shooter, a questionable choice in design. Not knowing where you are in relation to everyone closing in on you makes it difficult to know where to aim and fire. In shootouts, it can lead to excessive deaths and game overs. Ironically- a wish for our cuddly protagonist, but too early before his thirst for the blood of the innocent has been quenched. Hatred takes what should be a fun, over-the-top, chaotic romp—like replaying the “No Russian” mission in Modern Warfare 2 a dozen times—and somehow transforms it into an increasingly frustrating experience. There honestly isn’t much more to say about how this game plays. You literally just walk around, annihilating all the civilians out for a Sunday stroll.
I mean, while it is funny- Hatred is a shallow, piss-poor excuse of a game. It has about as much self awareness as a middle schooler dressed in a trench coat and vampire fangs who insists this is not a phase. Never in my many decades as a gamer have I seen something with about as much depth as a rain puddle. Hatred is like if an angsty teenager with a collection of skull T-shirts made a game about pure carnage and somehow convinced a few people to publish it. It’s a rage-fueled mess that tries so hard to be edgy, it makes Joker look like Sesame Street. The protagonist spends his time shooting civilians, but the real tragedy is he has less personality than a wet sock. Hatred is the game for you if you’ve ever wanted to take your inner rage and turn it into a pixelated mess of chaos, with all the subtlety of a toddler throwing a tantrum in a glass shop.
Sincerely with contempt,
Mikhail & Fil