Hatred is a game that was surrounded by controversy upon its release and was even banned on Steam for some time. Then it was brought back, and I was kind of curious about how this game was played, so when it was on sale for 3 dollars CDN, I bought it. While it is not as violent as most people make it out to be, I honestly found it to be a pretty boring game.
Pros and Cons
Pros
- The physics are nice
Cons
- The story seems edgy but lacks anything interesting
- Repetitive gameplay that doesn't evolve
- The game can get rather difficult, however, it’s not the fun kind
- The black and white graphics are not great
- Some bugs were present throughout the gameplay
Story
The story starts out with this character known as The Antagonist, who really hates humanity, and he probably hates you the player. The Antagonist decides to die fighting and goes on a massive killing spree and has a plan to take out the entire city of New York.
That’s it for the story. I am not kidding, Hatred offers nothing even remotely interesting in terms of a story. The Antagonist has no motivation that makes him go out of his way to start the killing spree other than the fact he hates humanity. We also know next to nothing about him, no past, no backstory, nothing, he just comes off as edgy and uninteresting.
Gameplay
Hatred is a top-down shooter where your sole objective is to kill as many people as possible and score points. At some point you will come across police officers and military soldiers that will give you access to other weapons. When you get close to a fallen enemy, you can perform an execution kill and you will need to do these as they are the only method of healing in the game.
When you are on a mission, you will have objectives that will need to be completed in order to finish the level. If you die, you will have to redo the whole level again, so you have to get those execution kills when needed.
So, with that out of the way, there are issues with the gameplay. First things first, it is going to get repetitive. You do the same thing repeatedly, you just go around killing people which may sound fun for the first 30 minutes but then it just turns into a slog. It also does not help that the game can get difficult and not the fun kind, as mentioned before if you die you must redo the level all over again.
Respawn tokens are your only second chance items, which you can get by doing objectives on the level you have. If you beat a level without using a respawn token, they will carry over. Trust me, you will die, as the game will go from easy to very hard and not in a fun kind of way. I have played hard games before and been able to successfully complete the challenge that was being offered but Hatred does not give you any breathing room for mistakes. This is especially the case when you come across armored enemies that do not go down easily. This will prevent you from getting those execution kills which in turn prevents you from healing.
Also getting hit by a car no matter the speed will kill you instantly for some reason, a fast-moving one is understandable but even if the car is moving slow, you can still die from it.
The one thing that I will give Hatred credit for is the physics that the game has. The environment is destructible, building walls can be destroyed by an explosion or if a car is driven into them.
Graphics and Performance
The graphics for Hatred are in a black and white theme, the only other colors that are there are the colors of fire or blood. The graphics in my eyes do seem like an interesting idea but they do not really seem that well-executed at all. I tested this game on an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 3GB, AMD Ryzen 5 1500X Quad-Core Processor 3.50, with16 GB of RAM. The game runs well but that is not really a selling point for it.
There were also some bugs that I have encountered as well, none of them were game-breaking but sometimes there would be times when people would fly off the map. It was the one bit of enjoyment I had throughout playing.
Final Verdict
I have played many bad games before but with all of the bad ones that I have played, they still at least had something fun to them. Far Cry 5 was the worst video game I played but at least that game had some enjoyable moments within its gameplay. Hatred has none of that, it has one of the worst aspects a game can have, which is being boring. Because of this, even at the low price of 6.69 CDN, I can’t recommend this game, even when it’s on sale. There is a survival mode that I have not touched upon in this review but that does not add anything new to the table in terms of gameplay.
If you want a game that has this exact premise, then I highly recommend Postal 2. That game does what Hatred does but 1000% better and is only 10.99. Or if you are looking for a top-down perspective game that has a challenge that is fair and rewarding, then I recommend Hotline Miami and its sequel, you can get the bundle for 20.98 CDN. Those games are well worth your time and money, I highly recommend you avoid this game as it is just wasted money.
If there is one more thing that I would give Hatred some credit for, it's the legacy it created. It has been able to spawn comics and even a T-shirt of some kind, so hey, it got something good going for it.