- Joined
- Jun 27, 2014
I figured every now and then, it's good to cover a game on this site that isn't some random piece of indie shit. I also decided to shift gears and maybe cover a game that while by no means good, certainly has a bit of interesting history and context to it, that one can really only appreciate with the benefit of hindsight. As a game, Hatred is purely C-List. It's a competent top-down shooter with a really nice physics engine and art style, surrounding a game that, at best, is passable. It certainly stands head and shoulders above the JPATG bottom eight. Unlike these esteemed titles, it runs well enough (unlike ReGiCiDe), it didn't crash at all (unlike Smash MAGA), has a competent gameplay loop (unlike Bomber Bother), and it doesn't have game-breaking bugs (unlike Revolution 60), and you can actually beat the fucking thing (unlike That Really Hot Chick).
That doesn't make Hatred a particularly good game, it's just way better than those pieces of shit. The game has solid gunplay, the black comedy at times worth a few chuckles (I defy anyone to watch the ending of this game with a straight face), but none of that really earns a recommend. Destructive Creations would go on to make vastly better games with the same engine, so Hatred isn't really even an outlier here. Instead, Hatred deserves that I cover it for being a rare cultural artifact, a game that for a few minutes, caused an entire media circus, and at the end of the day, rode that circus to victory, laughing and cursing all the while.
Hatred is a game that exists in a strange place; it is a game that exists to make fun of the time it was made in. Other games have done this same thing, in other eras; most notably Postal, and that is most assuredly the wellspring Hatred is drawing from. Like Postal, Hatred intentionally went to bat with a premise its developer, Destructive Creations, knew culture warriors of the time would lose their shit over, and it's very clear that Running With Scissors appreciated the shout-out, considering they added Hatred's main character to Postal Redux as an unlockable. See, an ugly little secret about the culture war when it came to video gaming is that it never really went away. Back in the 90s, most people simply assumed that the likes of Lyndon Larouche and Jack Thompson, being Conservatives, represented the biggest calls for censorship for Vidya, but in truth, if you go back and look at various controversies, none of them ever had the level of utter fucktardedness we saw from certain establishment Democrats. Unlike say, Bob Chipman, I will not be overlooking the fact that Hillary Clinton tried to cynically use Jack Thompson as a weapon against an entire industry, or that Joe Lieberman tried to shut down various companies over Light Guns by blaming them for gun crimes, and literally got the ESRB created after trumping up accusations that Night Trap promoted sexual violence against women.
What I'm saying there is that outrage-mongers will always be there, know no party restriction, and always deserve our ridicule and scorn.
Hatred is a work of satire. It uses a different approach than its forebears in that instead of embracing absurdity, it goes the exact opposite approach and plays it straight, only going so far past any line that it becomes impossible to take seriously. Individually, and divorced from one another, parts of the game can come across as extremely disturbing, and the general premise of the game is certainly quite dark, but when the game's main character leads off with a monologue so infamously mockable that it achieved instant meme status, and the developers of the game go around upvoting parodies of that introductory sequence on Youtube, you kind of know what you're getting into, long before the game's main character starts quoting Postal verbatim. In many ways, I dislike this approach for the game, since the comedic elements of say, Postal 2 genuinely make for more levity, but Destructive Creations clearly realized that the powers that be wouldn't see the difference, and ultimately decided: "Fuck it, I'm doing what I'm getting blamed for." Hatred's trailer was unashamedly grisly, almost akin to a grindhouse horror flick in its portrayal, and suffice to say, when it dropped, the Game Journalists, squarely off the high of the Autism Holy War, decided that this fucking thing was going down, son. Polygon, in particular, lost their shit, promptly declaring Hatred's infamous trailer the "worst trailer of the year," before unironically claiming the developers were actual nazis, and calling for the game's banning. Ben "Ku Klux" Kuchera realized what Destructive Creations was doing, but decided to sperg over the game anyway.
While all of this Journosperging and accusations of Nazism were initially successful at getting Steam to delist Hatred. Destructive Creations played the mainstream press all for fools: There's nothing in Hatred that hasn't been done in other games with lower ratings. Many common FPS games are more violent than Hatred is. The only reason the game has an AO rating is that Destructive Creations specifically asked for it, and if you go looking, you can find interviews where the Devs acknowledge that Hatred hadn't really earned it, but went for it anyway - knowing that the Journalists would go insane trying to attack what they perceived as a soft target, while actively paving the way for the game's success. In the end, Gaben himself, clearly familiar with when Running with Scissors did this with Postal, stepped in and personally relisted the game. The Journoswine lost their shit, and Hatred, financially, was shockingly successful, jumping to the top of the Steam charts, even as it got excoriated upon release by the very Journalists that tried to get it purged.
Hatred's a twin stick shooter, in which our main character goes on a violent rampage and shoots up the town. While he's referred to as "The Antagonist" in-game, the majority of people refer to him as Not Important (thanks to Hatred's intro), Jefferey Cuddletrousers (thanks to Yahtzee), or Sam Hyde (because he can't keep getting away with it).
Not Important is voiced by Herr Warcrimer - no, not the Carmageddon racer of the same name, the lead singer for the Polish Death Metal band Iperyt (Infernal War). His gravely voice has an almost hilariously off-putting edgelord quality to it that makes every single line he utters so over-the-top that it's kind of endearing in its own darkly hilarious way. And Hatred is one of those games where, the longer you fuck around in it, the more you're able to draw conclusions from the game that are hilarious if you're the sort of immature crazy person that dwells on this forum.
Playing through Hatred for this review, one thing started to repeatedly jump out at me: Not Important, for being a mass-murdering psychopath is, somehow, a lighter-in-tone character than the world in which he inhabits. You start off in his basement for a tutorial sequence, and it's blatantly obvious from this intro that not only does he live in an absolute shithole, but the neighborhood in which he resides is, impossibly, an even bigger shithole. In a dark alternate NY where the Shoreham power plant actually got finished, Not Important lives in a fucking awful neighborhood with an overwhelming police presence, intensely high crime, and shops that are open all night. Also his bathroom is unusable, due to the door getting stuck.
While playing the game, I decided to see how long I could go without killing anyone, mostly as a joke, and about twenty seconds in, I started to see just how fucked up his world is. Civilians will come and go into his house whenever they feel like it, even with Not Important standing armed in his living room. This shitty little house is all he has, and they don't even give him any peace there. I eventually came across several dead bodies that I had absolutely nothing to do with. If you manage to just let the AI go do its thing without running into you at all, eventually it will go full Just Cause and start killing each other for reasons completely unfathomable. During actual gameplay, I've seen Police drive up, crash into buildings, and kill dozens of civilians so they can cowboy up and try to kill me. We see Not Important conducting his rampage and automatically assume he's just a mass-murdering psychopath, but is he really all that crazy when he lives in a world like this?
If you see something red, it probably will explode when shot.
The tutorial teaches you the basics of how to shoot, how to take aim, and how to move, as well as just how ridiculously strong the game's explosives are. During this, you are in the basement of Not Important's shithole domicile, which is utterly full of old lumber and shit and suggests that the only thing holding the goddamn house up is all this wood. It also introduces you to the game's main healing mechanic: Not Important only heals from damage if he kills someone with an execution. You can knock enemies down to set up an execution with a melee attack, but it's finicky and sometimes you just wind up punching them to death trying to make it happen. The reveal that Not Important captured some drifter and locked him in his basement for this suggests that he has some weird sort of Doomguy "make enemies explode into ammo and health" shit going on, which may or may not be reflected in game mechanics.
The first level is about as straightforward as you can get, and introduces you to the game's core gameplay loop: Kill everyone in a specific place or way, and make your way to the goals. During this, you can do side missions which will give you additional extra lives for the level. Early on, these are always worth it; later, these are a tactical choice as you can sometimes spend lives trying to finish side missions, offsetting the ones you lose. The first mission's side missions all involve easy enemies, usually civilians, who are rarely armed and show no self-preservation instinct whatsoever. Later on, you'll run into civilians who take guns from corpses and use them, but for now those are rare. Your first enemies will be the police. In the above, a bonus mission is dealing with a funeral procession.
It's a Postal reference if nothing else.
You need to keep on your feet and stay moving, and when possible, use buildings and environments to your advantage. The AI is dumb as shit, but it has numbers and weapons and it's not about to give you an easy time. Break off often to heal by poaching health from isolated enemies and picking off stragglers. Not Important is a lone wolf (which you can't run from, GROWL), so fucking act like it and you'll live longer in this game.
Optional mission 2 involves you rampaging through a convenience store. To the best of my knowledge the game doesn't mandate you actually kill anyone here, you just need to chase them out and break shit, and suddenly this game is speaking real sense to anyone who's worked retail.
You can get into cars, but they're squirrely and handle like shit. Good for getting around fast, though. They do kind of get across Hatred's art style though.
The third optional mission involves destroying a party. It's so loud you can hear it from up the block. One of the armed civilians shows up here, they're the easiest enemy in the game that fights back. If you've been active in looting weapons by this point, you'll do fine. Interestingly, Not Important starts with one of the game's best guns; the AK-47 has extremely good damage and a nice rate of fire, but isn't particularly accurate if you fire it for more than 2 or so sequential bullets. You can have up to three weapons at a time; the second one you are likely to get is either the Pistol (fast-firing and accurate, and ammo is everywhere, but damage isn't great) and/or the Shotgun (very high damage in a cone but short ranged).
Eventually, with enough murder, your objective becomes raiding the Police Station.
It is easily the hardest part of the mission, and also darkly comedic, as the various people hiding there flee for their lives and leave the dudes in lock-up to be shot. That's some fucking commentary for you. The police station's also 2 floors, and you will need to deal with constant police reinforcements throughout. Eventually, you will successfully take out everything in the area, and move onto the next mission.
With the city police calling in SWAT, Not Important takes to the sewers to set up an ambush. In most games, Sewer levels are the worst level type in existence. In Hatred, it represents one of the best levels.
The absolute best parts of Hatred's combat loop are found here. As opposition escalates, and you run into new foes, it gets harder and harder to brute force your way through. The SWAT dudes have submachine guns, access to Flashbangs, and are armored, so they take more damage, do more damage, and are more dangerous in groups than the cops ever were, and they hunt in packs. This results in a sort of cat-and-mouse gameplay setup where you need to isolate smaller packs of enemies to take them out, or funnel them into preferable locations while still being aware of isolated enemies trying to ambush you.
They still throw random police at you, of course, and they are way nastier when backing up the SWAT dudes, especially when a Shotgun cop is doing so; while the SWAT dudes wear you down and flush you out, the shotgunners will try to do the big-dick damage to finish you off. As ever, picking off isolated enemies is the easy way to win this fight, but exploiting the terrain and doorfighting is equally important. I think this is why the sewers work in this game and don't for so many others. The sewers also don't overstay their welcome, which is fucking unheard of for shooter games of any kind.
One of the more surreal aspects of this is that there's civilians in the sewer. Entire groups of drugged-out junkies, just sprawled out and having turned parts of this fucking sewer into a shanty town. They're free health packs if encountered, so it can help to remember where the passed-out drug addicts are for a quick restock. You get an achievement for killing enough of them (Winners Don't Use Drugs), so once again I'm faced with the question of whether or not Not Important's rampage is just him naturally being insane or if he was driven this route by society. It would be an interesting question if the NPCs in this game deserved any empathy whatsoever, but as we've established, they gleefully kill one another without any impetus from our main character, so make of that what you will.
The Submachine Gun the SWAT dudes carry is in my opinion, one of the best weapons in Hatred. It's more accurate than the AK, can handle multiple enemies unlike the handgun, and won't routinely overkill enemies to prevent you from healing off executions like the shotgun will. It's a really welcome addition to your arsenal, especially if you wound up overusing the AK, which is really easy to do in the early levels; you can't usually find more ammo for the damn thing. Note that I said "usually." You'll see what I mean in a few minutes.
Like seriously, the sewers, beginning to end, took me about 4 minutes. It does the mechanics well, it has a simple layout, it doesn't overstay its welcome, and it's actually a really competent place for the aforementioned cat-and-mouse gameplay. If more sewer levels were like this, I think they wouldn't be as reviled in vidya.
The Marina is the next area and represents a massive difficulty spike. The civilians will now gleefully grab guns to attack you with, which means they're no longer free health kits with legs. One of them actually picked up my AK when I dropped it earlier in the level, hunted my ass down with it (I was on the other side of the fucking map), and then got killed, whereupon I picked it back up and inexplicably had a ton more ammo in it. Where the fuck did he find ammo for it? I sure as hell wasn't tripping over any.
Postal reference.
The level's straightforward, until you get to the point where they send a raid your way. This consists of dozens of cops backing up about 20 SWAT in Waves, and you're extremely likely to lose multiple lives here.
Afterwards, you hop a train to the next zone.
It's at this point that the game's main objective comes into view. We're going to blow the Nuclear Power Plant and kill everyone. But first we're going to rampage through the train and kill everyone.
Probably the easiest level in the entire game. It's all civilians, armed ones, with a few Metro Cops at the end and a few soldiers.
The latter are a new enemy and the strongest foe of all, but they really aren't a threat when the game throws all of three of them at you in a long corridor.
Just like in real life, you can massacre the entire train before the MTA Cops show up to do anything.
And people wonder why there's so much feces on the trains these days.
This guy's having a swell day, at least.
Not Important then decides to gun his way through the truck stop.
Our encounters with the Soldiers means we've replaced our AK with what is the single best weapon in the game, the M16. Sadly, ammo for it is scarce for the moment.
The game gives me the objective of destroying the gas station. Or rather, gives me the reward for doing so, despite having not destroyed the gas station. The cops drove into a fuel pump and killed themselves, blew up the station, and did about half of this mission's kills for me. Do you see what I mean when I say that Not Important is arguably a lighter character than the world he lives in? If this is how the NPCs act in a crisis, you can only imagine the fucking nonsense that happens day-to-day in this place.
I find it interesting that Hatred predicted current gas prices.
A local law enforcement officer has exiled himself to the shadow realm after flipping his vehicle. I'm as baffled as you.
Another SWAT agent manages to Austin Powers his vehicle between a truck and a lamp post. What the fuck is this game's AI?
After murdering the Truck Stop, Not Important secures an Armed SWAT Van and moves on.
You might be seeing, at this point, that a lot of Hatred boils down to a simple gameplay loop: Enter area, kill everything, provoke the authorities, kill them too, move onto next area. There's not much to it, though it's telling that Hatred still gives me more to work with, comedy-wise, than fucking Smash MAGA did.
Brief aside: I wanted to share that one of the best parts of Hatred is how fucking Mod-Friendly it is. One of the most enduring mods, for the longest time, was Hatred's The Room mod, which replaces Herr Warcrimer's gravely antagonist-voice with the dulcet tones of Tommy Wiseau, but the Mod sadly broke entirely when The Survival Update hit and now it doesn't work. The Weeb Mod, which gives our grim protagonist cat ears, blue hair, an Ahego coat, and more, is also fucking uproarious, especially if you've been watching the Keffals Thread. Another mod puts Postal Dude in the game, complete with Rick Hunter's voice-lines for if you want a more classic experience.
Part 2 (and the conclusion of this magnum opus) soon.
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