Let's Sperg JAIMAS PLAYS A MEDIOCRE GAME: Hatred by Destructive Creations - In which we watch Polygon get played for fools

[The tired cat]

Honestly, my biggest gripe with Hatred that aside from the color pallet making it hard to see enemies, the game didnt deliver on many promises (the trailer showed a grenade and flamethrower executions that arent present), combined with the execution mechanic itself not always working or bugging out. As for War Mongrels, its a fairly okay Commandos type game (though had bugs up the ass), but there were also issues in the story dept (our 2 main characters are former Nazis who suddenly realized "Being a Nazi is baaad!!"....in 1944..while they are on the Easter Front..as the USSR is pushing the Nazis back to Berlin...Took ya guys long enough!)

 

[Jaimas]

Honestly, my biggest gripe with Hatred that aside from the color pallet making it hard to see enemies, the game didnt deliver on many promises (the trailer showed a grenade and flamethrower executions that arent present), combined with the execution mechanic itself not always working or bugging out. As for War Mongrels, its a fairly okay Commandos type game (though had bugs up the ass), but there were also issues in the story dept (our 2 main characters are former Nazis who suddenly realized "Being a Nazi is baaad!!"....in 1944..while they are on the Easter Front..as the USSR is pushing the Nazis back to Berlin...Took ya guys long enough!)

I'm not going to ask too much from a WWII game that from trailers appears to be the Expendables but against Nazis. I'm old enough to remember the golden era of Nazisploitation.

As for Hatred, the one bug I constantly ran into was enemies exiling themselves to the shadow realm.



Yes, he is below the fucking floor. No, I don't know how he got there. Yes, the game did eventually decide that he was dead at some point and shunted him off this mortal coil.

Probably my favorite behavior from the game is that if you leave the AI alone, it just tends to fuck things up entirely on its own. It's not quite to the point where it goes full Just Cause with no impetus from the player, but I've absolutely come across major traffic accidents, disasters, and murders that I had absolutely no part in. While the cops crashing into the gas station and finishing that side mission for me was a thing, a similar one was had at the train station level where I completed an objective without doing anything because apparently the NPCs decided to get themselves hit by a train.

 

[The tired cat]

I'm not going to ask too much from a WWII game that from trailers appears to be the Expendables but against Nazis. I'm old enough to remember the golden era of Nazisploitation.

As for Hatred, the one bug I constantly ran into was enemies exiling themselves to the shadow realm.

View attachment 3561955

Yes, he is below the fucking floor. No, I don't know how he got there. Yes, the game did eventually decide that he was dead at some point and shunted him off this mortal coil.

Probably my favorite behavior from the game is that if you leave the AI alone, it just tends to fuck things up entirely on its own. It's not quite to the point where it goes full Just Cause with no impetus from the player, but I've absolutely come across major traffic accidents, disasters, and murders that I had absolutely no part in. While the cops crashing into the gas station and finishing that side mission for me was a thing, a similar one was had at the train station level where I completed an objective without doing anything because apparently the NPCs decided to get themselves hit by a train.

I wouldnt call War Mongrels something as Expendables, because it tries to deliver this very heavy and "deep/dark" story with its cutscenes and characters, which def dont really work. It def has some merits, but it treats it self way to seriously to be Inglorious Basterds type game (which Id say something like the Saboteur did way better).

When it comes to Hatred, biggest issues I had was the kick mechanic not working or on a few occassions the execution animations would freak out.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

I've been playing Hatred for the first time, am nearly finished. It's actually really fun. To me it feels like playing Maneater in a way, because you're a "monster" (social monster that is a mass shooter, monster shark) that is running around in a glorified shooting range until you trigger a response and then you have to kind of fight your way out of it (knowing you can't really win in a neverending fight).

The isometric perspective and controls feel great, the guns feel great (one of those where everything has a super distinct purpose), the missions are short enough and hard enough for some of them to really make you work at it (but not be too punishing), mouseholding with grenades, shooting through windows, smashing walls in cars is great, cars in general is great. It's like Hotline Miami with actual graphics. The idea that you can only make up for fuck ups (lost health, death) by playing even harder (pressing in for the execution kills, clearing side objectives) is great.

And the way it challenges you is by throwing absolutely horrific numbers of enemies at you that make you feel "HOW THE FUCK AM I GOING TO SURVIVE THIS?!?!" and then forcing you to just do it by managing how you navigate the map, how to work hallways and corners and stuff, force you to sack up and fight both aggressively and fast and also tactically.

The game is fantastic. I think the basics of it could have been a launching point for a much more expanded, more normal war/police/whatever game. Downtown and the Army Base are where it all comes together.

As for the tastelessness of it, I was hesitant to even touch the thing. Then pretty quickly the stick up my ass fell out, probably when I noticed how absolutely braindead the AI civilians are and how intentionally cartoonish the guy is. "Birds of a feather DIE TOGETHER." Everything the man says sounds like a grown man making fun of a little kid whose trying to sound badass. It's all said with tongue far in cheek. People made a big deal out of the people reacting realistically, and they do in the sense that they cry and sputter and basically act piteously instead of doing the more over-the-top shouting and goofy lines and what not that other open world games do, but at the end of the day, we have all done this bullshit in GTA a million times. The AI mostly just mills around, they run but they don't run with purpose. You can shoot through a hotel, leave, come back minutes later and people will be walking INTO that same hotel. It reminds me of a time when I saw my cat chase a mouse to a chain link fence and then the mouse CAME BACK.

It's not a real comedy game, the game itself is the joke, but it is impossible to take this thing seriously enough to actually be offended or upset by it.


Edit: Something to note - not that any of you are the kind of people that would have actually been offended by this game - is that the game doesn't actually feel like a mass shooting game. Much less a sim. Not Important might possibly be what the mass shooter fantasizes about being, but he sure as shit isn't what they are. He's not a twiggy, weird little fucker, he's basically a heavy metal dude and a walking army that blows up nuclear power plants and slaughters army bases. Even though it's literally the same as a mass shooting, in practice the guy's character and actions are so far removed from an actual shooting that it's just off in some fantasy world.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

Let us also note that while there’s no actual tactical AI, the enemies intentionally swarm in from every direction in a way that still feels immensely threatening.

You are safest in a building and when then they can mousehole you, shoot through windows, and often use multiple entry points.

 

[Jaimas]

Let us also note that while there’s no actual tactical AI, the enemies intentionally swarm in from every direction in a way that still feels immensely threatening.

You are safest in a building and when then they can mousehole you, shoot through windows, and often use multiple entry points.

It's a big reason the sewers felt actually interesting, since it resulted in you playing cat-and-mouse with the SWAT teams.

 

[The Last Stand]

It's not a real comedy game, the game itself is the joke, but it is impossible to take this thing seriously enough to actually be offended or upset by it.

Is the joke at the expense of those "mass shooters" or against moral guardians that despise counterculture? I never understood the intent.

 

[Jaimas]

Is the joke at the expense of those "mass shooters" or against moral guardians that despise counterculture? I never understood the intent.

Moral Guardians. The entire goddamn thing was expressly designed to troll the journo caste in particular.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

Is the joke at the expense of those "mass shooters" or against moral guardians that despise counterculture? I never understood the intent.

The latter.

There’s nothing in the game that actually deals with real shootings. No path to violence. No shooter lore. Not like something like Mumkey Jones Stops a School Shooting, which I doubt you’ve seen but is a hilarious mockery of school shooters.

The joke is the equivalent of a preteen boy making dead baby and Holocaust jokes. But they knew full well what they were doing, milked it for attention. The joke is both the surface level, juvenile “wow I’m so edgy” and the absurd overreaction to it and how they played the media for fools. Suckering people into taking something so transparently childish so seriously.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

Let's look at some Hatred Steam achievements.

Terrorist: Kill 1000 people
Hateful History X: Curbstomp five people
Leon: Kill 100 SWAT Team members (this is a reference to something, I don't know what)
Natural Selector: Kill 2000 pepole
Riot Causer: Kill 500 police officers
Bill Wiliamson: Complete Downtown with all sidequests (reference to movie Rampage)
Vietcong: Kill 150 soldiers
Omaha Beach MG Bunker: Kill 300 soldiers
Feminist: Kill 2000 males
Liberal: Fire 10,000 rounds
Conservative: Fire 25,000 rounds
Police Brutality: Cause 10 cop-on-civilian friendly fire deaths
Cop Killer: Kill 200 police officers
Winners Dont Use Drugs: Execute 20 junkies
Can Opener: Kill 50 SWAT team members
Genocide Machine: Kill 3000 people
Jackson Pollock: Kill 10 people with one grenade
Misogynist: Kill 2000 females

 

[Jaimas]

Let's look at some Hatred Steam achievements.

Terrorist: Kill 1000 people
Hateful History X: Curbstomp five people
Leon: Kill 100 SWAT Team members (this is a reference to something, I don't know what)
Natural Selector: Kill 2000 pepole
Riot Causer: Kill 500 police officers
Bill Wiliamson: Complete Downtown with all sidequests (reference to movie Rampage)
Vietcong: Kill 150 soldiers
Omaha Beach MG Bunker: Kill 300 soldiers
Feminist: Kill 2000 males
Liberal: Fire 10,000 rounds
Conservative: Fire 25,000 rounds
Police Brutality: Cause 10 cop-on-civilian friendly fire deaths
Cop Killer: Kill 200 police officers
Winners Dont Use Drugs: Execute 20 junkies
Can Opener: Kill 50 SWAT team members
Genocide Machine: Kill 3000 people
Jackson Pollock: Kill 10 people with one grenade
Misogynist: Kill 2000 females

The Leon one is a reference to The Professional.