The carnage, the glorious, delectable carnage. That’s what we’re supposed to think right? That’s the take-away from playing Hatred that we’re supposed to get. Unfortunately, what we actually end up with is sheer monotony. An apathy for a parade of weightless violence that rushes by without any kind of message. And it’s not like we really need a message necessarily, except that if you’re not having fun there really should be another point to playing through a game like this.
You come into Hatred expecting a lot, given the hype and controversy that has surrounded it, but that’s not this game’s fault, and we did our level best as we strapped ourselves in not to allow this to colour our judgement. Whether Hatred was seeking controversy with its premise is really neither here nor there. Does it justify itself as a game? Does it have value as entertainment? Frankly, no, it doesn’t. There’s just not enough on show here to really make it worthwhile beyond some light, puerile, morbid intrigue.
Hatred does a fine job of building up a blood lust, though, in its early moments, and these continue to pop up from time to time, powering you through much of the game. The ‘Oh, what will that do?’ instinct that the game engenders means that interest isn’t completely lost during the couple of hours it will take you to finish the story, but nothing carries all that much satisfaction for long. Whether it’s driving a cop car, firing an assault rifle, finding a flamethrower or crashing a train, it’s interesting for a while, but never remotely fulfilling. Part of this pretty serious problem might arise from the fact that our demonic murderer delights in the kill, but his motivation is as aimless as the game’s at times. It’s killing for the sake of killing, which conjures a rather dark curiosity for a while, but is ultimately a hollow pursuit. Perhaps it doesn’t need to be more. Perhaps having a deeper message or motivation doesn’t necessarily inherently give something more value, but without anything like that it’s hard to see whether Hatred has any great value at all.
If not thematically, then, perhaps mechanically it has something to offer? At this point you can probably already guess that it does not. As twin-stick shooters go, the action here is noticeably sluggish and repetitive. The core cycle of depravity Hatred pins itself on is that you need to kill people in agony (essentially prone on the ground) with an execution move to regain your health. Taking on cops, and later military personnel, is about taking a few pot shots and then running away to kill innocents who don’t fight back to regain some energy. On higher difficulties Hatred offers a real challenge, with you needing to keep yourself alive with limited respawns, leaving enough civilians around to keep you in the fight. You end up trying to game the system, sniping enemies at the edge of the screen, hoping not to be spotted. It doesn’t have the trial and error of Hotline Miami or the spray and pray of many other shooters of this kind. It attempts to forge its own path somewhere in-between, but it doesn’t quite work.
The level design on the whole is mixed. The suburban opening to the game gives you some clues to later difficulties as the monotone aesthetic, while moody and well maintained, means you can easily lose your character behind a wall or in a clump of trees. The train level is a short respite from the meandering and loose open levels that precede and follow it. What is it about train levels that make them so much more potent and often more fun than virtually any other setting in games? It’s a perfect playground for mass murder, of course, with a clear line of sight and easy executions all the way down the speeding vehicle. But at this point, it was so simple as to lose all sense of challenge or subversive fun. Now we were just killing because it was easy. Because we could. Whatever blood lust we had managed to build up was quickly dissipating.
Graphically, it definitely has flourishes. Splashes of red permeate the darkness and the way explosions light up the world and bring colour to it does do a rather nice job of making destruction feel like a form of creation. The world comes alive with the more death you cause. It’s just a shame that’s not taken advantage of more. Overall though, some rather buggy camera spins for executions, stupid AI enemies that shoot each other and don’t seem to understand how stairs work, wonky car controls that have you crashing into everything and some rather unsatisfying gunplay at times, leave Hatred with very little meat on its bones.
It doesn’t really feel as shocking as it appears to want to be, either. Perhaps this is as much a comment on the levels of violence in games we have already as it is on Destructive Creations’ effort. Curb stomping someone to death, stabbing a police officer in the chest half a dozen times or burning someone alive should be wince-inducing. Frankly there are gorier and more shocking kills to be found at the end of combos in Assassin’s Creed or in melee attacks playing Call Of Duty.
So what’s the point? Is it challenge? Is it to sate some inner dark urge? Is it to make a point at all? We honestly couldn’t tell you. Hatred at times appears to be all of these things and manages to be none of them at all. It is without a point. It fires its Uzi rounds aimlessly and manages to hit nothing. It’s not bad, it’s not horrific, it’s not reprehensible and it’s not memorable either.