https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLqMjCvPXndWchq1m7PkXUNcgKpxXbPyZD

Remember this game? Remember when this was released back in 2015 and videogame critics and censors were all appalled? Remember how it got straight up banned in several countries?
Yeah, I don't know. I never liked the concept of this game. Just like most people I just think it's distasteful and unnecessary. But its existence is kind of an interesting thing to read about.

I've been thinking about just giving this fabled game of controversy a shot for shits and giggles for years now and I guess I just buckled this week and went for it.

I live in Germany which is one of the countries that banned the game completely. Thankfully we live in a world of technology that allows us to cross those borders of regional censorship. It also just feels appropriate to pirate a game like this.

If you don't know, Hatred tells the story of a nameless edgelord stereotype who writes misanthropy with big letters as he despises the entire human race and plans to singlehandedly kill every person on this planet. In his eyes, people are all worthless maggots sucking on this planet like parasites although I doubt that he actually cares for the rest of the creatures on Earth.
The gameplay sees you steer this dude in a trenchcoat through different sections of town and gun down increasing numbers of people as well as doing some random side missions while on your way to a power plant to blow it up.

Now let me be honest here, there are some things about this game that I can appreciate. The black and white style can look very nice with only certain things like fire and blood being the colorful things giving a nice effect at times. The side missions can be neat at points like one area gives you the option to storm a bank and burn the money. I'm down for that even if it's very on the nose, just like everything else in this game. It also controls fairly well most of the time. The flamethrower in this game is one of the most satisfying flamethrowers I've seen in a videogame. Also for some reason, you can make the cross-hair a heart symbol which is always nice.
If it wasn't for the ultra-graphic nature of this game I could totally see this be a pretty solid contender in the top-down shooter genre. Nothing amazing but polished enough to give a fairly solid gaming experience.

But then there is of course the controversial nature of this game. Executing people, mostly innocent civilians, in very graphic and violent ways is a major mechanic that this game rides on as it is the only way to replenish health. From a gameplay standpoint, it's kind of a fresh idea I guess but it's frustrating at times as it can be hard to consistently find an enemy that is in the right condition to perform an execution. I found myself struggling to survive, trying to replenish health but not able to get one of these prompts going because everyone just straight-up died. There is not enough control over this vital mechanic. At least with health pick-ups, you can stock up and choose when to use them instead of having to actively run into combat when you're low on life.
The gameplay can also become very repetitive after a while. It's a rather arcadey game with a pretty simple premise and a short playtime; about 3hrs according to this site. But it can get tiring after getting the "Kill 100 civilians" task for the 5th time in an hour. Especially when the areas become so big that it's a chore to even find those people running around.
The AI is also pretty dumb. From what I've gathered that's one of the most prominently criticized things about this game anyway and I can see why. People just run all over the place without much rhyme or reason. Cops run right in your face or just strafe past you until they are shooting at walls trying to hit you. Instead of being an active threat trying to stop you they sometimes just feel like randomly programmed robots which makes fighting them more frustrating than engaging.
The soundtrack is also rather weak. I was really hoping they would go for some proper black metal or death metal tunes. That would have fit really well.

I've played the game for around 2hrs 30mins and from what I can tell I'm in the second to last area but I can't manage to get through it. The game made an immense jump in difficulty and while I was able to get through the previous levels rather confidently, I feel completely lost in this one. I cannot get my head around how I'm supposed to handle the amount of heavily armed enemies in that level and so I gave up after a while. I don't know if I'm gonna revisit this game but a part of me does really want to just beat it and check it off the list. Especially now that I'm already through most of it.


Hatred is the ultimate stereotype for the "videogames cause violence" argument. I'm pretty sure this is what concerned parents thought GTA would be. Just mindless killing of civilians in a hyper brutal way. The pseudo woke edgelord protagonist feels like something out of a 15-year-old's revenge fantasy. It's hard to not just groan and roll your eyes when he talks about how much politics suck and how everyone is just a pathetic sheeple.
I've heard some people say that's exactly the point. That Hatred is supposed to be a parody of what the anti-video game lobby accuses them to be. That it's supposed to poke fun at these ridiculous nihilistic viewpoints of angsty teenagers all over the world. And all of that is a very, very interesting theory. But it doesn't feel that way to me. I wouldn't bet money on the possibility that that's exactly what the developers were going for. This feels too genuine. And even if it wasn't it's debatable whether or not a game like Hatred was necessary.
I'm honestly a bit surprised they didn't go even further and put kids in the groups of civilians to mow down or add some form of sexual violence. But that would probably just get it banned in even more countries.

Anyway, it's not a great game. While the gameplay isn't completely awful, the concept and tone of this are just awful. I'm willing to read more about it and its developers after having played this game for myself a bit now but I'm not sure if I'm ever gonna come back to try to beat the rest of it.

On its way to release everyone got really weirdly up in arms about this game because of how mean spirited and nihilistic it looked. People kicked up a fuss, wrote up petitions to get it banned and typed page upon page of outrage.

Then it came out and it turned out to basically just be Postal 1 with more grey and black outfits than a hot topic store and everyone went 'Were we really kicking up a fuss about such a boring game?'

Yes. Yes you were.

Esp: Este juego nihilista consigue mejorar la idea de postal, con una mejor historia (aunque un poco absurda), dándonos un protagonista, el juego se siente absurdo como es la visión del protagonista sobre el mundo, el final es igual; podría decirse que bastante predecible, el odio que recibió este juego (supongo que por estadounidenses principalmente) se debe a que tiene mensajes sutiles en contra de su nación, ¿y cómo no los va a tener? ¿Qué lleva a una persona a sentirse como el protagonista si no es la sociedad de la cual se quiere deshacer?. El argumento no es malo pero está mal llevado a cabo, como decía arriba la historia se siente floja y corta, las mecánicas y controles están mal desarrollados y en ocasiones entre tanta oscuridad apenas se puede disfrutar la visual del juego (entiendo que quisieron hacer algo similar al cómic Killing Joke, pero es demasiado oscuro para poder apreciarse, lo cual arruina un poco las zonas de juego). La historia corta y el final predecible, lo innovador de este juego es lo mucho que te premia por matar civiles. ¿Qué esperaban de alguien que odia el mundo? El juego debió haber sido optimizado para xbox y otras plataformas, pudieron haber mejorado detalles o hacer un survival mucho más interesante, sin embargo el poco apoyo lo dejó inconcluso y con errores, no es un mal juego, pero no es nada demasiado trascendente. Btw: Entrar a la base militar es de las mejores partes del juego, un reto, muy divertido.

Eng: This nihilistic game manages to improve the idea of ​​a postcard, with a better story (although a bit absurd), giving us a protagonist, the game feels absurd as is the vision of the protagonist about the world, the end is the same; arguably quite predictable, the hatred this game received (I guess primarily from Americans) is due to the fact that it has subtle messages against their nation, and how could it not? What makes a person feel like the protagonist if it is not the society that he wants to get rid of? The plot is not bad but it is poorly carried out, as I said above, the story feels weak and short, the mechanics and controls are poorly developed and sometimes in so much darkness you can hardly enjoy the visual of the game (I understand that they wanted to do something similar to the Killing Joke comic, but too dark to be seen, which ruins the play areas a bit.) The short story and the predictable ending, what is innovative about this game is how much it rewards you for killing civilians. What did they expect from someone who hates the world? The game should have been optimized for Xbox and other platforms, they could have improved details or made a survival much more interesting, however the little support left it unfinished and with errors, it is not a bad game, but it is nothing too important. Btw: Entering the military base is one of the best parts of the game, a challenge, a lot of fun.

You know a game is gonna be terribly optimized when even the trailer runs at a shit framerate.

It's a very simple game, incredibly frontloaded to the point it peaks during the first level and everything afterwards has the progression of a flash game. Encounters and health system are rather poorly designed and the visuals get the point across but are very samey. Gotta point out it was also one of the first commercial UE4 games so some lighting and particle effects looked pretty ahead of the curve back in 2015.

Of course it's a below average TPS and the dialogue is cringe whether ironic or not, and it was only somewhat popular due to being provocative but I'm glad a game like this is given a chance to exist and be sold on a major storefront.

For all it's anger, all it's focus in being unpleasant and dark and brooding, it's boring.

It's isometric view and visuals all being in black and three thousand shades of grey make it hard to keep track of your all black clad murder man and there are elements that are actually effective, blowing up grenades/pipe lines make walls and houses crumble, and that one segment where you go into the police station all the phone lines are ringing and nobody's there to pick them up, that's an actually creepy scene, a star for that.

The ending of the game is fantastic because your long haired Cousin It school shooter guy goes to a nuclear plant and demands "HOW DO I OVERLOAD THE REACTORS" in a segment that reminds me of Xavier Renegade Angel. Another star for that.

It has aspirations to be like the first postal game, but it just feels like a bunch of kids from newgrounds got an associates degree in animation and got a bunch of assets from Unity.

"Fale bem ou fale mal, mas fale de mim!", uma frase que define toda a estética que Hatred foi criado, um jogo que define essa ideia de "jogo polêmico e perigoso" mas que ao meu ver tudo isso passou do próprio marketing do criador do game, é sim um jogo divertido e mecanicamente nostálgico por ser bastante desafiador e lembrar bastante os demais Jogos Arcades mas tirando toda a polêmica que o jogo foi e ainda é inserido, acredito que ele poderia ter sido mais trabalhado, no Modo "História" não sabemos o porquê dessa ideia ter surgido na mente do protagonista, nem ao menos seu nome (que é largado no modo sobrevivência como: "O Antagonista"), nada é dito nesse jogo, tudo é apenas uma desculpa para matar e ter uma certa coerência de quais locais o protagonista vai ao desenrolar desse "Modo História". Vale ressaltar que esse jogo funcionaria bem melhor em Terceira Pessoa! (e sim eu sei que existe uma modificação para isso, mas acho que deveria ter essa opção no próprio jogo.)

A thought that has entered my head.

I don't know the state of "wholesome" in video games, but from what little I got into it, for me most opinologists failed at the point that they pointed to gamified mundane activities (of which I am a moderate fan) as a response to violence, being in reality many of these activities, such as fishing or cutting down trees, could be interpreted as a form of ecological violence without
"Enemies". This is how they usually present the digital entities that we face. But we are not "enemies" in games that do not contextualize terraforming or indiscriminate exploitation of resources? Bending the Minecraft and Animal Crossing regions is fine, but the Hatred neighborhood is wrong?
Video games separate people, individuals.

I am more inclined towards the creation or presentation of physical conflict through sports, preferably fictitious, but hey.
Video game creators shouldn't fear violence. Its exploration in fictional contexts is important, in all its facets and perspectives, and few media are better than the video game to do so. It doesn't matter if they are explorations of violence and recreation of conflict in a loop like in the Taroverse, or action works that explore identity and personal emptiness through stylization and hunting as a way of life, like Itsuno's Devil May Cry .
Hatred and the original Postal do their thing in a not so different way because they are a kind of horror games that do not deal with the subject of violence in a standard way, they do not offer the stereotypical heroic fantasy or resemble the examples of before, no evocative, but they are honest, they present violence as a grotesque activity in a neighborhood with a Dollhouse aesthetic (also Nier Repliant did) and they expose something that, although it needs an appropriate and convincing contextualization, is very real: violence is something easy to exercise , in almost all its forms, and in video games it's something we just do because it's satisfying. Already, there are a few pop video games that reflect on this (Taroverse, SpO: The line, Max Payne 3, bioshock...) but they usually need context or even a bait to bite so that we enter their conversation without feeling offended, for what? Why is MWII acceptable ("acceptable") until it puts us in terrorist control very explicitly? There was some controversy there, but not so much that in every TD game anyone can be a terrorist? Is it okay to play practically the same as Hatred in The Last of us part II just because that game has a -poor- excuse to contextualize scenes of extreme photorealistic ultragraphic violence? And come on, TLoU2 has no real intention of making us uncomfortable.

At least not much more than the intention of offering a satisfying time through fairly well-constructed action. But, again, Far Cry 3? 60% of the games? I don't know, a study on it would be interesting. As long as it doesn't have something like Under the skin as a scale for when you try to put the player in the skin of the antagonist or monster, but, hey.
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It's weird, this violence thing reminds me a bit of what was said about "this game makes you feel like batman/spiderman/superhero" and I was like: "Bro, almost all games make you feel like a superhero without a cape"
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KANE & LYNCH 2:
BEST GAME
WESTERN SPREADING CHAOS IN SHANGHAI, THE DIGITAL IMAGE PORTRAITS THE EAST AS A PLAYING FIELD. awful everything. play it
Arduween 1x09

I refuse to engage with the "campaign" more than I already did, not only because it's tasteless and edgy beyond belief, but because it's boring. Going house-to-house, just killing people indiscriminately while avoiding cops with ease until the stronger units roll you over and ruin any semblance of fun this POS has - not that interesting, believe it or not. And of course, you can never escape the feeling that this is super pathetic, and judging by Destructive Creation's other games, these guys seem to be all about edgy violence and trying to cause a stir to garner attention. And, granted, Hatred is the most worthless in terms of themes and aesthetics, but I just can't say I have any respect for this studio. I frankly don't care if Hatred is a parody, a genuine expression of extreme
cynicism, or just a dumb exercise in controversy, because it's clear that the creators don't really care either way.

But judging by the survival mode, Hatred is an exciting arcady shooter about being a fucking psycho with some alright progression systems and an interesting scoring system. And for the price that Hatred is going for these days, I'd say it's a good deal. There's not too much to sink your teeth in here, but I got it for like half a dollar and don't regret it too much.

By the way, this game has Workshop support, so a lot of tweeks can be made to make it a better experience (from the colouring to new features like the first-person mode).

P.S.
One of my favourite parts of this game is how, because it was basically forgotten a month from launch and was never that popular to begin with, the steam card prices are GREAT. Now I'm looking to see if I'll be able to get them all and then refund this game and turn this whole operation a profit

It's funny thinking back and seeing the kind of uproar this all caused in mainstream media. You would think hell's angels were coming to take us away from our mortal coil by the boatloads over what is essentially a soulless knock-off of Postal 1.

Everything about this screams cheap PSP game, kinda reminds me of monotonous junk like Infected (a PSP game, I realize how unclear that is in text), only a lot less fun. From the lack in narrative, drive, and inconsistent gameplay. The noticeable destructible environment granted this half a star. Every game in existence should have destructible environment.

It's pretty short, I got it for $3 so I am not complaining but I would not pay more than $3-5 for it.

Really tight controls, fast-paced shooting. Actually pretty fun despite its aura of negativity. Oh yeah and the entire environment (basically) is destructible which is very fun. I had a great time blowing down apartment building walls with a high caliber machine gun.

It feels like someone wanted to pay a way darker Postal. It plays like the first Postal, but the themes are way darker and there isn't any joking or wacky characters, just one greasy 4chan against the world.

Takes like 3 hours to beat the main story.

Hatred, tüm insanlıktan nefret edip onları katletmek isteyen bir ana karaktere sahip fazlasıyla vahşi bir izometrik aksiyon oyunu. Şimdi fazlasıyla vahşi dememin sebebi oyun boyunca ana karakterimiz gereksiz yere dağ kadar insan katlediyor. Bu katliam için oyunda infaz animasyonları var ama onlar da baya kötü. Zaten oyun genel anlamda averajın altında saçma bir oyun. Oyunun mekanikleri hakkında konuşmam gerekirse yani öyle çok bir şey yok sıradan izometrik aksiyon oyunlarındaki en düz mekaniklere sahip bir oyun işte bir artı olarak infaz animasyonları eklemişler ama onlarda bana baya tırt geliyor.

Bölüm dizaynlarına bakarsak nedense bölümler bana gereğinden fazla uzun ve sıkıcı geliyordu. Aslında başlardaki bölümler öyle sıkıcı gelmiyordu öyle geçip ilerliyordum ama oyunda ilerledikçe bölümler daha sıkıcı olmaya başlamıştı. Yani kısaca oyun baya ortalama altı ile ortalama arasında gidip geliyor. Ben şahsi görüşüm olarak önermem fakat indirimlerde fazlasıyla ucuzluyor yani merakınız varsa bir bakabilirsiniz.

This is probably the edgiest fucking game I've ever played in my entire life. This game would not be nearly as edgy unless I put on black eyeliner with makeup, blared Insane Clown Posse from a friend's car stereo and threatened to cut myself every 5 seconds with the back end of a rusty needle that I found on the ground at a Paraguay back alley brothel. If I had to choose between getting my nuts chopped off and playing this game well I'd rather play this game but still. It's ok. It's an ok game. I bought it cause I liked Postal 2 and Postal Redux and thought it would be similar. But it's ok. It's not really intelligent but it's not a game I would play for intelligence. I would play it because....I guess shooting people. And honestly? The shooting to me feels like a sloppy as shole to be on a completely honest playing field though, regardless of my opinion for the edgy content.

Pros:
Play with mods and it's a decent Postal Redux clone
Voice acting and lines are often hilarious, though unintentionally so

Cons:
If played without mods it kind of feels...meh
Played through five hours and the achievements didn't even activate for me


All in all to me it is ok. It's not the best but it's not the worst. If you like it cause it's edgy and against the norm of today's society power to ya, I can't even hate. But as a game in itself I would look elsewhere.

From Steam Reviews: https://steamcommunity.com/id/gamemast15r/recommended/