Hatred (video game)

Hatred
Logo of Hatred
Developer(s)	Destructive Creations
Publisher(s)	Destructive Creations
Director(s)	Jarosław Zieliński
Producer(s)	Przemysław Szczepaniak
Designer(s)	Jakub Stychno Arkadiusz Filip
Programmer(s)	Piotr Bąk Tomasz Widenka
Artist(s)	Sebastian Tworek Tomasz Schneider Dawid Gomola Tomasz Górnicki Mariusz Klat Marek Kozłowski Maksymilian Pietkiewicz Bartosz Miha Cyprian Listowski
Writer(s)	Herr Warcrimer
Composer(s)	Adam Skorupa
Engine	Unreal Engine 4
Platforms	Microsoft Windows
Release date(s)
Genre(s)	Shoot 'em up
Mode(s)	Single-player

Hatred is an isometric shoot 'em up video game developed and published by Destructive Creations and was released on June 1, 2015 on Microsoft Windows. The player-character is a misanthropic mass-killing sociopath who begins a "genocide crusade" to kill as many human beings as possible. The developer described Hatred as a reaction to video game aesthetic trends such as political correctness, politeness, vivid color, and games as art. Its October 2014 announcement trailer was characterized as "controversial" by multiple video game journalists. The game was shortly removed by Valve Corporation from their Steam Greenlight service due to its extremely violent content but was later brought back with a personal apology from Gabe Newell. It was then successfully greenlit on December 29, 2014 and fully released on June 1, 2015.

Hatred received negative critic reviews, with some panning the game for its lack of variation, and one critic drawing comparisons between Hatred and the 1997 video game Postal. On Steam it holds an overall reception of "Mostly Positive" from user reviews.

Gameplay

In Hatred, a shooter video game presented in isometric perspective, the player-character is a mass-killing villain who hates humanity and begins a "genocide crusade" to kill innocent civilians and police officers. The player can carry three weapons at a time and an assortment of grenades, as well as drive some of the vehicles appearing on the map. Health is regenerated by performing executions on incapacitated people; the moves made to kill those victims involve a switch of camera perspective, being cinematic. If the player is killed, the level restarts entirely unless the player completed additional sidequests that provide a limited number of respawn points. The character's voice acting is deliberately kept to a minimum, with his ideology and motivations largely left open.

Plot

The plot of Hatred revolves around a disturbed man whose name as well as background is not given, with him only known by nicknames such as "The Antagonist", and who feels sick and tired of humanity's existence. The Antagonist arms himself with an AK-47, three frag grenades, and a sharp military combat knife in his home to start his "Genocide Crusade" on the streets of New York City. The spree killer begins murdering all the civilians and police officers that he can, the police trying in vain to stop him, and he also kidnaps an innocent person before torturing the victim in his basement and killing him. The Antagonist then travels to the large police station at 1 Police Plaza to kill all remaining police officers (dubbed "Human Shields" in the context of the game due to the police's failing efforts in trying to protect civilians). After killing the "Human Shields", the Antagonist plans to ambush the reinforcements pursuing him through the sewers. A full team of S.W.A.T. officers arrives, and the Antagonist ruthlessly kills them all. After exiting the sewers, he arrives at a marina where he slaughters the civilians present there before escaping the armed police response via train.

During the train ride, the Antagonist discovers that there is a nuclear power plant in New Jersey. Expressing interest in heading for the plant, he begins to slaughter everyone on board the train, including armed civilians, mafia members, armed soldiers, and the oddly oblivious train operator. He stops the train and makes his way on foot to a truck station where an additional S.W.A.T team arrives and exchanges fire with the Antagonist. The Antagonist slaughters them and then leaves by hijacking their armed S.W.A.T. van.

The Antagonist begins to massacre people in the train station. He murders a group of local gun dealers, stealing their arms and killing many civilians in the process. While spreading the bloodshed, he discovers that the United States military is now hunting him down. The Antagonist heads straight downtown into urban New York City to slaughter even more civilians.

The Antagonist arrives armed with a flamethrower at a rally for local politician José Morales. He attacks the rally and the civilians in the nearby area, which draws even more members of the police and the military to him. After slaughtering everyone in his way, the Antagonist leaves on a hijacked Humvee for a nearby military base to procure explosives that he may use in the aforementioned nuclear plant.

The Antagonist arrives at the (fictional) military base at Fort O'Connor. Despite facing sustained, strong opposition, the Antagonist eliminates every soldier in the base, and the military is completely overwhelmed. The Antagonist remarks that he has succeeded in personifying the cliché of a "One-Man Army" by getting rid of all military opposition. The Antagonist exits Fort O'Connor with C-4 charges and finally heads directly to the nuclear power station.

The Antagonist storms the power plant and engages in battle with the security forces, intending to overload the reactor and trigger a nuclear event that would decimate the rest of the city. After entering the code (666, though the same ending occurs if a different code is entered), he is attacked by a security guard, yet gleefully kneels and laughingly accepts his fate. The soldiers shoot him many times in the chest as he collapses. Severely injured on the ground, he activates the trigger, wondering if the explosives will truly work. The power plant erupts and wipes out huge sections of New York City, with posthumous voice of the Antagonist saying: "Well, they did."

Development

My name is not important... What is important is what I'm going to do. I just fucking hate this world and the human worms feasting on its carcass. My whole life is just cold, bitter hatred... and I always wanted to die violently. This is the time of vengeance and no life is worth saving. And I will put in the grave as many as I can. It's time for me to kill... and it's time for me to die. My genocide crusade begins here.

Hatred announcement trailer, October 2014

Hatred is the first game by Destructive Creations, a video game developer based in Gliwice, Poland. Most of their staff formerly worked at another Polish developer, The Farm 51.

Destructive Creations announced Hatred on October 16, 2014, with a trailer that multiple video game journalists described as "controversial". The developer described Hatred as a reaction to a trend of political correctness in video games, and sought to make a game that eschewed politeness, colorfulness, and games as art. In this way, they also sought to make a game that recalled the industry's history as "a rebellious medium" and surface-level entertainment with no insertion of "any fake philosophy". While the trailer was intended to be provocative, Destructive Creations CEO Jarosław Zieliński did not anticipate the magnitude of the reaction and supportive fan mail. He added that he did not think the trailer crossed a moral boundary, and that those who disagreed could choose to not play it. In an interview with Vice's Motherboard, Zieliński noted that the dark ambient music within the game as well as the character design were intentionally made to be devoid of joy, stating that "I don’t want to justify anything. I want the player to ask: why." The game uses the Unreal Engine 4 game engine and Nvidia PhysX physics. The Unreal logo was removed from the trailer at the request of Unreal developer Epic Games.

The team chose to work on a single platform due to the team's small size, early on mentioning that they hoped to distribute the game through Steam and GOG.com if allowed. On December 15, 2014, Hatred briefly appeared on Steam Greenlight, but was promptly removed, with a Steam representative stating that the company "would not publish Hatred." On December 16, the game was returned to the service, and an apology to the development team was sent by Gabe Newell. Following this, it became the most voted game on the service and was approved successfully on December 29.

In January 2015, Hatred was given an "Adults Only" (AO) rating by the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB). The rating effectively prevents any mainstream retail distribution of the game in the United States, or on video game consoles as all three major console makers forbid AO-rated games on their platforms. It is the third video game that received an AO rating for extreme violence rather than sexual content, behind Manhunt 2 and the unreleased Thrill Kill. One of its developers disputed the rating, stating that they were "not quite convinced" about the rating due to its association with sexually explicit games, adding that "it's still some kind of achievement to have the second game in history getting AO rating for violence and harsh language only. Even if this violence isn't really that bad and this harsh language isn't overused."

The second trailer was released on January 29, 2015 along with pre-order details. It showed new weapons such as a flamethrower and new execution animations. Developers claim that shortly after the release, developer tools for Hatred will be made available.

The release date was announced on April 28. The game was released on June 1.

The first DLC titled Survival for the game was released on September 10 for free on Steam. The DLC adds three new maps for Survival mode, three new playable characters, "Story" and "Insane" difficulty modes, new sidequests, new rank systems, new leaderboards and new achievements. Also the DLC adds the ability to use cheats for example unlimited ammo, "God mode", and unlock all weapons.

Reception

Reception
Aggregate score Aggregator Score Metacritic 43/100 Review scores Publication Score Destructoid 5.5/10 Game Informer 5.5/10 GameSpot 3/10 PC Gamer (US) 48/100 The Guardian Metro 3/10 Shacknews 3/10 Softpedia Toronto Sun

Pre release

Several video game press outlets responded to the game's announcement trailer, particularly in condemnation of its "portrayal of wanton violence". The review site Goodgamers.us interviewed Przemysław Szczepaniak, Destructive Creations PR manager, who responded to the outrage by saying "There is a huge difference between violence in real life and the one showed in games." Polygon's Colin Campbell wrote that they responded to the press release "with genuine revulsion". They described the trailer as "grisly", "extremely violent, and very tacky". PC Magazine's David Murphy wrote to "get ready for the backlash about the ultra-violent shooter ... if this game is ever released". He compared the game to Manhunt, Postal, and Mortal Kombat—other video games considered controversial for their amount of violence—and felt that Hatred "will generate just as much controversy". The trailer attracted defense of the game's right to freedom of expression, but Polygon reported that no outlet requested censorship of the game.

Although some noted that the player had just as much capacity to kill innocents in game series such as Grand Theft Auto or Fallout, Mike Splechta of GameZone questioned the game's timing and how it could become the "next scapegoat" in a climate that already held video games responsible for school shootings and other violence. Polygon's Ben Kuchera wrote that the trailer was a "rhetorical failure" in that it attempted to shock viewers, but ultimately reflected the 1990s "shock culture" aesthetic. In response, Destructive Creations' CEO felt that the trailer's "so called 'shock tactic' [did] its job very well", and added that the industry reaction to the trailer reflected the political correctness—"the way we are told and taught to think"—against which the game rebelled. When questioned about links between the company and the Polish Islamophobic and anti-immigration hate group Polska Liga Obrony (Polish Defence League) based on a public Facebook like, Destructive Creations responded that they did not support the organization, were against "totalitarian ideologies", and appreciated the publicity despite its malevolence.

The second trailer, titled Devastation, received similar criticism, with Polygon calling it "just as vicious and cynical as the first trailer."

The Guardian, Rock, Paper, Shotgun and Kotaku have described Hatred as a "mass murder simulator".

Post release

Hatred received generally negative reviews. It received an aggregated score of 42/100 on Metacritic based on 46 reviews.

GameSpot felt that the gameplay of Hatred lacked variation, arguing that the game "fails even at being dangerous." Similarly, Jim Sterling, while criticizing the tone, concluded that "worse than that—we got a damn boring game". Rock, Paper, Shotgun felt that "most of all, [Hatred] fails to be a controversial, shocking experience". Chris Carter of Destructoid was also critical of the one-note gameplay, while also reporting technical issues on release. Richard Cobbett of The Guardian described the controversy as being "about the feuding around the game rather than the game itself", calling the final product a "bland monochrome rehash" of Postal. Game Informer, while critical of the game overall, concluded that "Destructive Creations could tailor its twin-stick shooting chops into something interesting in the future." Softpedia though, did praise the twin-stick shooter mechanics made interesting because of the theme, calling the game "a good twin-stick shooter that manages to offer an interesting experience only through the actual theme." Conversely, upon launch, Hatred quickly became a best seller on Steam, and has held an overall reception of "Mostly Positive".

External links

• Official website