First review out (It's an inconsequential game)

http://www.destructoid.com/review-hatred-292912.phtml

^^ To sum up the review, good gunplay, interesting visual style at times, bugs, character whose motivations aren't really justified, uninteresting world.

Now, I have a friend (who likes the Postal games, mind you), who claims to have gotten the game early. He said that the game is akin to a B-movie and that it's more "schlock than edgy". There are side missions and objectives and the like that require certain skills. But overall he admitted that its marketing was more to stir controversy by pretending to be a 'politically incorrect' serious edgy game in order to stir up interest.

I'm not going to play the game myself, but based off what I've heard, the game isn't worth much of anything. It's a B-movie advertised as something else. I have respect for the GB mods, so if they feel this topic is going to stir up trouble or is unwanted, I won't shed a tear. And, yes, I know it's obvious to point out that the game is silly and childish due to its edginess marketing and wanting to elicit a response. The game, however, is inconsequential. It's not worth arguing over. Wait for a game that actually attempts to say something instead of a game that says nothing.

In a perfect world, this game would come and quickly go, only stopping to be bought by those few who are interested. No hand-wringing or pitchfork-waving necessary.

Of course... this isn't a perfect world.

(I just hope the GB editors keep their powerful silence on the whole thing. The 4+ articles bemoaning Hatred's existence on Polygon was free advertizing better than any that could even be bought.)

Not surprising. The developers were more interested in stirring up controversy than making a game.

I have zero interest in actually purchasing or playing it, but I am interested to see what the general impressions are from people in the press that do choose to play it. Regardless of how accurate or inaccurate the trailers may be, I really just don't want to support the further efforts of a developer that's primarily interested in marketing its game with shock value rather than compelling gameplay, aesthetics, and/or writing.

I think this game tried to emulate GTA, from its controversial birth to highly successful franchise, and is apparently failling.

It would have been very difficult to really be consequencial in its message. The developers would have to be sensitive and thoughtful about the game and its message, instead of just riding the infamy and the fame of being provocative.

I assume they write this for every average game they review (and not written specifically for Hatred), but I like this description of average games:

Average - Like a meal of lukewarm water with white bread. It filled my time and my belly, but lacks any discernible flavor or nutritional value. A game that left me no different than it found me. Just passing through.

Really, this is the only ending this story could have possibly ever had.

I really love this type of top down shooter but no way in hell I play or support this. Wish more of them were coming out that weren't so dumb.

I just saw Gamespot's gameplay video too. It kind of feels even worse to find out that they were insensitively exploiting current events to market this surprisingly inoffensive and inconsequential game. The game is fine because it's just silly fiction (it's funny because it's wrong and dumb etc), but they have to be incredibly daft to not realize that they were making a statement that extended further than just that.

It is no surprise that a game that used controversy as its main marketing tool turned out to be average.

"Average" is probably the most damaging score for this game.

I greatly appreciate Danny's sense of maturity and professionalism with how he approached covering the game, and judged it on its merits. Which seem to be very few.

I actually think that the game looks great, visually speaking. The gameplay itself though seems a bit dull. Yes the violence is gruesome, but I don't really think it's much worse than something like Postal, GTA or DEFCON for heck's sake where you kill millions with a click of the mouse.

I might pick it up at a Steam sale somewhere down the line for a couple of bucks.

Looked stupid. Good to know it is indeed stupid.

I don't think this game deserves attention in any direction, positive or negative. It's not really all that new to be considered taboo or controversial, and it's definitely not enough of a game to be considered fun. The one notable thing I think it does well are the visuals, which are pretty good. I only wish the graphics were in service of a Sin City game instead of a second rate edginess simulator. When I go for shlock, it better be good shlock.

@joshwent:

I dunno, after watching the gamespot video and seeing what Danny had to say about it (specifically this tweet) I think the best thing for games press people to do is to cover it and show off that's it's mediocre at best before people go buying because "they have to know" due to complete lack of coverage by anyone.

I mean, it seems alright from a technical standpoint, but being completely turned off by the subject matter alone isn't an unfair response.

I will give the game this credit: the killshots during the teailer actually made me squirm, physically and emotionally. I reacted. It's hard to elicit that kind of a response in a world where we've become numb to killing innocent people. In this game's trailer, for some reason (maybe the acting, the camera, whatever), I felt genuinly terrified for their lives... Though I'm sure if I played through it (which I don't have interest in) I would eventually see all of the killshots enough times to become numb to them as well.

Well... Yeah. Yeah, it always looked like a mediocre boring game. It's still trying hard to be offensive though. I just thought we were past this kinda crap. At least in the mainstream.

Like the reviewer pointed out, looks like Postal 1.

Very good first impressions video. Hopefully Danny's here to stay, I like that dude's work! I wonder what price point they're shooting for with Hatred. I might give the game a shot but it looks to be pretty damn average indeed so I'm not going to spend anything significant. Still, a modern Postal 1 that exploits the added mayhem of current physics engines could be enticing enough to be worth playing at some point.

Edit: Hm, Steam doesn't actually show a price. A very smart person did however choose to discount Postal 1 to 50 cents at this peculiar time. Silly-ass virtual bloodthirst slated for the moment.

Having watched about 30-40 minutes of gameplay, I think I can say with some confidence that the controversy is pretty much entirely manufactured. Sure, the context of the violence is a bit tasteless but the violence itself is pretty damn tame. It certainly doesn't even come close to MKX.

The ESRB rating I can sort of understand since they've always had a thing for throwing the book at games that encourage violence against authority figures or civilians, but the twitter outrage and Neogaf's policy of banning all discussion look hilariously silly in retrospect.

Looks like a game I'd buy for $10 if I had nothing better to play at the moment.

yay for whimpers.

Covering this game like any other is totally fine. And especially coverage done by someone with the tact and thoughtfulness of Danny "I should really just work for Giant Bomb already" O'Dwyer. I certainly wasn't implying that sites should pretend this game doesn't exist.

What I'm admonishing are any editorials (which there were plenty of after the trailer) about how horrible this game is and it shouldn't be made and those guys are probably nazis, etc., as that's precisely the kind of stupid fuel that would make certain folks buy the thing on principal, no matter what the quality of the game actually is.

like three minutes into the gamespot vid and already hilarity ensuing. this just comes off as dumb now rather than controversial and disturbing. i think it's mostly danny and andy helping to ease what sting there was, but even without that it just reeks of stupid (though i don't think intentionally).

i do approve of the kicking, though. i think vinny's open world sense started tingling when GS started doing that.

Once the prerequisite "controversy" was out of the way, I knew we'd be left with a spiritual successor to Postal 1 and nothing more.

I won't lie, that interests me. But in a world where Postal, GTA, Hotline Miami, and so on exist, nothing about Hatred ever said "shocking" to me.

I'm glad the game isn't worth paying attention to and we can all forget it exists in 6 months. Then again, there are still people out there who like Postal, sooo....

I mean, they DID get all of us to talk about it. I doubt if they were smart enough to orchestrate the entire meltdown over all of this but I'll damned if it didn't work and they'll probably sell far more copies because of it. Wait until someone far more savvy comes along to take advantage of the internet's insatiable need to voice loud opinions about anything and everything, yeesh.

Heh, could you imagine? Postal players in 2015...

*shifts eyes back and forth*

Of course, if any were around here, I'm sure they'd be into much classier fare as well. Not... not that I'd know, of course.

There are still people out there who like GTA!

for a murder simulator, i expected more HOTAS implementation.

It's funny how easy we let trolls get the better of us. "Let's all write harsh, scathing things about this game that is offensive to all our sensibilities! That'll show those gosh darned developers!" Show some restraint, games press.

@ch3burashka: That's the entire schtick for a fair number of game journalists (and alarmingly, journalism in general these days). Restraint ain't got nothin' on that sweet sweet click bait.

"To sum up the review, good gunplay, interesting visual style at times, bugs, character whose motivations aren't really justified, uninteresting world." You can say this about nearly all AAA games realeased today. The press is full of people running around for stuff to get angry at.

The controversy around this took me back to the 90's. Its amusing how Kotaku put out dozens of articles about it. Buying straight into the simplest marketing strategy there ever was.

Game will probably do really well, considering how much free marketing they got.

QFT. Also, this game to me (I could care less about the content) is just trying really hard to be edgy. It looks, sounds, and acts like it was made by a bunch of goth children. It's controversial only in the crudest sense, and nothing about it--no, not even the fake-creativity-button that is doing something in black and white--is interesting. This game got dropped off at the mall from his mom's van, and has 3 hours to pretend he's a black clad wanderer while she gets groceries at Wal-mart.

The real illusion is that this game makes any kind of statement at all. My problem isn't that it offends, but that it just kind of sucks. It's no more provocative than people instagramming pics that make it look like their wrists are bleeding.

I'd rather read another article on <insert game website> about <insert annual AAA release>, and that's saying something.

Doesn't matter, this game still resulted in being one of the most talked about games of the year, so they 'won' regardless.

Graphically I think it's actually really interesting. All the physics stuff also seems to be really cool. I think a lot of people expected this game to be complete trash cobbled together by some unknown european developer but it's actually a really competent game from a technical standpoint.

As someone who is familiar with one of the guys who made it, I am not surprised that it was mostly talk.

My biggest problem when watching streamers yesterday was that 1. nothing happens most of the time and the action seems very segmented, with long stretches of running around to "collect" that last one kill and 2. half the time, you can't see shit. If you have to color all characters with red outlines when engaging in action, you kinda fucked up.

They don't have a marketing campaign. Hatred is talked about because people want and feel the need to talk about it. Not because they were 'tricked' into it by manipulative, mustache-twirling members of Destructive Creations.

Honestly, the only way to handle this game maturely was to give it no special treatment. This was botched by the countless articles about how 'outrageous' the game is after it was just announced, looking to be just an uninteresting dual joystick shooter.

So the proper way to 'cover' the game is to give it as much treatment as a mediocre dual joystick shooter in 2015 (unless it doesn't turn out to be that); no more, no less. More, and you are just giving them free press and making fools out of yourselves by proclaiming 'this game is bad and doesn't deserve your attention here direct your attention to us writing how bad it is'. Less, and you're just self-censoring yourself and giving them the excuse that 'the press doesn't want you to know about this game, you have to buy it!'.

Well, doing what they did certainly alleviated the need for any kind of a mass marketing budget and got the internet all fucking riled up anyway (and still has, following the twitch and GAF censorship) which will probably translate to sales more out of curiousity rather than any actual desire to play it.

In hindsight? They're fucking geniuses. Especially in today's world, no press is bad press, and this is one instance where the scum of the internet will buy the game cause it's fucking edgy bro, and the decent people will buy the game because they wanna see how fucked up this crazy developer is (hint: they're actually not and you can find worse violence in MKX)

It's lightning in a bottle and they'll never be able to regenerate the outcry if a sequel were to be made, but I say good on 'em for striking once. Capitalism, y'all.

@ottoman673: Is it actually banned from discussion on GAF? Heh. Wow.

ive seen a couple hours of gameplay and i thnk the game looks really fun.its not as bad as everyone who cried about it thought it was either(how shocking).i will for sure pick this up at some point and enjoy it,and if you like postal you will too.

I saw the video for this and I'll play more Robot Disco Dodgeball instead.

If anything their engine work seems pretty impressive. Great visuals and fun destruction physics. Accompanied by mediocre gunplay and cringeworthy dialogue (atmosphere). Its definetely not the devil some people would like you to believe. If anything, i actually want the guys who made this to do more with that physics engine.

I couldn't even watch the full video on the site... this looks booooring. The visual style is kind of cool and the voice work is kinda unique and evil. You can be as visually enthralling or controversial as you want but in my book it will never make up for your lackluster mechanics.

still a game made by polish right-wing extremists so No Thanks

Yeah I agree. Like I said in my post I would totally check this game out if it wasn't so dumb. I love top down shooters of this kind and wish you'd see more with this kind of good tech behind it. Kind of reminds me of Renegade Ops which is a game I really love. Nice modern graphics and nice physics with an old top down genre. But then they go this angle with the rest of it. No thanks.

I honestly don't care that much about the angle. If it's not super expensive I'd get it just to see where the story goes. If they just have you murder people for several levels with no real end goal then that would be kind of disappointing.