Hatred
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 "Jesus, humanity!"
— Scott the Woz, "Shovelware Variety Hour" | ||||||||||||||||||||||
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"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."
— Not Important
Hatred is a 2015 shoot 'em up game developed and published by Destructive Creations that was released on June 1, 2015, for Microsoft Windows. The player character is a misanthropic mass-killer referred to as "The Antagonist", 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. Valve shortly removed the Game from their Steam Greenlight service due to its extremely violent content, but it was later brought back with a personal apology from Gabe Newell. It was greenlit for a second time on December 29, 2014, and released on June 1, 2015.
Plot
The player character, who is referred to as "Not Important", is a misanthropic mass-killing sociopath who begins a "genocide crusade" to kill as many human beings as possible.
Hateful Qualities
- The game is a massive publicity stunt, as it was created solely to provoke viewers and create controversy with its AO (Adults Only) rating and tries way too hard to be edgy and dark, but ends up failing in every way possible.
- The game is pure shock value with no plot, lore, or message to speak of, and is nothing more than plotless depictions of violence, murder, and destruction.
- The game suffers numerous performance issues, including lag and frame rate drops.
- The overall game experience is very boring. Many of the victims are defenseless civilians and a few police officers, which offers very little to no challenge whatsoever. Killing so many "enemies" that don't fight back can quickly become tiresome and repetitive.
- There are many bugs and glitches.
- The AI is kind of bad since there will be times when the enemies like police will do nothing.
- There is a noticeable lack of gameplay variation (merely killing people for its sake).
- Not Important's monologues are cringe-worthy since they sound exactly like what a 14-year-old edge lord would write.
- The voice acting is pretty bad with all the actors giving very hammy performances.
- There is even an unsatisfying ending that doesn't even accomplish Not Important's goal. That ending that Not Important destroys the town by blowing up a nuclear power plant which explodes like a bomb.
- A nuclear power plant cannot explode like a bomb. Nuclear bombs require a critical mass of Uranium-235, while nuclear fuel mostly consists of Uranium-238.
- You can find the correct administrator's password at the end, but it doesn't affect the ending at all.
- Not Important never gives any reason as to why he's going on his "genocide crusade" nor why he hates humanity, but this is most likely intentional. Even the first Postal game had a reason, that being the Dude believes that the town was "infected by a madness plague".
- Worse, the game itself never gives any kind of explanation about Not Important's twisted nature, and his background or past was never revealed at all.
- It doesn't help that, Not Important is also unlikable.
- Difficulty Spike: The military base is easily the hardest level in the game due to factors that aren't a problem in other levels.
- Where previous maps started you out in an open environment with mostly civilians and gradually added law enforcement, the military base throws you directly into the frying pan, with dozens of enemies and a humvee with a turret in the very first area you run into.
- Being a military base, nearly every NPC is a soldier armed with an assault rifle or missile launcher, and all of them are heavily dug in.
- There is very little cover to use aside from the buildings filled with soldiers or sandbag fortifications which can be destroyed.
Important Qualities
- The detail and the graphics are awesome. The fact that it was made in Unreal Engine 4 helps.
- Despite the AO rating, the game's violence is surprisingly not that graphic compared to M-rated games like Mortal Kombat, Doom or Splatterhouse, but what makes the game shocking is just the idea of going around killing innocent bystanders.
- Some good dialogues from Not Important, especially; "Can you hear your guardian angel crying? I can."
- There are several mods to improve the game. Including some that make it an FPS/TPS, add color, or increase the difficulty.
- The game was successful enough to spawn its spin-off comic franchise, starting with Subscribe or Die followed by Black Label.
- Despite the problems, it was a whole spiritual successor of the first Postal game. Even better, you can play as Not Important himself in Postal Redux by typing the cheat "mynameisnotimportant" in-game.
Reception
Hatred received generally negative reviews. It received an aggregated score of 42/100 on Metacritic based on 46 reviews.
Several video game press outlets responded to the game's announcement trailer, particularly in condemnation of its "portrayal of wanton violence". They then had to write more articles explaining how they weren't doing the same thing Jack Thompson was doing a decade earlier. These were unconvincing.
Critics 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", but it didn't.
Despite the negative reception, the game developed a cult following and was a best seller on Steam at launch, holding a "Very Positive" response.
Trivia
- Hatred is one of the three games to be officially rated AO just for extreme violence rather than sexual content, after Thrill Kill (which got canceled) and Manhunt 2.
- If Peak Entertainment Casinos (which was given that rating due to real gambling) is counted, this makes Hatred the fourth AO-rated game not to have porn.
- Due to this game, live streaming service Twitch announced a complete ban on all AO-rated games from its platform, even if they don't have porn content.
- On April 11, 2020, Destructive Creations announced that they would be porting the game to the Nintendo Switch. But given Nintendo's policy against licensing or allowing AO-rated games on its systems, it's very unlikely.
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