Hatred

[Vieira151]

So, uh, yeah. Would be interested to hear what y'all think about this game.

Hatred is an isometric shooter with disturbing atmosphere of mass killing, where player takes the role of a cold blood antagonist, who is full of hatred for humanity. It's a horror, but here YOU are the villain. Wander the outskirts of New York State, seek for victims on seven free-roam levels. Fight against law enforcement and take a journey into the antagonist's hateful mind. Gather equipment of the dead ‘human shields’ to spread Armageddon upon society. Destroy everything on your way of hunt and fight back when it's disturbed...

...just don't try this at home and don't take it too seriously, it's just a game.

The question you may ask is: why do they do this? These days, when a lot of games are heading to be polite, colorful, politically correct and trying to be some kind of higher art, rather than just an entertainment – we wanted to create something against trends. Something different, something that could give the player a pure, gaming pleasure. Herecomes our game, which takes no prisoners and makes no excuses. We say ‘yes, it is a game about killing people’ and the only reason of the antagonist doing that sick stuff is his deep-rooted hatred. Player has to ask himself what can push any human being to mass-murder. We provoke this question using new Unreal Engine 4, pushing its physics (or rather PhysX) systems to the limits and trying to make the visuals as good as possible. It's not a simple task, because of the game's non-linear structure and a lot of characters on the screen. But here at Destructive Creations, we are an experienced team and we know how to handle the challenge!

Let's just say it has garnered a huge amount of criticism and media attention. So yeah, discuss!

 

[Wellenbrecher]

Meh, relying on the shock-value of ultra-violent "gameplay" to sell their ****.
The voice-over is cringeworthy beyond believe.

At least Postal 2 was funny and somewhat clever, insofar that you technically didn't have to do anything violent.

 

[DanAngleland]

I think as soon as he opened his front door at the end of his speech there should have been a policeman there, who proceeds to give him a lecture on threatening his neighbours with an air rifle and confiscates it from him. The end.

I can understand there being a negative reaction to it; it seems gratuitously vicious and cruel, and there are graphic scripted killings (such as the cop being stabbed in the eye). The animation of the character looks good enough, but I don't like the theme of the game at all. I don't think people should be so quick to scorn the fear of it having a negative effect on players either; viscerally powerful media, whether it is visual or aural, can have a strong effect on peoples' moods, and while people (other than already screwed up ones) aren't going to play this and immediately consider hurting somebody, I think negative attitudes to people can be developed by long term exposure to overtly negative things like this. Suggesting that this sort of thing is just a necessary accompaniment to the mainstream culture, just a small drop of devilry to counter a sterile or overly sanitised culture, which well balanced people can harmlessly choose to explore and take in their stride, dismisses the point that many people aren't well balanced and already have plenty of warped ideas and standards of behaviour due to innate personality disorders or being cocooned within groups of unbalanced peers.

On the whole, I wonder if this really serves a purpose, given its gratuitously vicious nature. Who is going to watch a woman pleading not to be hurt before the player character puts a gun in her mouth and blows her skull apart and continue playing if they are genuinely considering and feeling the disturbing nature of the act? Is it really going to provoke any deep thought on the subject of  ''what can push any human being to mass-murder'', or is it just a shock value game which will have a desensitising effect on players' responses to violence? I find it contradictory that the in quoted paragraph in the OP the producer says:

''The question you may ask is: why do they do this? These days, when a lot of games are heading to be polite, colorful, politically correct and trying to be some kind of higher art, rather than just an entertainment – we wanted to create something against trends. Something different, something that could give the player a pure, gaming pleasure''

before saying, as I quoted earlier:

''Player has to ask himself what can push any human being to mass-murder''

It feels to me as if the second sentence there was simply written because the producer felt obliged to make an excuse for the game, to justify it by suggesting it has a deeper, more high brow purpose than that which he declares in the first sentence.

It's a shame for me that an isometric shooter has to feature so much carnage and be a sort of interactive horror movie. I would be interested in a more traditional military/SWAT/cops and robbers game in this sort of engine and perspective.


EDIT: What's more, in that first bolded sentence I quoted, it talks about: ''These days, when a lot of games are heading to be polite, colorful, politically correct and trying to be some kind of higher art''. I agree that the second part of that sentence is true, games are becoming more cinematic in general and exploring some themes in more depth, but as for being polite and politically correct, I don't think that is necessarily true. Certainly many seek to be more gritty, dark and explicit than ever before, which is part and parcel of exploring themes in depth and being more cinematic in style, and these features also often mean the games aren't polite or colourful- what about zombie games for instance? Gore, darkness (both in a metaphorical and literal sense) and horror aplenty in that burgeoning genre, and again, the cinematic nature of many games, which seek to be more adult and include realistic dialogue for dramatic and dangerous situations, often goes hand in hand with swearing and violent language, so hardly polite.

 

[Troll]

Player has to ask himself what can push any human being to mass-murder.

So the protagonist is supposed to be in some way interesting because... he hates the world just cuz? Literally the worst possible way to try to incite this question.

 

[Vieira151]

At least Postal 2 was funny and somewhat clever, insofar that you technically didn't have to do anything violent.

I think the point is that it isn't trying to be funny or clever. It looks like its going for the "dark, gritty" theme most games these days are going for.

And yeah, it doesn't look very good. It might be quite fun for 10 minutes, but if I wanted to buy it then it'd need more than basic isometric shooting mechanics.

 

[kraggrim]

''Player has to ask himself what can push any human being to mass-murder''

It feels to me as if the second sentence there was simply written because the producer felt obliged to make an excuse for the game, to justify it by suggesting it has a deeper, more high brow purpose than that which he declares in the first sentence.

Yeah this jumped out at me as well  .

Doesn't look like anything you can't do in GTA or a host of other games, just with a different filter on top. Might be a laugh with friends if there's multiplayer I guess.

 

[Wellenbrecher]

At least Postal 2 was funny and somewhat clever, insofar that you technically didn't have to do anything violent.

I think the point is that it isn't trying to be funny or clever. It looks like its going for the "dark, gritty" theme most games these days are going for.

Exactly, and it really doesn't work very well as a concept that way IMO.
Another example would be Manhunt, I guess. As ridiculously gruesome and "gritty" as it was, it had plenty of stuff that was absurd enough to lighten things up. This looks nothing but brutal and "dark".

 

[The Bowman]

Who would even buy this? It's absurdly violent and serves no good purpose other than making some mentally ill happy. Of course, many games have a degree of violence, but most of them are driven by a "humanized" storyline which makes things logical. This "game" is nothing more than a poor excuse.

 

[Sir Prince]

This looks like media witchhunt bait.

Also ****.

 

[Vermillion_Hawk]

Hotline Miami already did a much better and more thought-provoking (such as it was) analysis of violence, and in a better format too in my opinion. I don't know why this would exist other than as, as others have pointed out, bait for the media. It's already succeeding if that's what they wanted from it.

 

[Wellenbrecher]

Speaking about bait, ****aku crapped itself as usual because of this.
So one guy wrote a piece about hos disgusting this is and yada yada yada. Right below that was a bit where the retarded **** gushes about how awesome and in how many awesome was you can murder people in Far Cry 4.

Because integrity is for the weak.
(it might've been a different site, but my memory insists that this level of hypocrisy is right up their alley)

 

[Vermillion_Hawk]

The enemies in Far Cry 4 are exclusively cisgendered male scum and therefore don't classify as humans.

 

[Captured Joe]

Why don't they make an interesting game for a change...

 

[RalliX]

It's just **** in every way.
You can be the first person to do something horrible. That doesn't mean it should be done, just because it will be memorable, or leave a mark.

 

[Scully]

I'm not gay so I don't mind the violence, but it does seem like you just press a button and watch a kill animation. Probably gets old fairly quickly.

 

[Lerber]

This game sure looks like utter ****.

 

[Nahkuri]

2edgy4me

 

[Captured Joe]

You can be the first person to do something horrible. That doesn't mean it should be done, just because it will be memorable, or leave a mark.

So play CK2, it has a purpose there.



Even if it is just to bang your niece or sister or mother or whatever.

 

[Patchouli Knowledge]

There seems to be a pretty big backlash against this game, but I don't really know how someone can get offended by something that's trying so hard to be deliberately offensive.

 

[Wellenbrecher]

There is no backlash apart from people like ****aku and related "media" and we should ignore those ****wits by default. Should, I know how hard it is :p

Anyway, most "normal" people simply do not give ****, but I seriously hope mainstream media does not hear about this.
Even that Buckley abortion ****er understands this and for once his comic is actually to the point:

Spoiler

Or mostly at least. The last panel is useless, as usual.