Right, let’s get the elephant in the room out of the way as this game is… well, let’s just say that the first teaser trailer had a hard time. However it was also pure marketing gold for Hatred and Destructive Creations could not of wished for all the free advertising and publicity the outcry caused. The PR team doing this game could just put their feet up for the last 6 months or so and just watch the money come pouring in.

 

So the game itself is just an isometric top down twin stick shooter. Now there are hundreds of these games so I bet your wondering why all the fuss for this game, and I'll be honest I really don't know as the game is very similar to the old PC game Postal. It also looks oh-so-shiny and uses the new Unreal Engine 4. I have been very vocal in my dismay at how unfinished this engine is and well maybe it’s getting ready for some good games as Hatred is the most polished and best playing game with this engine that I have played so far.

 

The game looks stunning and the black and white graphics just suit this game so well, and here is where all the fury has come from over the last few months. And here is why Twitch has banned all live streams of 18+ games and here is an 18+ game. Here you play as a mad man and, well, that’s basically the only reason given to just kill anyone on screen and there are a lot to kill.

 

So I've mentioned how great the game looks but there are a few problems and this is mainly problems with isometric view games, and here it’s the same and that’s when you perform a mercy killing. So if you stand over a critically injured NPC then you can get a nice close up animation of you killing the said character, and some of these animations include multiple stabbing, shotgun blast to the head, slit throat and others like these but using the different weapons. The problem is that when you zoom in on these animations, sometimes the camera gets hitched on background objects and you lose track of all the death and murder going on.

 

You control the main character with the left stick to walk around and the right stick to aim his weapon, then right trigger to shoot and the left trigger brings up a more detailed aim for killing random people with ease. Then you have the face buttons so you can crouch and reload your weapon, run, and even get in some cars and drive around and this feels good but not great. To be honest I feel this is the weakest part of the game and think Hatred really did need nice and tight controls.

 

So now we have to talk about the violence and to me there was nothing in this that really stood out or even worth all the so called hype as the most brutal game ever. I think Postal did everything this game did 8 years ago, just that really looked bad. But Hatred looks nice plays well and is always a great stress relief to just mow down hundreds of innocent people then see how long you can survive when the police turn up. Then: how about the military?

 

But here we are the game is very fun to play but the developer has maybe tried to add a little too much in the way of controls and options when sometime less is more. I feel this is a game where if the controls were just a little tighter then the score would maybe even be a star higher but the game is great and I am happy to say that Unreal Engine 4 has really stepped up and allowed the developer to make a stunning and fun game.