Hatred Review Roundup: Overblown controversy

Hatred has been regarded as a controversial game since its initial reveal in October. The game's violent themes have elicited an Adults Only rating from the ESRB, caused its removal from Steam Greenlight (it was reinstated on Steam), and convinced retailers it's too offensive to sell.

Despite all of the apparent controversy, Hatred is a 'Top Seller' on Steam and is currently outselling Grand Theft Auto 5 and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. Whether it's to check out what caused the controversy or to take a stand against "Social Justice Warriors.", the intrigue surrounding the game pushed it into this position on the list.

Reviews from both users and established sites have revealed that the four hour game has some technical issues with crashing and framerate drops. The game itself is described as monotonous and lacks variety — on top of that, it fails to be the controversial game that it was perceived to be.

Average reviews put the game to be around 5-6/10.

Rock, Paper, Shotgun:

Hatred fails in every way. It fails to be a fun, entertaining game. It fails to be a technically competent release. And most of all, it fails to be a controversial, shocking experience. It even fails at being bad in an interesting way. By the time you’re taking on levels requiring multiple stages, the thought of repeating the tedium all over again becomes untenable. After a miserable few hours, I’ve not completed the game, so goodness knows, perhaps some incredibly shocking thing happens toward the end. But it seems unlikely, and getting there would be no fun for anyone. If you were looking to rubberneck at the engineered controversy, there’s little to care about. If you were planning to buy it to show those feminazi SJWs a thing or two, you’re going to get stuck with a shitty game-shaped hole in your wallet. It is, beyond all the hype, just a crappy game.

Destructoid:

"There's nothing really special about Hatred. It's a twin-stick shooter. It has guns in it. It has objectives. Most of the time those objectives involve acting like a menace to society or blowing stuff up. It doesn't have anything new to bring to the table, or anything interesting to say about the genre. You can go back to yelling at it now if you want."

Eurogamer Poland [Translated and paraphrased]:

"Hatred stirs mixed feelings. And it's not because of the theme of the game. Intense maps and the aesthetic tend to be exciting, but pretty soon we see monotonous gameplay and design errors… The game is not well optimized. The game looks good, but in no way justify the current technical state of production. Even with recommended settings it's hard to rise above 30 frames per second, with more chaos on the screen there is a decline in animation. It does not help to reduce the graphics.

Moreover, violent themes have driven the developers into a corner."

User Reviews:

• "The controversy of the game is overblown as there is most definitely worse games out there in terms of content, although I will say the audio clips did get to me every so often. In the end, this game is a tough one. It has strengths, there's no doubt about that, but it's the lack of gameplay variety that ultimately gives the game the game a 5.5/10 for me, which makes it an average game." – [TechRaptor]Dragnix
• "Although the game striked up a lot of controversy regarding it's subject matter, "Hatred" is just your standard run of the mill Top-Down shooter. It's nothing too special but it has it's moments. The explosions for example are the highlight of the game. All three difficulties are the same, they only determine how much HP you gain from each execution you perform." – Akabane101