YMMV / Hatred

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• Accidental Aesop: For a game trying to be as edgy as possible as the Antagonist performs his massacre, the game shows no mercy towards the player, especially in the later levels where SWAT and the military are introduced. This has the unintended message of discouraging would-be mass murderers of how they won't get very far and they will quickly fail due to law enforcement.
• Alternative Character Interpretation: Some theorize that the Antagonist is a Shell-Shocked Veteran due to his vast knowledge on weaponry and being able to control military vehicles easily, and his Hatred stems from the rise of homeless veterans.
• Awesome Music: While seriously Not Safe for Work, Particular Hatred by Iperyt is an intense and savage metal track to close the game out on.
• Broken Base: The decision by the ESRB to give the game an Adults-Only rating has sparked much debate as to whether Hatred deserves it or not. Many people including the developers certainly do not agree with the rating, while others believe it fits. Whether the rating hindered the game's success or not is to be determined, but this does mean that, should the developers consider porting the game to consoles, it might have to have content cut (as all three major console manufacturers do not permit "AO" rated games to be sold on their systems).
• Catharsis Factor: What the developers were aiming for is a game where players can relieve their frustrations in life. However not many people were receptive to the idea on account of killing innocent people instead of people who actually deserve it.
• Cliché Storm: The game unashamedly tries to place the Antagonist under as many "edgy" cliches as humanly possible... at the cost of lacking any sort of identity or lasting impact beyond the controversy spawned.
• Critical Dissonance: Hatred was given mostly negative reviews from critics, with many being very harsh to the game's faults. That didn't stop the game from being both the top-selling game on Steam upon its release, and getting a 9/10 consumer rating on the same site, though.
• Crosses the Line Twice: And stomps on it, breaks it limbs, sets it on fire, eats the ashes, and then makes a nihilistic statement on the futility of the human race. One of the harshest criticisms of the game is that the actual gameplay ironically doesn't cross the line as many times as the trailer did. For example, most of the executions consist of The Antagonist simply shooting or stabbing the victim once or twice, then the victim rolling over dead with nary a fuss.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • Hunters are armed with shotguns and can usually be found in groups. It is all but required to kill them from practically the other side of the screen, otherwise they'll make short work of you.
  • Naturally, the SWAT teams and US soldiers, due to their armor which makes them harder to take down, and for their strong assault weapons. It becomes very frustrating when they surround you in open areas.
• Fan Nickname:
  • Many have decided to take the Antagonist's statement of "my name is not important" literally, and refer to him as "Not Important".
  • Some have also taken to calling him Nathan Explosion based on his appearance and his guttural voice. Thanks to a certain someone, some people also like to ironically call him Jeffrey Cuddletrousers.
  • The game is usually referred to by something involving "Edge," "Edgy," or something along those lines. Some people have also begun calling the protagonist "Edgy McEdgerson."
• Hype Backlash: Hatred owes most of its popularity to the controversy surrounding its premise as a literal Murder Simulator. But once the uproar among the gaming community faded away, some players concluded that the game on itself doesn't stand out in terms of quality, and opinions about its shock value are divided between those who think it's nothing exceptional and those who think it's too "edgy" to be appreciated (even for someone who's not a Moral Guardian). This led people to think that Hatred took advantage of its surrounding controversy to receive too much undeserved publicity.
• I Am Not Shazam: The main character is called "The Antagonist". His name isn't actually "Not Important". This very site made that mistake several times.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • The trailer, especially the Antagonist's monologue, which has already spawned several parodies.
  • "My genocide crusade begins here."
  • "My name is not important..." Also done with some homonyms, such as: "Nadim Pourtant", "Nothem Portent", or "Nadhim Poortint".
  • The Antagonist's long black hair and his wangsty, narmy attitude has drawn a lot of comparisons between him and Tommy Wiseau.
• Mis-blamed: When Epic Games made Destructive Creations remove the Unreal Engine logo from Hatred's first trailer, many believe it was because Epic Games was offended by the games content and was pulling out support. In actuality, they only made the developers remove the logo because it was used without permission. Other than that, Destructive Creations has full right to use the Unreal Engine.
• Moral Event Horizon: The Antagonist was already across this line from the very start of the game when he kills somebody that he drugged and kidnapped; it continues to escalate as he only gets worse from there by slaughtering his way through hundreds of civilians, cops and soldiers as part of his grand plan to nuke the city.
• Narm: All over the game, which makes it a little hard to take seriously.
  • The Antagonist is trying so hard to be 'edgy' both in his narration and design, and the trailer tries so hard to play it dead serious, that it comes off as hilarious. The over-the-top gritty nature of the Antagonist, his motives, dialogue, and the violence he inflicts on innocent civilians is so overplayed, it is hard not to believe that it is not straight satire on the creators' parts.
  • The voice acting in general.
    The Antagonist: How do I overload the reactors?!
    Worker: What?! No, never! It'll cause a massive explosion! Are you inSANE?!
    The Antagonist: THAT'S what I WAAANNT, and you will tell me! Or I'll make you diiieee...VERY. FUCKing. Sloooowly...
    Worker: ALRIGHT, PLEASE STOP!! I WILL DO THIS! I WILL!! DO THIS!!
    [...]
    Worker: NO...I WUN'T DO DAT! (sounds mildly concerned) I can't be responsible for this! ...Kill me if y-
    The Antagonist: [kills worker] Useless piece of shit. [flatly] What is this fucking code.
  • The ending to the game. The Antagonist breaks into a nuclear power plant to trigger a meltdown. He then gets gunned down by police as he triggers the meltdown, even getting a posthumous one-liner after the city explodes. The whole scene is utterly ridiculous from start to finish and impossible to take seriously.
    Ah... I only wonder if those explosives will work.
    (cue the city exploding, and then a very long Beat)
    Well... They did.
  • The Evil Laugh the Antagonist pulls off leaves a lot to be desired, considering his guttural voice and the Vocal Dissonance.
    RAAAAH-HAH-HAH-HAHAHAHA!
• Narm Charm: In spite (or perhaps because) of how excessive and stupid everything in it is, the game can have a certain campy, over-the-top charm to it.
• No Such Thing as Bad Publicity: The creator's response to the backlash. Seeing as the game's trailer has received much attention from gaming websites and reaction videos on YouTube due to its content, it eventually worked, and despite the mixed reception, the game became one of Steam's topsellers.
• Older Than They Think: Let's face it, this is basically Postal HD with the Serial Numbers Filed Off. Becomes Hilarious in Hindsight when the Antagonist was made a playable character for the actual Postal HD remake.
• Overshadowed by Controversy: The game's premise has gotten the gaming community into an uproar. For the longest time, the most anyone talked about was how horrible and sickening the premise for the game was (along with the game being released around the time mass shootings were on the rise in America), rather than if the game was even good gameplay wise or not. The controversy has not gone away even after the game's release.
• Rated M for Money: Much of the game's attention came from its extreme level of violence, becoming the first game to be released with an AO rating for violence alone, rather than explicit sex or gambling with real money.^note Thrill Kill received an AO rating for violence, but was cancelled before release. The PC version of Manhunt 2 was also rated AO partly for its violence, but also for explicit sexual content. This backfired somewhat though, as it prevented it from being released on consoles.
• Shock Fatigue: It goes without saying when the game is a literal Murder Simulator. What makes it worse is that the game is only about massacring innocents all while they scream and cry, and there's little Black Comedy to alleviate (unlike Postal for example). Even many of the edgiest Nightmare Fetishist gamers find Hatred to be too much to stomach.
• Signature Scene: The Antagonist's introduction, where he waxes nihilistically about how humanity must die and he's willing to slaughter as many people as he can until he finally dies himself. It instantly became the game's Establishing Series Moment, albeit for unintended reasons.
• So Okay, It's Average: Reviewer consensus is that the game is fairly run of the mill, with an impressive physics engine along with a striking visual style, but nothing else worth writing home about. The controversy surrounding it is the main reason it received much attention and sold well.
• Special Effect Failure: The executions are laughably badly done, the knife kills in particular being better called "tapping a guy gently on the chest with a rubber knife".
• Spiritual Adaptation: If Uwe Boll's Rampage had been based on a video game, it would probably have been this one. The creators seem to have acknowledged this, given that one of the achievements is called Bill Williamson, the name of the Villain Protagonist in that movie.
• That One Level: The military base is a massive spike in difficulty for the game and can be extremely frustrating. Whereas previous maps started you out in an open environment with mostly civilians and gradually added law enforcement, the military base throws you into a gauntlet right from the beginning, 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 that can be destroyed, rendering them useless. A very cautious playstyle is required to survive even on Easy difficulty, and successfully completing the level is one of the most blissful feelings you can experience in the game.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: After the ad campaigns and controversy focused on going on a rampage, gunning down the innocent... that's basically the first level, and then you fight cops and soldiers for the rest of it. If they were going to do it, they might as well have gone all the way, instead of nosediving straight into territory that stopped being controversial after the first GTA game came out.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: Looking past the obvious controversy, the fact that the developers went out of their way to make the Antagonist as unlikable (arguably flat or even dull) as possible (with no hint of irony or humor involved) might turn off some. It can be argued that the main point is the gameplay, but for many players, there needs to be at least some motivation for violent gameplay - even Doom has you saving the planet. Being given a palette of horrible deeds and no reasoning beyond "Be a killer" leaves an incredibly foul taste in a lot of people's mouths.
• Visual Effects of Awesome:
  • Even critics that felt it was mediocre gameplay-wise lauded the game's destructible environments. Watching things blast apart from explosions or get chewed apart by gunfire is absolutely fantastic.
  • The game's use of Color Motifs creates quite striking visuals, especially when the red and blue flashes of police sirens start rolling in.
  • Despite the cameras being really far, the close ups and the models are really detailed, and receive bonus points for averting No Flow in CGI with the Antagonist's hair and Badass Longcoat.

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