I’ve got to disagree on several levels with you here.
Err… have you actually played those three? Especially Quake is completely different with its projectile weapons, movement systems, mind games, map control… Just because some games are orienting themselves at more popular titles, not everything’s the same.
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The cause of the scandal around this game, being a person running amok, might seem interesting, but not its implementation. The Hatred Man (let’s call him like that) just says that humanity is disgraceful. In the whole game, there’s not a single line with even the slightest bit of actual criticism on humanity. You don’t have a humorous presentation as you get it in Postal.
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The game’s brutality seems to be the only other marketing reason for the game. But if you think about it, this game is quite innocent, compared to Postal, Harvester or Manhunt. Especially if you turn the execution animations of, any shooter is more brutal.
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From an objective standpoint, the gameplay is not good. It works definitively - you’ve got a solid twin stick shooter, but other things make it worse. The health system, where you have to execute people in order to get health back, is bad by design. It seems to be random if you can execute a person or not. In addition to that, you’re invulnerable while the animation is playing - looks really dumb when ten cops are standing around you, doing nothing. But beside that, this game is extremely repetitive. 95% of the objectives are “Kill more people” which gets boring after the first few maps. But anyway, show me the diversity in Hatred - either you shoot, drive or drive and shoot. Nothing else. The enemies aren’t fun to fight with, because civilists just run away or hide and cops/SWAT teams are bullet sponges with different weapons. So basically, you’ve got two enemies where one isn’t a threat at all.
“People want to control what games are and should be.” - well, err, that’s actually not a bad thing, is it? Of course, this means popular games become mainstream, but still there’s the Indie scene. And to be honest, I don’t think I’ve ever seen “creative freedom being suppressed”.
Yeah, you know that video games are a real industry now, with hundreds of people - who have to be paid - working on a single game? And you might want to specify “updates”, patches are still delivered for free. What you’re looking for is additional content.
Hatred just doesn’t have any aspects that say “Hey! Buy me and not all the other shooters!”. The gameplay is not good, there’s no story, the graphics are decent, there’s absolutely no message to be told and it’s just really boring.