I was actually somewhat excited to try I Hate This Place. I was largely unaware of it, and when I wrote about it back in July, it caught my attention with its unique style and gruesome visuals. And seeing how survival horror is one of my favourite genres in gaming, I’m always looking forward to a unique take on the style.
However, as is often the case with horror games, interesting ideas and good intentions don’t always make a good game. I Hate This Place certainly has some interesting ideas, but it holds itself back through the all-important execution, creating a game that challenges less your ability to stay alive, and more your ability to stay invested.
If there’s one recurring element that defines my issue with I Hate This Place, it’s a lack of polish. So many moments that could have otherwise been interesting or tense are diminished by amateurish errors that just reduce the overall quality. Take, for instance, the story. Players in the role of Elena, who is thrown into a horrifying world after a summoning ritual, performed by her friend Lou, goes wrong.
At least, I assume that’s what kicks off the events because the first cutscene ends with an anticlimactic fade to black that doesn’t actually show anything happening. Lou begins the ritual, fades to black, game starts with Elena saying, “What just happened?” After this, almost every moment of storytelling the game indulges in is undercut by shoddy delivery.
Characters deliver voice lines that don’t match up with their speech bubbles, or deliver their lines in weird ways that feel like they’re rushing through them. And what I didn’t understand was why I Hate This Place didn’t lean further into its comic-book style by just having either drawn panels or animatics to help better convey the story. The game is based on a comic; they could’ve worked in existing art, and it would’ve been just as good.
Gameplay in I Hate This Place is interesting, but nothing to really write home about. It’s essentially Don’t Starve with a survival horror twist. Players will need to utilize the daytime to move through the world safely and gather necessary crafting materials so they can face the terrifying creatures that emerge at night. Players have access to Rutherford Ranch—the haunted homestead from the I Hate This Place comics—where they can rest, build useful structures and prepare to journey into the abyss.
“If there’s one recurring element that defines my issue with I Hate This Place, it’s a lack of polish.”
But what makes I Hate This Place both interesting and a bit frustrating is how it’s played. Since almost all the monsters in the game can only see through sound, players need to be extremely careful in how they move through the world, and stealth is their greatest asset. The game approaches this with a unique sense of style, using comic-book effect text to communicate where sounds are coming from and their intensity.
It’s an interesting idea in theory; however, the isometric POV combined with just how far away these monsters can hear noise means you need to constantly crawl through certain areas, and it is abysmally slow, and enemies are always in view, so it’s not as tense as it should be. Not only that, even if you try to run, creatures have a tendency to catch up to you insanely fast, and combat almost never feels like an option, given Elena has no defensive capabilities and enemies hit as hard as the trucks they move like.
And it’s another area where the game feels like it lacked polish, or at least consideration. Guns don’t feel particularly effective considering how much of a sacrifice using them should be. Something super loud that’s going to give your position away should dispatch enemies pretty easily, since the cost of using something that strong should be putting a target on you—especially for monsters that see through their ears.
But even seemingly powerful weapons like a shotgun can take up to eight shots to put an enemy down, to say nothing of the peashooter pistol you get at the start of the game. And I get it’s meant to be a survival horror game, and combat isn’t meant to be satisfying, but as a last resort, guns should be a reasonable option. It just makes the game incredibly boring when you’re playing it “right,” and deeply frustrating when you make a mistake.
Visually, I Hate This Place is neat, but a bit underwhelming. The comic-book style works to some cool effect, but doesn’t really come through in the rest of the game. Aside from some noticeable huge dot-shading on certain environments, it mostly just utilizes a cel-shaded aesthetic—as I said, I wish they leaned into it a little bit more. The visuals are backed by a soundtrack that has a spooky 80s vibe to it, with a lot of eerie synth.
I didn’t hate I Hate This Place, but I was never really enjoying it either, and not for the reasons you typically don’t enjoy horror games. While it has some interesting ideas, the core gameplay loop and overall lack of polish make it a somewhat dull affair that never really delivers on the survival or the horror. Fans of the comic might find something enjoyable here, but for most others, it’s a pass.
