Review - I Hate This Place
Every now and then I find myself turning to indie games for unique horror experiences from the Amnesia series, to modern games such as Mouthwashing and No, I'm Not a Human. It's a space where inventiveness spawns truly memorable gameplay experiences.
I Hate This Place is an isometric horror game where you scavenge supplies in the day time to craft weapons and build structures to craft materials, and then, when the sun sets, survive the monstrous creatures that roam during the night.
Developed by Polish studio Rock Square Thunder and published by Feardemic and horror specialist Bloober Team's publishing and co-develooment offshoot, Broken Mirror Games, I Hate This Place shares similarities with games like Darkwood, mixed with light survival elements similar to Don't Starve.
You play as Elena, a young woman who's recently returned home to her Aunt and Uncle's ranch - the very place her mother disappeared when she was a child. Back then, she swears she saw The Horned Man take her mother, and when her childhood friend Lou enacts a ritual to seek answers, Elena falls unconscious and wakes up to find Lou has also vanished. Now she must search for Lou whilst entangling with government secrets, followers of the occult and work towards uncovering the truth about her mother's disappearance.
Based on the Image Comics series created by Kyle Starks and Artyom Topilin, I Hate This Place is a horror story set around a mysterious ranch that seems to be surrounded by ghosts and monsters. The world created for the comic of the same name, is replicated in game to create an 80's, Stranger Things tone, albeit, distinguished by a distinctly vibrant colour palette compared to the dark tones of other horrors, and features the use of comic style lettering whenever Elena steps on something loud - a clear similarity to the onomatopoeic words that splashed onto the screen in the Adam West led, 1960's Batman television show. These aren't used to scare, but as visual indicators of sound when dealing with the universe's blind enemies. But that isn't to say I Hate This Place doesn't make an attempt to scare, as it does feature a handful of attempted jumpscares and gory imagery, that both come off as more spooky than scary. Unless you suffer from arachnophobia, then the variety of spiders in the game might leave you wishing you had a bazooka instead of a revolver.
I Hate This Place starts with a linear, tutorial section that introduces you to the controls and main gameplay loops. Initially, the game feels quite punishing when you don't understand the mechanics. But after my first doomed run that saw me lose twenty minutes of progress, I eventually found the first Resident Evil-like save room, which gives you a reprieve to save and an area to take stock of your inventory. And for the first half of the game, preparation is the key to successful enemy encounters, as all creatures do serious damage, especially the bosses, like a giant mutant.
This is where the constant tug of war between a player's choice to engage in direct combat or proceed stealthily begins. While the game gives you just enough tools to choose either approach, most humanoid enemies are blind and allow Elena the option to sneak past them. They rely on their hearing, so if Elena crouch walks and avoids loud crunchy floors like metal grates or broken glass, she can save her resources and progress with a fully stocked inventory. But sometimes, the risk is worth the reward, as some optional encounters that lead to combat can contain a chest full of goodies or a blueprint to be able to construct a new weapon or structure.
This is most frequently seen in the dungeon type levels which take place in locations like bunkers and mines; interwoven areas with locked doors and simple puzzles that require some kind of item to be found or a taser to be shot to power a switch. Exploration is at the forefront of each level, where you can use tin cans to distract and creep past enemies or crawl into vents unseen.
However, sometimes the best plans can still go wrong and Elena has no option but to fight back. Fortunately, I Hate This Place has plenty of combat options. At workbenches, Elena can craft weapons from blueprints and ammunition from the materials she has scavenged in the environment. This extends to medication and other helpful equipment like ropes and explosives. Supplies are scarce in the beginning, to encourage a mixture of stealth and combat, which builds a nice difficulty curve as you meticulously try to avoid being ensnared by tentacle monsters and giant mutants.
However, this does become kind of unimportant by the midway point. That isn't to say the damage you take changes, but you get accustomed to the shooting mechanics and eventually use the building mechanic to make supplies.
While stealth has just enough depth, the combat feels tactile and relies on a player's skill and decision making to determine whether you succeed or not. On console, the right stick is used to aim your gun, which requires precision or else you'll easily miss your shot and waste precious ammunition in the first half of the game. It helps to take stock of enemy attack patterns: tall humanoid enemies lunge and squeeze you, spiders jump on you, and other enemies spit acid. Surviving these encounters also requires players to manage a stamina bar. Yet another layer of risk and reward, where you sprint away from a mutant to be able to fire off a couple of bullets at an enemy's weak spot, and then decide whether to wait for your stamina to refill and fire another few shots, or rinse and repeat to keep your distance. But run too much, or too soon, and your stamina won't be able to replenish and you'll quickly get hurt. And if you try to spam your melee weapon without stamina, Elena's swings will be super slow, and before long, you'll be dead and returned to your last save to try again.
At times, engaging in combat whilst searching for keys to progress through the game's dungeons, I found this calculated risk enjoyable, but sometimes it did feel unfair in tight spaces. But mostly, the combat felt fair and if you take your time and follow the rules of the world, it was a nice break from regular shooting games.
However, I can see the difficulty not gelling with everyone at the beginning. But after the tutorial bunker, Elena arrives at her family's ranch and is given the main quest chain and the ability to explore the entirety of the map - a well-designed small sandbox made up of four main areas. All accessible via the ranch boat, which acts as a fast travel system. But it also opens up I Hate This Place's other core element, the light building sim at the ranch.
The front grounds of the ranch functions as a grid to place and build a selection of material makers that eventually become an assembly line of any materials Elena needs to complete her journey. She can make water pumps for water, a scrapyard to make scrap metal and rags, a garden for vegetables to make soup that refills Elena's stamina, and eventually, even ways to manufacture bullets and bandages. Each item takes a set amount of time to manufacture, but once the ranch is kitted out, it becomes an assembly line that supplies unlimited resources to make any challenge in the game much easier to complete.
Basically, I Hate This Place gives as much as you want to put into it. And after this, everything became more manageable and maybe a little too easy compared to the beginning. Although you still take the same damage, I went from running out of handgun ammunition and medical items, to having an upgraded backpack to counter overencumberence, full of over a hundred bandages and four hundred plus bullets.
The last type of level in I Hate This Place is paranormal investigations. These hued levels are found by exploring the map or following the clues given by a quest giver. Once you reach a nearby area, a green visage of a ghost will float across the screen, towards a interactable object. Pressing these transports Elena into a ghostly domain where all she has at her disposal is a flashlight that can be used to uncover hidden paths, items of interest and defeat ghosts. These levels offer the most interesting narratives in the game - short stories that tell the tragic downfall of each ghost.
However, I Hate This Place's solid gameplay is only one part of the experience. Like most horror games, story and atmosphere are just as integral; a key area where I Hate This Place excels. Solid voice performances add a richness to every character interaction, plentiful text documents and journal entries add flavour to each setting, and crunchy sound design like a popping spider egg or cracking glass all compliment a well thought out score that perfectly backdrops the nightmare fuelled world full of monsters and ghosts.
This attention to detail extends to the visual presentation - a choice of eye-popping purples and reds replace the common darkness of horror for a distinct 80's inspired flair. A colour palette inspired by the Image Comics series, but infused into a distinct cel-shaded art style that gives a strong personality to an interesting world of myths, government conspiracies and cults. Expanded on in Elena's journal, which collects inked sketches and adds discovered locations onto the map.
Unfortunately, I did encounter some technical issues during my playthrough on Playstation 5. At one point, a mission didn't complete, so I had to restart my playthrough to continue and lost hours of playtime. There's also frequent frame rate hitches that last a second when the map loads upcoming areas, and sometimes, dialogue speech bubbles didn't appear. These were frustrating issues, but I hope the day one patch will solve most, if not all of them. As there is a solid indie horror game here, that's a nice short break from the usual AAA horror shooters. It's just a shame about the technical issues.
One thing that's immediately clear is I Hate This Place captures the comic aesthetic it's based on perfectly. It's a fun isometric horror shooter with scavenge and build mechanics that add a nice difficulty curve during the first half of the game. Every mechanic works in unison to encourage player choice, and then, allow players to reap the rewards from their assembly line of materials to take on all challenges in the second half.
I Hate This Place is far from a perfect video game, but it shows the clear potential and talent of the developers Rock Square Thunder. It delivers a solid mix of stealth, combat and puzzle gameplay in a stylised horror wrapper, culminating in an interesting game about facing past traumas that we keep locked away like distant stories in the dark. With no difficulty options and a bit of a learning curve, it might not be for everyone. But for those clamouring for a spooky game and willing to invest the time into gameplay systems, it's a solid horror game that does enough to distinguish itself in the genre.
I can only speak about the Playstation 5 version, but if the technical issues I encountered aren't fixed by the day one patch, just be aware that although it is completely playable and enjoyable game, certain things might hinder your playthrough.
