I Hate This Place

I Hate This Place has some great fundamentals in place, and the game certainly knows how to create an excellent atmosphere. The fact that you can also try to go stealth mode or guns blazing is quite interesting, and it offers plenty of choice to the player. With that in mind, you don’t always feel that survival pressure when you have access to all the resources you need and crafting becomes a second thought. Despite all the issues, I still think that I Hate This Place is worth a shot, especially if you like the genre. It will take some getting used to, but this is definitely a wonderful story, and I want to see more comic books brought to life this way.

I Hate This Place is recommended for those seeking authentic, edgy, and uncompromising survival horror, and for those willing to endure frustration and disorientation in exchange for an intense, disturbing, and artistically unique experience. An uncomfortable, imperfect journey, but precisely for this reason profoundly consistent with its title and its vision.

I Hate This Place has some interesting ideas inspired by its comic-book origins, but its moment-to-moment gameplay is dull at the best of times and deeply frustrating at the worst.

In terms of comic book immersion, the pulp horror style of I Hate This Place does a great job to suck fans inside the cartoon frame. It looks darkly delicious, right down to the KAPOW!-style crackles, snaps and crunches that pop out of the screen to highlight crafting fires, underfoot glass or dynamite fuses. For serious gamers though, it’s little more than an enjoyably creepy distraction with its main story largely a (crouched) walk in the park. Side quests are fun but anticlimactic while crafting and RPG elements are pretty much redundant.

An aesthetically punchy survival horror game that hides its underdeveloped gameplay behind over-complicated mechanics and some frustrating busywork. Not a disaster by any means, but nor is it a shining example of the genre.