My subject today is a game whose title echoes a sentiment I’ve found myself repeating quite often for various reasons I won’t get into. It’s a stealth-focused, survival horror crafting game entitled I Hate This Place, developed by Rock Square Thunder and published by Broken Mirror Games. The titular place that’s hated by the main character is Rutherford Ranch, the remains of a run-down podunk town that looks like it was at the epicenter of a clash between a legally distinct Umbrella Corporation and a legally distinct H.P. Lovecraft story. That might sound harsh, but I mean it as a compliment.

I Hate This Place isn’t shy about the fact that it takes a lot of inspiration from campy horror movies of the 1980s. Horror games and movies aren’t usually my jam, but I do love me some campy action movies. I volunteered to review I Hate This Place because I thought that love of mine would help to balance out my aversion to horror. That’s true to an extent, but what really impressed me is how well the more humorous aspects blend with the horror elements to make the overall experience more enjoyable.

In I Hate This Place, you’re expected to use daylight to your advantage to scavenge for crafting materials. You’ll need to explore and find the blueprints for each craftable item before you can make anything yourself. Once you’ve done that, you can craft any non-weapon items whose blueprints you’ve learned at your campsite. You can craft weapons and ammo at workbenches you’ll find as you explore. You have to manage your health, stamina, and hunger; there are no additional survival mechanics (e.g., sleep or hydration) to worry about. Of these three resources, stamina is the only one that regenerates passively.

Then, when night falls, you’ll need to use your wits and all the items you crafted during the day to fend off the horrors that will hunt you down once the sun has set. You learn early on that the vast majority of enemies you’ll face can only track you by sound, which is where the stealth elements come in. So long as you’re crouching and not stepping on anything like broken glass or monster tentacles, you won’t make much noise while walking. On that same token, you can intentionally make noise to lure enemies out of your way and/or into traps.

The stealth elements and the idea that your enemies can only track you based on how much noise you’re making are really well-implemented. There’s even a visual onomatopoeia that appears on-screen to help you gauge how noisy you’re being. It’ll tell you how loud your normal footsteps are and if the sound of your footsteps has changed due to what you’re stepping on. That’s quite a nice touch. I also like that the crafting system is both easily understandable and really forgiving. For example, you can craft a sawed-off shotgun with a few bits of wood and some unspecified “parts.”

I Hate This Place isn’t picky about its requirements in terms of crafting materials. I’ve found a fair bit of humor in that, and I enjoy the feeling that my character is much more resourceful than I would be in the same situation. Speaking of humor, I Hate This Place isn’t exactly a good source of high-brow jokes, but that’s the main reason I enjoy its sense of humor. I’ve even found a couple of things that made me laugh despite my suspicion that they probably weren’t intentional, like a possible reference to Team Fortress 2’s “Meet the Spy” early on.

I also get a kick out of the fact that save points are CRT televisions with VCRs plugged into them (ask your parents). That’s a pretty good way to encapsulate the campy 1980s atmosphere that I Hate This Place aims to evoke. With all of that said, though, there are a few points against I Hate This Place. For starters, I had to turn all the graphics settings to their lowest in order to get a stable 60 FPS frame rate. In fairness, I’m not sure if that’s a game optimization issue or just my computer’s hardware showing its age.

The frequent and rather explicit gore and profanity might also be turn-offs for some players. That stuff doesn’t bother me personally, but I know that’s not universal. I encountered what I think was a bug at one point where some of the captions were much lower on the screen than they should have been, which meant that, at best, I could only see a portion of a speech bubble as opposed to the entire caption. That seemed to fix itself the next time I reloaded a save, however. The gamepad controls in I Hate This Place aren’t perfect, especially when using guns.

My gripes about the gamepad controls could just be because, as I’m sure most of our audience knows, controllers are generally inferior to mice when it comes to precise tasks like accurately aiming guns. I should also mention that my lack of depth perception and the difficulty it causes me in a lot of games could be an additional factor. Lastly, even though I said I meant the “legally distinct Umbrella Corporation” comparison as a compliment, and I stand by that, a lot of the enemy designs in I Hate This Place feel uninspired, and at worst, like outright Resident Evil rip-offs.

Even though games like I Hate This Place aren’t in my usual wheelhouse, I enjoyed my time with it. If you’re more of a fan of horror games with survival and crafting elements than I am, and/or if you enjoy cheesy 1980s action/horror movies as much as I do, you’d probably enjoy checking out I Hate This Place. However, if you’re turned off by any of the negative aspects I mentioned, I’d honestly say you’re doing yourself a favor if you wait for a sale on I Hate This Place, or if you elect to skip it entirely.

A PC review copy of I Hate This Place was provided by Broken Mirror Games for the purposes of this review.

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I Hate This Place

$29.99

7.5

Score

7.5/10

Pros

• Really well-implemented stealth mechanics.
• Simple, forgiving crafting system.
• Homages to cheesy 1980s action movies are great.

Cons

• Frequent profanity and gore might be turn-offs for some players.
• Often uninspired enemy designs.
• Running at a stable frame rate might require better hardware than you’d expect.