I Hate This Place review – comic book survival horror

A descent into Hell sounds like typical survival horror fare but this indie game based on a comic book is very different to Resident Evil and Silent Hill.

Comic books have been an inspiration for films, TV shows, and video games for a long time now. Inventive plots, artfully designed visuals, and characters that already have texture and backstory make them excellent prospects for conversion to complementary media. Although I Hate This Place is not a particularly well known comic series, its 80s horror aesthetic is very much in tune with Stranger Things, whose New Year finale is still fresh in many minds.

This video game adaptation begins with heroine Elena, and her friend Lou, trying to summon an evil god called The Horned Man, in the hope that he can help shed light on the death of Elena’s mother several years earlier. When Lou suddenly vanishes, Elena goes looking for her, walking past graffiti surrounded by candles, whose large letters simply say ‘RUN’ – it’s advice players themselves might be advised to follow. Ignoring it, she discovers the entrance to an abandoned bunker, where she suspects her friend may be hiding.

Instead, what she discovers seems to be the beginning of the path to Hell, populated by savage blind monsters, who are drawn to the slightest sound. Creeping about in a half crouch you can limit the noise of your footsteps and make your way around them, a process that’s hampered by expanses of broken glass and endless bloody coils of cartoon viscera that squelch underfoot, attracting exactly the wrong kind of attention.

Presented in isometric view, I Hate This Place makes a decent first impression, its comic book art style working well within the constrictions imposed by its gameplay. Footfalls are accompanied by THUDs emerging from Elena’s feet, CRUNCHes as you cross fields of broken glass, and SQUELCHes when negotiating the guts that, for some reason, adorn large portions of its floors.

Although crouch walking lets you ease past the underworld’s sound sensitive denizens, straying even slightly over floor-based obstacles is a shortcut to a fight. That’s best avoided where possible, since even basic enemies are relentless bullet sponges, taking two or more refills of your snub-nosed revolver, or a couple of nail bombs before they finally keel over, and you rarely emerge from those encounters unscathed.

The game’s survival horror leanings mean ammunition is initially scarce, but once you find a workbench you’re able to craft bullets and new weapons using the looted bric-a-brac you find absolutely everywhere. You soon craft a sawn-off shotgun, which is more effective than the pistol, and a lot more useful than Elena’s baseball bat – which is only really good for breaking crates and barrels, and dispatching the smallest variety of giant spider you find in the woods.

To bolster the already significant supply of raw materials you scavenge, Elena constructs what amounts to manufacturing facilities in the grounds of her aunt’s ranch, which has conveniently been built right next to all the supernatural goings on. Why anyone would choose to live somewhere so desolate is never adequately explained, but then few things are in I Hate This Place, a game that feels tragically undercooked on almost every level.

Combat is the most obvious failing. Enemies’ capacity for absorbing damage, and your somewhat removed viewpoint, make weapons seem feeble. Once a monster detects you – often after you’ve tripped over a hazard that wasn’t visible from your isometric vantage point – you can attempt to toss an old can to distract it, but the throwing mechanics are so poorly engineered it’s an unreliable technique, especially under pressure.

Dialogue is stilted and unnatural, a sense made worse by second rate voice-acting – even Gal Gadot manages to inject more humanity and charm into her roles. The plot and Elena’s motivations within it are just as opaque, and you’ll regularly find yourself wondering just what you’re meant to be doing, strolling aimlessly around a forest whose day and night cycle seems to make almost no difference.

Side quests are equally half-baked. You’ll head off on a mission on someone’s behalf only to have it peter out with no particular reward or sense of closure. If there is a heart to the game, it’s crafting, with Elena’s elaborately convoluted Beverley Hillbillies-meet-Satisfactory production lines taking up increasing expanses of her aunt’s front garden.

But even that feels like an odd thing for a teenager to be doing when her friend’s missing and she’s notionally meant to be investigating her mother’s death. It also produces such a profusion of weapons and ammunition that any sense of survival horror tension is made impossible.

If I Hate This Place has an upside, it’s that its mercifully short, the closing credits arriving in under eight hours, depending on how immersed you get in those production lines. It does have some interesting ideas, and stealth games are a lot less common these days than they used to be, but when implementation is this haphazard it’s hard to eke out much enjoyment from it.

Formats: PlayStation 5 (reviewed), Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X/S, and PC
Price: £24.99
Publisher: Broken Mirror Games
Developer: Rock Square Thunder
Release Date: 29th January 2026
Age Rating: 16

Email gamecentral@metro.co.uk, leave a comment below, follow us on Twitter.

To submit Inbox letters and Reader’s Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use our Submit Stuff page here.

For more stories like this, check our Gaming page.

Comments


Add as preferred source