You Bastards!

Hatred is an isometric shooter with disturbing atmosphere of mass killing, where player takes the role of a cold blood antagonist, who is full of hatred for humanity. It's a horror, but here YOU are the villain.
www.hatredgame.com

I've found the internet debate around this game to be interesting, in part because there seems to be a thread that this particular exploration of the dark side of humanity will somehow be the single straw that breaks the camel's back.

Ever since I was in junior high school (likely before that even), computer programmers have been making games where the primary activity has been to move an avatar around the screen and shoot computer-generated people. Or mutants or aliens or what-have-you. Brøderbund software even had a game named, literally, "If It Moves, Shoot It!" What makes Hatred a horror game, and the player's avatar a villain isn't the activity - it's the reasoning. It can be argued that in more traditional Shoot'em ups that the computer-generated targets fight back. Sure, but, as an article I once read pointed out, the oppositions in computer games is never really about putting up a fair or intelligent fight - they exist to be "killed" by the player. An acquaintance of mine who works in the video game industry noted that if First-person shooters were anything like real life, your character would likely at some point find himself face down in a pool of his or her own blood with no idea what hit them.

I understand the discomfort at the idea of pretending to be a spree killer as a form of entertainment, although I think that at least some of it is born of the uncharitable assumption that there is a sizable number of people out there for whom it would be unambiguously entertaining. But in the end, all of these sorts of games simply offer different pretend reasons for different flavors of pretend violence. Hatred is no exception.