Hi there!

In case you're wondering, H.A.T.E. is short for "Hostile All Terrain Encounter"

Unfortunately this funky acronym is already where the developers creativity regarding this Gremlin production ended. As you can tell from the screenshot already, H.A.T.E. is a rather uninspired Zaxxon clone

Your mission throughout each of the 30 levels is to collect some kind of energy pods, transporting them to the end of the road. They also work as shields and they get destroyed when you're hit by something. To succeed in a level you must carry at least one of them when crossing the finish line.

The "All Terrain" mentioned in the title is a bit exaggerated, since it's actually always the very same terrain. Your vehicle transforms into a tank every other level, but that's a marginal difference.

While H.A.T.E. is technically flawless and backed by solid audio/visuals, the game design is dead boring. There's the same 3 types of attackers from level 1-30 and really, after playing one level with the plane and one with the tank you've seen everything.

Not even the difficulty is increasing: The 30th level is just as easy to play as the 1st! Okay, you have only one life, so the designers were probably hoping that the player would make a mistake somewhere eventually...

Of course with casual state saving I managed to fully experience the thrill of getting looped back to the 21st level after beating the 30th...

Some future day the "Playing..." series may see another Gremlin shoot'em up in the form of "Pegasus", but first it'll continue with something else.

Greetings,

Manuel