Atomic Heart (2023)

I remember first hearing about Atomic Heart way back when as a little side note in a list of games to keep an eye on. I forgot about it for a while and figured it got canned, only to be pleasantly surprised it was being released. While I was a little hesitant it might be more horror focused at first, I decided to give it a go.

Anyone who’s been in the video game sphere for a hot minute is probably familiar with the term “Eurojank”. Some folk call it Slavjank, I call it Eurojank. Games that lack in polish but make up for it in spirit, while the story is tinged with those Eastern European sensibilities and concepts that go for it. Atomic Heart was a Eurojank game that got a budget.

One of the tentpoles of a Eurojank game is clunky gameplay mechanics, and Atomic Heart has those in spades. The gameplay feels like it’s torn between being a Doom 2016 style shooter and a 1st person stealth-lite game. You’ve got a somewhat limited inventory that makes you manage what weapons, ammo, and health items you take with you. There seems to be a focus on melee weapons, especially early on, but the melee combat feels undercooked. There’s a normal attack, a heavy attack, and a dodge. I was desperately wishing there was a block button. And annoyingly, the options menu doesn’t include a control scheme layout. In general, I gravitate more towards blocking vs dodging in melee systems, especially 1st person melee. The enemies have certain attacks you have to dodge or get knocked down, but really every attack has to be dodge or you take damage. You do have a shock attack that can slightly stagger enemies. And if you get ganged up on by more than one bad guy, you will be constantly knocked down, unable to defend yourself. I ended up knocking the difficulty down to easy early on because it seems the difficulty just determines how much health the enemies have & the damage they deal out.

While you can sneak up on some enemies for an insta-takedown, trying to play this as a stealth game is a fool’s errand. Unless the enemy is purposefully placed in a “stealth takedown me” position staring at a wall, most of them constantly patrol in circles and can spot you from a mile away. There’s no detection meter, so you could say it was never trying to have stealth gameplay, but why bother giving us a takedown option then? There’s also security cameras you can sneak around, but the mechanic of how they detect you doesn’t feel crisp.

Once you do build up an arsenal of guns and stockpile ammo, the gameplay starts to smooth out. You still want to mix up between melee and ranged to not chew through ammo too quick. The gunplay is solid, but nothing too special. You have the standard loadout of rifle, shotgun, pistol, & rocket launcher. There’re also a few weird science weapons, but I didn’t dabble with them outside of the energy pistol. Using the crafting/upgrade system, you can boost your weapon stats, and the later upgrades add new functionality, such as homing rockets for your launcher or a faster loading animation for your rifle. You get the shotgun early and I found it to be one of the most reliable weapons throughout the whole game, only using the rifle to reach the far away flying enemies. The enemies can be a bit spongy, but overall, the gunplay was better than the melee.

You also have plasmids, I mean, polymers to use as support during fights. Polymers are the weird science invention that thrusted the USSR into the retro-futuristic world of Atomic Heart’s setting. They do everything from creating a temporary shield, freezing enemies, to lifting people up. I found the ability to spray enemies with polymer goo useful in conjunction with the elemental effects you can add to your weapons. The shield was also useful after being upgraded to reflect damage back at enemies. With most enemies being melee based, the shield gives you some breathing room and throws some damage back at them. And upgrading the shock polymer to full power lets you take out one or two low level enemies in one blast.

Atomic Heart is set in Facility 3826, a Soviet research base up in the mountains. It’s one of the flagship communities of this Soviet techno-union. While this means you spend a lot of time in science facilities, they do mix up the design, so it’s not always grey corridors and laboratories. This is where those 1950s stylings come in, with pops of colors and curved designs everywhere. It’s similar to Fallout’s retro-future designs, but the Russian influence makes it stand out enough. The game starts, rather awkwardly, with our protagonist, Major Nechayev, floating down a canal in the middle of a celebration on a flying city. It’s where the world design gets a chance to shine. The first lab you explore after things go tits up feels like it takes the most time and it kinda bogged down the experience for me. Once you get into the open world and get to see more of the facility the game picks back up. None of the other locations overstayed their welcomes. You get to explore a museum of science, a ballet theater, and a hospital, so there’s variety. The open world is mostly set dressing for traveling between locations. There are little challenge rooms to unlock weapon upgrades, but other than that, I found little reason to explore off the beaten path. It doesn’t help the world is littered with security cameras and hordes of robots. It makes exploring without being constantly harassed by bots near impossible.

The big thing this game is built around is robots, and their designs vary. Some look like clunky, diesel-powered, claptraps with an army green paint job, others look like Working Joes, and then the ballerinas look like something out of a futuristic sci-fi game. It makes sense that a waiter bot and a cargo bot would be built different, but the technology they’re built from should still have the same retro-future 50s aesthetic. The invention of polymers is what spurred this technological leap, and you can find it in globs around the world. It’s a jelly-like water you can swim through, with fish swimming in it and everything.

The polymers are where that special brand of Eastern European horror come into Atomic Heart. I can’t quite put a finger on it, but a lot of these Eurojank games out of the former USSR have this gritty, psychological, body horror vibe to them. It’s always very workman, not overly flashy, but in its simplicity, it manages to be disturbing. If I hazard a guess, I think it manifested from the cultural impact living under the USSR put on those countries. I never learned exactly how polymer is made, it may’ve been on a terminal somewhere, but, a bit of a spoiler, there does seem to be an organic component, usually in the form of minced up livestock. As Nechayev swims through the polymer, you hear whale songs and snippets of conversations. I thought we were going to get a Soylent Green situation as our big horror twist, but it never came.

One thing I do have to give some praise for is the music. It stuck out as a high point. The tunes are varied, some of the big fights find you cutting up plant monsters, because robots weren’t enough, to some songs that sound straight outta Doom 2016, other times you’re fighting a boss to a modern remix of a classic Tchaikovsky piece, then go out and explore the world to an 8-bit techno tune. Early on, one of the robots sings a haunting Russian lullaby, but my favorite moment was when I walked into the courtyard of a building that was blasting some music over the loudspeakers, then as a fight started, the music transitioned from the retro tune on the speakers to a remix version playing over the combat.

You play as the Major, code named P3. You work at Facility 3826 as a fixer for the facility’s leader Dr. Sechenov. They are getting ready to release Kollective 2, a sort of hive mind device that lets people have direct control of robots. Unfortunately, a scientist has gone rogue and set the robots to kill mode. It’s P3’s job to track this scientist down and get the shutdown codes from him. As a Eurojank game, awkward voice acting is to be expected. It does make it hard to get a read on P3 as a character. A lot of his lines are delivered with a weird inflection or way too fast. I think they’re going for he’s an everyman protagonist who doesn’t understand much of this science stuff. He’s done with all this shit & has a quick temper, but he still clocks in every day, and he is fiercely loyal to Sechenov, who saved his life. I got that after having to read past some of the strange remarks he makes. Along for the ride is P3’s AI powered glove, Charles. He’s the archetypical, uppity British AI assistant who is much smarter than P3. They have a stressed relationship for most of the game, but it’s not developed well. Again, P3’s rough writing, he usually just tells Charles to shut up vs banter with him.

So, the story, and spoilers from here on. After a flying car crash, you end up at the first lab, which is the base for the Soviet’s agricultural program. Along with being the origin of the robot uprising, there appears to be an outbreak in the botany lab and sentient plants have turned the corpses of staff into Last of Us zombies. We get the first glimpse at the Soviets main plan with Facility 3826, to explore the stars and make distant planets habitable. Here we have to find 4 canisters to revive an electric tree that powers the station, “finding x things to progress” is a common mission structure in this game. As mentioned, this first base feels like it takes the longest. I think because it was an extended tutorial level that set up everything. After that slog, you travel the open world via car to the main HQ. We meet a weird grandma who is packing heat along the way. I thought she was maybe secretly an English spy, because of her accent, but I think that’s just because of the voice actor.

At the main HQ, we learn some more plot about the new Kollective 2 devices. Charles tells us about the alpha connector, a ring forged in secret that controls the other rings. It lets whoever has it control anyone with a device, but it was rumored to be destroyed. There’re also the 2 beta connectors which makes people or robots blind to the Kollective system. Charles suggests Sechenov is planning to use the beta connectors, shaped like rings, to create two robot assassins that can operate outside of the system to eliminate enemies. There’s also the issue of higher ups in the Russian government visiting to assess the mess and possibly remove Sechenov from power, but they end up getting killed after P3 blacks out.

You end up chasing the traitor, Petrov to a theater next. Here he remarks that he only turned the robots on their masters, but he didn’t build in all the weapons they have. It’s strange they have those. He ends up beheading himself in a theatrical performance, but P3 is able to preserve his head in a jar and recover the beta connectors. This is where the 3rd act starts. Petrov’s girlfriend, Filatova, wants to meet you at the secret Ministry of Exposition. On the way, everyone you’ve met asks you for the beta rings, which seems suspicious. Charles recommends tossing the rings, which P3 does. We meet Filatova at the Ministry, which is located under a lighthouse.

Here we learn that P3 was once a special agent who was married to a fellow agent, but a mission in Bulgaria went sideways. It led to his wife’s death and P3 being replaced with about 70% prosthetics, something that has never been alluded to before in this game. Sechenov used the dead wife’s memories to create his bodyguard robots and wiped P3’s mind. When he did that, he implanted a control switch in P3’s mind that turns him into a puppet with no memory of what he did, like killing the envoy from Moscow. We also learn Charles is the ‘soul’ of Sechenov’s old science partner, Charleton. He has been withholding information from us during the adventure. It turns out all the talk about alpha and beta connectors and Kollective devices was pretty much moot. The real way Sechenov might control people is through the polymers injected into their bloodstream. If the story was a little better written, this may’ve been a fun rug pull, but it felt more like a dumb fake out.

This all ends with a choice, P3 can either side with Charles or stay loyal to Sechenov. It is one thing the story does well. You don’t get any real concrete evidence Sechenov wants to control everyone, it’s just Charles’ speculation you have to go off of, and he’s proven to be untrustworthy. The true ending is to side with Charles, which leads to you assaulting Sechenov’s tower and fighting the robot twins. We do learn that Sechenov was planning on doing something with the robots. The USSR was planning to sell the robots abroad, then switch them into combat mode to take over the USA. But it turns out that Charles, not Sechenov, was the one who would cause P3 to black out & use him to kill the government envoy and Filatova. The game ends on a cliffhanger, with P3 unconscious, Sechenov dead, and Charles having taken control of the master polymer that runs Kollective 2.

I mentioned the combat had Doom 2016 vibes, but there’s another game you will be constantly reminded of as you play through Atomic Heart, Bioshock. I try not to call a game “just {blank} but with {blank}”, but Atomic Heart seems more than happy to show off its Bioshock inspirations. There’s your polymers that function similar to plasmids and the small selection of guns. You have a friendly voice that guides you through the whole game only to be revealed as the real villain. Where Bioshock 1 was about capitalism without restraints, Atomic Heart has an underlying analysis of blind belief in communism running through its story. As an American, it was neat to see a game about the Soviets where there’s a variety of viewpoints on the ideas of Soviet communism. Usually, Communism is nothing more than ‘the Red Threat” in games. Both games dive into what happens when science has no limits, whether robots or genetic mutations. The game starts in a flying city & one of the major plot points happens at a lighthouse. The music as you descend the lighthouse has a very Pond5 version of Bioshock’s theme to it. This is all to say, I would comfortably call this game “SovietShock” and I think the developers would consider it a compliment.

One possible theme I noticed that wasn’t part’n’parcle taken from BioShock was that the beta connectors may not have actually been beta connectors. They were shaped as rings & I wonder if those were actually P3’s wedding rings, and Charles is worried they may jog P3’s memory, hence why he suggests destroying them. And the granny wanted them for herself, and it’s revealed she’s your mother-in-law, so that makes sense. But Sechenov also wants them and that doesn’t quite fit my theory, so maybe I’m off.

All in all, with all the press it got and being a AA release, I didn’t expect Atomic Heart to be in the Eurojank tradition. It is most obvious in the awkward writing and clunky combat. I found the melee combat lacking, but exploring the retro-futuristic world was a high point. The story is engaging, because it cribs so much from BioShock, but seeing as the Shock series is no more, I’ll take a new game heavily inspired by BioShock. If you are someone who likes Bioshock, Eurojank games, or weird science/history, I can recommend Atomic Heart for a sale price, & I plan to check out the newest DLC when it goes on sale.

I don't like to like to boil down a game to "it's like X but with Y", like the old "Skyrim with guns" or "the Dark Souls of platformers" but when they wear the inspiration on their sleeve like this, it's hard not to call Atomic Heart "Soviet BioShock".

There's always a man, there's always a lighthouse

Finished the game using mostly only melee weapons (and abilities) and it was pretty fun.

Wish they balanced the abilities a bit better, because there are 2 abilities (telekinesis and shield) that make you almost immortal, making the game very easy even on max difficulty.

Locations from the main storyline were done well and fun to explore. Cannot say the same about "Polygons" (side activity locations where you can find resources and upgrades for your weapons). There are a couple of polygons with bosses (you will see the same bosses later in the game anyway) but most of them only have boring puzzles almost without any enemies. And finding an entrance to the polygon is usually a big pain in the ass.

The plot was fine for the most part, but both endings of the game felt very weak and underdeveloped.

Visuals and music are very good. Performance on PC is also good.

What a bizzare video game. I remember seeing trailers a while ago and was astonished by how good it looked, literally mind blowing, like that Bioshock Infinite that we never got type good. Now, ignoring the controversial discourse around this game and leaving it aside, i'm really just flabbergasted by this game's existence, some of the aspects are truly masterful and others totally amateurish, feels like veterans and newbies had a contract to make a game together.

The intro is a total Bioshock worship, but it works, it lures you in, the art direction is fantastic, the animation department must've done some after hours cause that's some top notch stuff right there, puts a lot of AAA western games to shame. Unfortunately this is where my praises end, as soon as we really get into the gist of the game and explore it's level design the issues are rather apparent, this game is held by spit and duct tape, it does not play well at all, the levels are poorly designed and the enemies are just a pain to fight, combat feels clunky and enemies can stun lock you in an instant. By the halfway mark i was already checked out, the repetition got to me, spending time with one of the most unlikable protagonist in video game history didn't help either, i struggled to keep going, in hindsight i probably should've quit on the 20th 'crispy critters' line i've heard, the story is madness, way too much unnecessary exposition, none of the characters can ever shut up, it's all just so tiresome, Ken Levine where are you? Can you please show how it's done

Abandoning this one.

Not because I'm not liking it. I'm not, but thats not the problem.

After playing the intro scene, I simply cannot play more than 15 - 20 minutes without getting a heating alarm from the PS5.

I've got this alarms before while playing games like FF16 (once) and Spider-Man 2 (twice) but this is happening in every game session with this game.

Things I thought while playing Atomic Heart, in chronological order:

lovely music, kinda johncarpenterish;

the beginning is the usual immersive sim stuff but it is very well made, especially for a studio at their first game;

dialogues are extremely (and intentionally, I think) silly;

I wanna try the Russian voiceover, hahahaha it's amazing, oh crap those small subtitles in the lower part of the screen are unreadable while you play an FPS, OK let's switch back to English;

I like how you pick up resources, it's basically a vacuum cleaner;

the platforming makes me want to die;

I do like the set pieces and some activities, how they are constucted;

a kinda open world semi-stealth game in which you get stuck on rocks is borderline criminal, especially considering there's no free save option;

more generally speaking, I don't like having a game with this kind of structure and based on rewarding exploration that makes you save Resident Evil style. Maybe it's just me;

the part where you have to find the train ticket made me laugh. I don't laugh often with video games, even less with action video games. Well done;

I really like the puzzles based on magnetism and on making the rooms turn on themselves;

I see complaints about the fact that the open world is full of enemies but I think it's fine, it generates a nice tension and I gotta say the save systems works fine with it, because you cannot immediately reload and you have to improvise. Plus, the fighting system is good so improvising is fun;

by the way: I think this is a really good shooter! You have to constantly use the dash, the gunplay is solid, the powers are fun, it's a good mix;

I may be wrong but I got the impression that if you don't explore the optional parts and upgrade a lot you risk struggling quite a bit with the last couple of bosses, which are a little bulletspongey;

Left and Right gave me David Cronenberg vibes;

is it me or did they fix the getting stuck in rocks thing with an update?

I liked the last couple of dream sections, much more than the first two;

hahaha OK there's an explicit Rapture homage, it doesn't shy away from it;

jeez the exposition dump at the end. Boooring;

if you choose not to fight you kinda get the good ending. That's funny. The "true" ending is really dark, which would be interesting if it wasn't such a blatant setup for a sequel;

well, I'm not saying anything new but yeah, to me it felt like a BioShock that takes itself much less seriously from a narrative standpoint but takes its FPS component so much more seriously. So the narrative doesn't reach the highs all BioShock games can reach, but it also avoids their lows (shout out to Infinite's ghost) and I think as a shooter it works best - it's more consistent for sure - than those three games and their worst parts (shout out to Infinite's ghost);

still, it's an FPS, which means I got bored by the end and I switched to easy for the last couple of bosses. Sue me.

Hal pertama kali yang benar-benar bikin aku terkesan buat main game ini adalah karna ada sosok The Twins.Ya,mungkin ada dari kalian juga ada yang sepertiku.Dan tidak berharap banyak pada game ini karna gameplay nya yang mirip Bioshock.untungnya ini diluar dugaanku,tanpa DLC ,tanpa micro transaction,dan yang mengagetkan lagi ini game pertama Mundfish.Dari mekanik gameplay yang terlihat seperti Bioshock malah terasa lebih seru dan menyenangkan,management item yang tidak sulit,dan Sci-fi yang bener-bener Sci-fi.Aku bukan seorang penyepong grafik,tapi game ini memiliki visual yang benar-benar buatku kagum dari bentuk bangunan dan beberapa objek dan item yang belum pernah kulihat sebelumnya.walaupun masih ada beberapa bug yang mengganggu,namun tertutupi oleh gameplaynya dan beberapa detail kecil di dalam game ini.Plot nya yang mainstream tapi tetap berkesan untukku karna masih berhubungan akan kesadaran diri.Game ini akan jadi salah satu game yang akan aku beli dan mengerjakan semua achievement nya (aku main dari Xbox Gamepass akun temanku).

*maaf bila review ini terkesan cringe,labil,dan kaku.Ini adalah review pertama saya dan kebetulan aku memang cringe labil dan kaku

mungkin review ini masih terlalu norak karna ini aku pertama kali review game dan aku belum main game sebanyak "itu".

The game suffers from technical difficulties and oddities here and there which takes away from the overall satisfaction i got from this game. If you like a bioshockesque kind of narrative with very nice combat this is definitely for you. A couple of remarks:

• weapon upgrading system is bad: upgrading is tiresome as you need to check for every weapon what is available and if you have the materials every single time you think you might have enough materials for an upgrade.
• The whole hawk system is a bit convoluted for what it really is.
• The test sites are not really talked about in the game if you just happen to find one or look on the map for them they're probably nice but i missed them all.

Aside from all of these remarks i would still highly recommend this game!

Atomic Heart is probably the worst game I've finished in 2023 so far. And that is a shame, giving the major potential it had. The main problem here is lack of identity and bad execution of good ideas.

From the start, this game captivated me with its beautiful world and premise. It all looks and sounds very nice. The presentation is, in fact, the best thing it offers.

Great artstyle, cool animations, an amazing soundtrack, creepy enemies, crazy abilities and even crazier weapons. It was all off to a good start. Hell, even the jokes were fun, ocasionally. But... the more I played the more I disliked it.

For every good thing in Atomic Heart, there are two equally bad things. That feeling only got worse by the time I watched the credits roll. The enemy variety got stale, the semi-open world got boring, the interior environments got repetitive, puzzles were obnoxious, melee combat became a joke, the difficulty spiked out of nowhere, the sense of pregression halted... the magic just died.

Honestly, the story was the only thing that, in my opinion, got better as I moved forward, but that was ultimately held back by bad character development, poor storytelling (like dumping major plot points on you while robots kept jumping in your face), empty endings and a gameplay that just didn't seem to hold up! I can't quite put my finger on why, but I started to loathe how its slow and cumbersome system plays and, especially, its inconsistent pace.

And those bosses? My god, they were insufferable! I'm not kidding when I say that this game would improve, like, 30% if they fixed boss fights. Almost all of them felt annoying, frustrating and, most of all, unrewarding. The only ones I enjoyed were the two final battles. Pack this with the amount of dreadful puzzles you encounter in the game and you have yourself a very tedious experience. And not all of the puzzles were bad. Some were quite clever. But there were A LOT of them and A LOT of unnecessary and recurring ones.

One of the puzzles even made me play SNAKE, FOR FUCK'S SAKE...

Atomic Heart's real problem lies in its identity crisis. It was almost as if the game tried to be other great FPS games. It wanted to be Wolfenstein, Bioshock, Fallout, Duke Nukem, Dishonored, Half Life and it managed to be nothing. Not even its own thing.

There is fun to be had here. But very little. It's cool to try this out if you have Gamepass. If you don't, just don't waste your time.

Intro sequence goes on and on and on The world design is nice. However, a 5 minute boat ride and 5 minute air ride sandwiching an entirely uneventful 10 minute walk through the city is total overkill in selling the pre-catastrophe immersion.

I finally reached a point of unlocking weapons and abilities and things are starting to come into focus.

Not a fan of the double-tap-and-hold scan control. Not a fan of having to move a cursor over menu items in terminal screens rather than simple d-pad navigation. Why can't we have both? Not a fan of the clunky process for getting info from corpses via voice lines.

Weapons and abilities are neat. I appreciate the bioshock nods.

Atomic Heart might be one of the most frustrating FPS games I’ve played in the past decade. Not because it is terrible - in fact, I had a pretty good time with it all things considered -, but because it could have been so much more than it ended up being. After the incredible, Bioshockesque initial impact, the constant flurry of minor bugs and widespread annoyances continuously conspired to take me away from that first feeling, leaving me with a final mix of satisfaction and peevishness that could have perfectly been avoided, even if Mundfish were clearly punching above their weight with this first release. Simply because, to solve so many of these issues, they didn't need more money: they just needed more common sense.

There are several problems with this game, and I’ll get to them momentarily. But the main one to get out of the way is the voiced protagonist. I honestly think that, if we swapped “Atomic Heart” with “STFU and Let me Play’: The Game”, we would have a more appropriate title. Seriously, what the actual f. He just. Doesn’t. Stop. Talking. Between him, his glove (what is it with this current trend of protagonists hanging out with talking gloves anyway?), the sex-crazed machine he uses for upgrades and the audiologs that go on and on, at times it feels like it's impossible to get a moment’s quiet in this game. This is further enhanced by a dialogue style that, even though it was intended to come across as campy and lighthearted, often falls apart at the seams. A tongue-in-cheek tone wouldn’t necessarily need to be out of place here, but Atomic Heart lays it on so thick that it almost immediately loses whatever appeal it might have had. The English dubbing is also awful, and even though I'd like to say you’ll eventually get used to it like I did, I’m not sure most people actually will. The option for the original Russian is there, but a) the subtitles are incomprehensibly tiny which makes them harder to read, and b) the game often throws so much at you at once that you can't possibly be reading while dealing with it all. So in this case, the alternative is to miss out on potentially important bits of information, which is far from ideal. The whole thing does get better once the tone of the game becomes more serious (which should've been the case from the start) and the dialogue becomes more scarce, but by then the overall negative impression feels hard to overcome. Why is it so hard to accept the fact that a silent protagonist is a much better choice for so many games? Not everyone needs to be voiced, and I strongly dislike this currently prevalent industry notion that they do. This is a clear case of something that could have actually brought some costs down because it simply didn't need to be there. I completely accept the feeling of repetitive NPC lines (something that becomes very apparent very quickly) due to budgetary constraints. The choice for a Duke Nukem wannabe voiced protagonist, however, makes zero sense any way you cut it.

I wish Atomic Heart’s issues began and ended with its protagonist woes, incessant chatter and minuscule subtitles, but they sadly don’t. Another thing I strongly dislike is the inconsistency in the world’s reactivity: for all the feedback you sometimes get, which feels great, you also feel like a lot around you is static or simply decorative: windows don’t smash, sound often doesn't alert enemies, you can often pull a Jesus and run on water, car driving is infuriatingly contradictory (you can smash it against a bunch of robots without making a dent, but bang it against one rail and immediately you're on fire), etc etc. Something else that was too prevalent to ignore wast the amount of smaller, nagging bugs. Things like getting stuck in tight corners while in combat, loot that can't be looted, no map loading because the game thinks you're indoors when you’re not, enemies spazzing out on you, or achievements being bugged beyond logic. These things happen often enough that it becomes clear Atomic Heart needed more time in the oven. I know there was a patch out recently that probably addresses a lot of these, but still: if you need to delay a game, delay it. It’s much more preferable than putting it out in such a sorry state.

A final paragraph for the rest of Atomic Heart’s letdowns: melee combat isn't great, since it feels quite floaty, a bit clunky and QTEs were absolutely unnecessary; very confusing in how it lays out its mechanics and interface for you, something that affects your understanding of hawks, relay stations, puzzles, menus or platforming (which is ambitious yet fails to deliver on its premise); stealth is dealt with as if it was an afterthought and is simply not a viable option for the most part, which is ironic since they keep suggesting it (running past your enemies before they have time to register your presence isn't stealth, it's poor game design); enemies could do with a bit more variety, since a lot of them feel like recycled models; ludicrous story, which is particularly irritating because it's only ludicrous in its writing and telling, not its concept (it had the potential to be a lot more impactful, since the backstory is there and it offers a couple of pretty interesting twists).

If you paid attention to my intro, you’re probably confused by now, since nothing I've written so far justifies saying "I had a pretty good time with it”, quite the opposite in fact. Well though, I did. The truth is almost everything in this game is extremely hard to get used to. But you eventually do, and when you do… things change. Your perception changes. Suddenly, everything the game does particularly well becomes easier to appreciate. The remarkable world building. The Bioshock vibes. The impressive sense of scale. The gorgeous visuals. The art style. The original, breath-of-fresh-air type concept, with a really cool take on the alternate history genre. The Fallout nods. The fantastic (even if at times a bit intrusive) soundtrack. The phenomenal presentation - the fight with Left is probably the most emblematic example of how impeccably this game can present itself. The awesome dismemberment system. The amazing telekinesis-type looting mechanic, which has already become one of my favourites. The punchy, intense gunplay. The awesome powers, most of which feel great to use. The (rare) glimpses of stellar level design (the theatre level is particularly memorable). The truth is, when - if? - you get past the game's hurdles, it becomes quite a different experience, and you’re able to glance at something special.

And this is where the biggest frustration lies: even with its barrage of problems, Atomic Heart still manages to enthral here and there, yet the fact that it never manages to jump over the barrier that separates the special from the truly special is a consequence of its own self-inflicted wounds. Zero additional money was needed to turn this into an immediate classic. All it required was the right amount of time and sensibility. If you ask me if this is still worth experiencing, I’d say yes, especially now with so many things apparently patched up. Your level of enjoyment will very likely depend on your patience for its shortcomings and your appreciation for its strengths. It certainly may end up annoying you to no end, but with a bit of luck, it may also climb up to become one of your memorable gaming moments. 7.5/10

I'm going to break this down into two parts, the good side of the view and the bad. Spoiler free.

First, I'm going to be positive. This game is so pretty. The graphics look great and there was little to no stuttering. Overall, it very quickly invokes those old BioShock vibes in a good way. Unfortunately, that's the end of the positive part of this review.

Next, the things that are bad about the game. These I'm not going to spend a ton of time on each one as I feel like I've already given this game more of my time than it deserves.

• I'm not a prude, but why the HELL is there an over sexualized vending machine that tries to kink shame me into participating in BDSM activities to upgrade/store my gear?
• If there's this amazing invention that allows me to have infinite inventory for crafting materials that I can pick up, why the hell are my weapons/heals/ammo limited in space?
• Does the protagonist need to curse so much? I mean, seriously, I'm okay with cursing but I felt this was just excessive...and then on top of that, his "catch phrase" is Crispy critters instead of more cursing? Why? Just why? You're already cursing more than you're talking, why stop there?
• With the corpses talking after death due to the mind stuff, why are some of them vaccine denies and blaming that? is that really necessary to mix in THAT debate for a game?
• The parkour/climbing is just so slow. why is it so plodding? it's painful.
• This game does NOT respect your time and allow you to save conveniently. I can't estimate how much time I lost because I either had to backtrack to a save box to not lose progress or having to repeat things because I died and did lose progress!
• This plot has so many holes, inconsistencies, and unsatisfactory elements, I'm not even going to spend the amount of required time to lay them all out....and that ENDING. Seriously? what the hell is that? I'm aware that there are two endings, but BOTH of them suck. Like, nothing is resolved. Are they planning a sequel? I sure as hell hope not.
• The driving.
• This game gives little to no choice to the person playing. I guess that's a design decision...but further, it take agency away from the player by dropping you into cut-scenes and just assuming mobs get the jump on you. Why treat me like I'm not a hero?

I think that's enough to drive my point home. There's a lot to dislike in this game....but for some reason, I still played it through to the end.

Please, if you're not liking it, just bail. I'll come out and say it... it's not that great.

~David.

This game is... rough... It plays okay, but it's nothing special for a Bioshock clone, mostly though nobody shuts the fuck up and the dialogue is just so, so, so bad. Also, the intro is far too passive, it's gotta be what, 20-30 minutes before anything really happens? 20-30 minutes where you either don't control the character at all or can only walk while insufferable dialogue is badly acted...

Jesus, I couldn't uninstall this rubbish fast enough...

Completely aside from the game, which I may play many years from now but don’t have a burning desire, I was curious about the devs. I checked their about me page and it looks like “Artem Galeev, Robert Bagratuni, Evgenia Sedova, and Oleg Gorodishenin” are leading a company based in Cyprus and that includes staff from “10 countries including Poland, Ukraine, Austria, Georgia, Israel, Armenia, UAE, Serbia, and Cyprus.”

But that’s only 9 countries listed? Why not list the 10th?

Sorry, I know the answer is obvious and the war is tragic and I certainly don’t hold individual Russians accountable for anything their government does, but I find this kind of politician’s double speak to be so hilarious in this context.

There is something about the main character that is a huge turn off. He doesn’t actually seem to care about anyone or anything that I can tell. To him, everything in the world is an inconvenience. He seems to treat helpful NPC’s very poorly as if they should just get him what he wants and shut up. He asks a lot of questions but his reactions almost seem like he doesn’t care at all about the answers.

The combat is dull, and the intro is incredibly long. I played maybe an hour but I am done.