Atomic Heart Review – Crunchy Animals

One of the most amateurish things a game reviewer can do is simply compare the game being reviewed with other existing games. But if a new game is so heavily and blatantly inspired by existing games, then it’s more of a developer’s fault. Anyway, I dare to write that Atomic Heart most of the time strongly resembles a combination of Half-Life (you explore military bases and laboratories affected by the disaster) and especially Bioshock (you unravel the reasons for the destruction of a utopian world in an alternative history). Add to that the intertwining of individual missions with a (moderate) open world journey and a certain “unpolished” game in the spirit of the first parts of the Metro or Stalker series, and the combination of all this gives you a pretty good game idea.

• Platform: PS5 (review) PS4, X1, XSX|S, PC
• Publication date: 21.02.2023
• Manufacturer: Mundfish (Russia/Cyprus)
• Genre: FPS
• Czech localization: No
• Multiplayer: No
• Data to download: 42 GB
• Game time: 20+ hours
• Price: CZK 1,420 (Steam), “free” with Xbox Game Pass for PC, Xbox console, and cloud.

Where did the comrades go wrong?

Undoubtedly, the most striking feature of the entire game is its setting: an alternate history of 1955 and a utopian version of the Soviet Union, where thanks to the invention of liquid programmable modules called “Polymer” there was a rapid acceleration of scientific development, which led, among other things, to the almost complete replacement of human labor all kinds of robots, interconnected a network of artificial intelligence, called the “Collective”. We enter history on a day when a new, improved version of the 2.0 Collective is about to be launched, but, as usual in such stories, something goes wrong and the robots rise up against the people, unleashing a bloody hell.

You play as a “mentally unstable” commando, codenamed “Major P-3”. Your main task is to try to stabilize the situation in the Object 3826 scientific complex by receiving tasks directly from Dmitry Sechenov, the inventor of all the above technologies, as well as the scientist who saved your life after a serious injury in the past. But as befits such a story, suspicious politicians and other agents also enter the plot, so for most of the game you will not be sure who you can trust and whether the whole disaster was really an accident or someone carefully planned it. The overall setting and concept of the story is also strongly reminiscent of Sweden’s MachineGames’ revival of the Wolfenstein series.

The most striking feature of the entire game is its setting.

For a more or less pure-blooded shooter, the story plays a surprisingly large role, and there’s a lot of dialogue to be had, thanks in part to the fact that your character discusses most situations with built-in CHAR AI. in his special glove. You’ll also encounter a variety of NPC characters, including “dead” people whose minds are stuck at their point of death due to the Collective’s technology. In addition to interactive dialogue and scripted cutscenes, the game also features traditional cinematic sequences (in-game graphics), one of which was so weird and mesmerizing that it could well be placed next to the “classic” Pyramid Head introduction scene. in Silent Hill 2. The story also has at least two endings, though having tried the second one, I have to say it’s more of a joke than a serious ending to the story. Be that as it may, from the above it should be clear that in terms of the plot, the creators have invested a lot of effort in revealing the game world, its characters and the whole adventure. A rather pleasant departure from Western game production is also a kind of “lack of political correctness” where the characters are not afraid of harsher language or themes, including a fairly detailed analysis of the sexual use of special robots (led by titular twin ballerina robots). ).

Just wait hares robots

The gameplay also shows signs of many years (development of the game began in 2017) diligence of the creators. Although at its core it’s a fairly simple shooter, each weapon has a creative design and a number of colorful upgrades, as well as your “magic” and telekinetic abilities. Specifically, for example, the way you collect items from cabinets and drawers here was almost more fun than shooting – you vacuum items remotely with a “telekinetic vacuum cleaner” right into your pockets, which looks pretty epic accompanied by fluttering papers and has something the fun of PowerWash Simulator mechanical games. Quite unique is the ability to “dissolve” any weapons or items produced at any time, as well as acquired abilities and their upgrades, into raw materials / resources so that you can invest them in something completely different – the game will always return 100% of all invested resources to you, so you won’t lose anything to experiment with. To our credit, firearms are just as good an option as energy or melee weapons, or spells and telekinesis: you can easily base your playstyle on one of these options and ignore the rest. That is, with the exception of one type of (rare) enemy, for which it is ideal to have weapons nearby.

The creators externally position themselves as an international team with a main branch in Cyprus, but this is a Russian company with Russian key leaders. With “Eastern games” we are somehow already used to the fact that mechanically they are not as smooth as Western productions from the hands of mostly more experienced Western developers. For example, the first parts of the Ukrainian series “Metro” or “Stalker” had this problem. At the same time, there was nothing so terrible that it was painful to play them. The unique style and setting more than compensated for these shortcomings. Here the situation is very similar: although the feeling of control (on the DualSense controller when playing on the PlayStation 5 console) of movement and shooting is very good, the artificial intelligence sometimes gets a little stuck, and most importantly, there is a certain lack of tightness in the game’s settings options, as well as in its UI interface and some additional tutorials (for example, the game will prompt you to put special incendiary/freeze/electrifying liquid canisters on your firearms to improve their attack accordingly, but it won’t tell you how).

We are used to the fact that “oriental games” are not so polished mechanically.

Small inconsistencies and shortcomings also concern the graphics and technical state of the game on the console, although the impression of a very generous and distinctly original overall design prevails quite significantly. The opening celebration sequence before the launch of The Collective 2.0 is especially mind-boggling as you watch the huge flying cities of the future filled with humans and robots of all kinds. Many locations in the game feature the same whimsical design, although everything is set to a noticeably moderate color palette, pairing mostly dark tones with red. Although this is not a big problem, sometimes the lighting in the game is annoying, but this is nothing critical. Most of the time the game runs very smoothly on the PlayStation 5 console at sixty frames per second. He uses vibration, but not advanced. On the other hand, the speaker on the DualSense controller plays back to you numerous recordings found in the game environment, which is quite fun, also because of how unique this game world is.