Is Atomic Heart worth your time? Let's find out.
The gunplay, crafting, and powers. Are a good mix to the gameplay providing a fresh and nice progression as you continue to become stronger. I only have mixed feelings about the role-playing progression, because it seemed like I spent a chunk of my time looting containers and enemies to upgrade my character’s abilities or my weapons. I believe a regular experience system with levels could’ve been a better alternative, but since the developers decided on a scavenge for loot, crafting & upgrading your character abilities or weapons via materials you find around the world. It is a decent attempt. I was thinking they could add reward tickets or some other equivalent to let you upgrade your weapons and character abilities. As an extra feature in the game to supplement the scavenging aspect. Like a reward system.
Moving on. I wish the game had extra vehicles because the open world felt huge and not enough vehicles to find. And when you do use a vehicle the durability is a bit low. It can take a decent amount of hits, but in my opinion, the degradation of the durability after hitting enemies feels too high. I had to avoid hitting robots to make it to my destination. And lord help me if I see a small group blocking the only path forward. I’ll have to run out of my burning vehicle after running them over. I hope the developers can fix the durability and make them withstand a bit more hits. Perhaps a 50-75% increase in toughness and I’d be satisfied and place extra vehicles around the world so you don't need to run so much. Since it feels uncommon to find one.
I kinda wish there was a quest log or at the very least, a logbook of summarized events that occurred to refresh the player on what happened so far. You can see clearly on the top left corner of your current quest, but looking through the menus, I don’t see a section for summarized events. And this is also me paying attention to the story’s narrative. The addition of a quest log or logbook could've helped players comprehend the plot a bit more. So I can see other players getting confused in the middle part of your playthrough. The beginning and final act are fine.
The game plays great when it's linear with fitting levels, but the open-world nature could use some work. I still enjoyed my time with the world of Atomic Heart. But I felt there needed to be a fast travel system in place to go back to old locations instead of driving back. Since I saw barely any drivable vehicles. Aside from that, there’s plenty of good Atomic Heart does well.
Had plenty of "Prey" the 2017 game inspiration, and gunplay with powers. Same with Fallout on alternate history. So the world-building aspect, I think, is done decently well. There are cartoons and small animations detailing custom game-overs and modded weapon demonstrations. Using a cartoonish style. Which made me appreciate the little bits.
Speaking of the level design, there are plenty of puzzles here integrated pretty well. Not so much to be a chore, but enough for you to go off the beaten path if you so desire. What I love here, rather than other games that try to half-heartedly implement puzzles by using the same one again. There is no copy-paste. You have plenty of variety to look forward to and they don’t consume much time to finish. If anything, the mini-puzzles can be completed in less than 10 seconds or less. The game goes further by including extra unique puzzles and more to complete in the optional dungeons. I won’t say any specific examples, because I feel it's best to discover them on your own. And boy I hope you will enjoy it as much as I did. I should add each puzzle I completed in the story sections didn’t reach the lengths of scratching my head constantly. All of them seem to be reasonably well-designed to not be so hard. But also not too simple.
I do have to give special praise to the optimization here. The game runs almost like a dream on my old pc with a GTX 970 card. So playing on 60 fps and getting barely dips to 30 fps during very intense action moments is a major plus in my books. Graphics options are also extensive, so you can tweak them to your preference.
Your AI glove companion Charles is pretty cool. Growing alongside P-3. And you will encounter moments in which it’ll ask you questions and you can respond to Charles with dialogue options. Honestly, my playthrough without Charles would’ve made the game boring as hell without his candid commentary and challenging P-3 at times to question the moral quandary and critical thought. This doesn’t occur commonly, but when it does oh boy does the dialogue shine.
However, the inverse of that. Are moments where I dislike the main character whenever he speaks and doesn’t consider the advice Charles gives him and will act like a stubborn jerk to what Charles advises. And this occurs frequently from the beginning to the middle of the game. And I feel the interaction between the two may make newcomers quit early on. Be that as it may, I strongly encourage anyone willing to put up with those interactions to bear with it. Because the journey and ultimately what happens in the ending is worth seeing through the first hours of a dysfunctional relationship between P-3 and Charles. Into something more. Whether or not it’s good in the end or bad. I’ll leave it up to the player. But in my case, I found their moments from the middle to the endgame worth playing through.
The beginning and endgame have an amazing presentation and do a suitable job of making you become invested in the world and the events to come. And find what layers they’re hiding beyond the objective of finding Petrov. Nonetheless, the middle of the game could lose player interest since there aren't a lot of moments that could impress players to a degree where they’ll become further invested in the story. It comes to a lull so to speak. But, I think the final act does redeem the slow middle act to refocus the player back to the main plot.
In my 17-hour playthrough with Atomic Heart, and after the end credits are rolling I think the game has a lot of charm, personality and heart. There is passion in nearly every corner from how terminals give you a nugget of lore about the world, to the not-so-dead NPCs giving you context on the facility’s day to day before chaos struck. Has over and above simple antagonist. Yes, there is stuff that could be tweaked in regards to the beginning hours of P-3 and Charles, increasing vehicle durability, and expanded car limit. A proper quest log to not lose players in the narrative. And some minor bugs here and there which the developers are already fixing.
And finally, the story I feel is in the middle of satisfactory and excellent. It’s enough to hold your interest, but I found the world, characters, and subtle political commentary more fascinating. There are moral quandary questions and candid commentary from Charles which I particularly enjoy listening to when they ask deep questions and thankfully the P-3 embraces these questions with answers I found acceptable to move him from a one-note character into a proper protagonist undergoing development. And the A.I. Charles, too.
In the end, I believe Atomic Heart is worth your time. Especially for those interested in an alternate history of the 1955 Soviet Union with robots gone awry. And a jerk of a protagonist with a great A.I. companion along for the ride. Fantastic gunplay with powers against robots and more enemies I didn’t expect. An optimized game capable of running almost flawlessly on a low to a mid-tier computer I think. Level design is great when it is linear, not so much in the open-world aspect, but still passable to me. Excellent variety of puzzles and integrated well. Rock-solid Russian soundtrack with decent voice acting for the English voice actors.
So if you like any of that. Perhaps Atomic Heart might interest you.
8/10
The gunplay, crafting, and powers. Are a good mix to the gameplay providing a fresh and nice progression as you continue to become stronger. I only have mixed feelings about the role-playing progression, because it seemed like I spent a chunk of my time looting containers and enemies to upgrade my character’s abilities or my weapons. I believe a regular experience system with levels could’ve been a better alternative, but since the developers decided on a scavenge for loot, crafting & upgrading your character abilities or weapons via materials you find around the world. It is a decent attempt. I was thinking they could add reward tickets or some other equivalent to let you upgrade your weapons and character abilities. As an extra feature in the game to supplement the scavenging aspect. Like a reward system.
Moving on. I wish the game had extra vehicles because the open world felt huge and not enough vehicles to find. And when you do use a vehicle the durability is a bit low. It can take a decent amount of hits, but in my opinion, the degradation of the durability after hitting enemies feels too high. I had to avoid hitting robots to make it to my destination. And lord help me if I see a small group blocking the only path forward. I’ll have to run out of my burning vehicle after running them over. I hope the developers can fix the durability and make them withstand a bit more hits. Perhaps a 50-75% increase in toughness and I’d be satisfied and place extra vehicles around the world so you don't need to run so much. Since it feels uncommon to find one.
I kinda wish there was a quest log or at the very least, a logbook of summarized events that occurred to refresh the player on what happened so far. You can see clearly on the top left corner of your current quest, but looking through the menus, I don’t see a section for summarized events. And this is also me paying attention to the story’s narrative. The addition of a quest log or logbook could've helped players comprehend the plot a bit more. So I can see other players getting confused in the middle part of your playthrough. The beginning and final act are fine.
The game plays great when it's linear with fitting levels, but the open-world nature could use some work. I still enjoyed my time with the world of Atomic Heart. But I felt there needed to be a fast travel system in place to go back to old locations instead of driving back. Since I saw barely any drivable vehicles. Aside from that, there’s plenty of good Atomic Heart does well.
Had plenty of "Prey" the 2017 game inspiration, and gunplay with powers. Same with Fallout on alternate history. So the world-building aspect, I think, is done decently well. There are cartoons and small animations detailing custom game-overs and modded weapon demonstrations. Using a cartoonish style. Which made me appreciate the little bits.
Speaking of the level design, there are plenty of puzzles here integrated pretty well. Not so much to be a chore, but enough for you to go off the beaten path if you so desire. What I love here, rather than other games that try to half-heartedly implement puzzles by using the same one again. There is no copy-paste. You have plenty of variety to look forward to and they don’t consume much time to finish. If anything, the mini-puzzles can be completed in less than 10 seconds or less. The game goes further by including extra unique puzzles and more to complete in the optional dungeons. I won’t say any specific examples, because I feel it's best to discover them on your own. And boy I hope you will enjoy it as much as I did. I should add each puzzle I completed in the story sections didn’t reach the lengths of scratching my head constantly. All of them seem to be reasonably well-designed to not be so hard. But also not too simple.
I do have to give special praise to the optimization here. The game runs almost like a dream on my old pc with a GTX 970 card. So playing on 60 fps and getting barely dips to 30 fps during very intense action moments is a major plus in my books. Graphics options are also extensive, so you can tweak them to your preference.
Your AI glove companion Charles is pretty cool. Growing alongside P-3. And you will encounter moments in which it’ll ask you questions and you can respond to Charles with dialogue options. Honestly, my playthrough without Charles would’ve made the game boring as hell without his candid commentary and challenging P-3 at times to question the moral quandary and critical thought. This doesn’t occur commonly, but when it does oh boy does the dialogue shine.
However, the inverse of that. Are moments where I dislike the main character whenever he speaks and doesn’t consider the advice Charles gives him and will act like a stubborn jerk to what Charles advises. And this occurs frequently from the beginning to the middle of the game. And I feel the interaction between the two may make newcomers quit early on. Be that as it may, I strongly encourage anyone willing to put up with those interactions to bear with it. Because the journey and ultimately what happens in the ending is worth seeing through the first hours of a dysfunctional relationship between P-3 and Charles. Into something more. Whether or not it’s good in the end or bad. I’ll leave it up to the player. But in my case, I found their moments from the middle to the endgame worth playing through.
The beginning and endgame have an amazing presentation and do a suitable job of making you become invested in the world and the events to come. And find what layers they’re hiding beyond the objective of finding Petrov. Nonetheless, the middle of the game could lose player interest since there aren't a lot of moments that could impress players to a degree where they’ll become further invested in the story. It comes to a lull so to speak. But, I think the final act does redeem the slow middle act to refocus the player back to the main plot.
In my 17-hour playthrough with Atomic Heart, and after the end credits are rolling I think the game has a lot of charm, personality and heart. There is passion in nearly every corner from how terminals give you a nugget of lore about the world, to the not-so-dead NPCs giving you context on the facility’s day to day before chaos struck. Has over and above simple antagonist. Yes, there is stuff that could be tweaked in regards to the beginning hours of P-3 and Charles, increasing vehicle durability, and expanded car limit. A proper quest log to not lose players in the narrative. And some minor bugs here and there which the developers are already fixing.
And finally, the story I feel is in the middle of satisfactory and excellent. It’s enough to hold your interest, but I found the world, characters, and subtle political commentary more fascinating. There are moral quandary questions and candid commentary from Charles which I particularly enjoy listening to when they ask deep questions and thankfully the P-3 embraces these questions with answers I found acceptable to move him from a one-note character into a proper protagonist undergoing development. And the A.I. Charles, too.
In the end, I believe Atomic Heart is worth your time. Especially for those interested in an alternate history of the 1955 Soviet Union with robots gone awry. And a jerk of a protagonist with a great A.I. companion along for the ride. Fantastic gunplay with powers against robots and more enemies I didn’t expect. An optimized game capable of running almost flawlessly on a low to a mid-tier computer I think. Level design is great when it is linear, not so much in the open-world aspect, but still passable to me. Excellent variety of puzzles and integrated well. Rock-solid Russian soundtrack with decent voice acting for the English voice actors.
So if you like any of that. Perhaps Atomic Heart might interest you.
8/10
2 Comments
@mete - Yuup. Wish it was better. Not sure if there are mods to alleviate it. Hope if they ever make a sequel after all the DLC is done the vehicles will perform optimally.
mete
1 month ago