An oft overlooked game when considering the breakout hits of 2023, I feel like Atomic Heart is a praiseworthy shooter that promises good things for debut studio Mundfish’s future projects if they can keep us this momentum and passion.
Unfortunately, with as talented as a studio Mundfish clearly is, they haven’t yet nailed down dialogue, or for that matter quality voice acting. Going into the game I was no stranger to the fact that the dialogue and voice performances were less than stellar, so I made an executive decision to use the original Russian language setting and just turn on subtitles. That didn’t fix the clearly sophomoric and needlessly edgy script, but it made me roll my eyes just a teensy bit less when I had to read it instead of hearing it. Would definitely recommend doing that for anyone being held back from playing by memes they’ve seen online of the game’s writing snafus.
Because where Atomic Heart lags behind ten years in dialogue quality it more than makes up for in gunplay and graphics. Modifying guns with elemental mods, upgrading your high-tech glove to shoot electricity, frost, and telekinetic grabs, and perfecting the surprisingly reactive movement feels fantastic once you figure out what works against what enemy. Furthermore, the enemy designs were AWESOME, and what’s more they gave an actual reason to try different strategies what with their built-in immunities and weaknesses. Sometimes that means that you have a much harder time ahead, for when you don’t have the tools to most easily take down the boss in question, other times it’s a massive relief and provides a nice burst of happy brain chemicals when you can just melt the enemies because you’re armed for all occasions and have been upgrading smartly and in a wide range of upgrade paths. The only enemy that raised my blood pressure beyond enjoyment was the Plyush, the fleshly figures. Now that might be because I didn’t upgrade my combat axe particularly far, but I also think that limiting effective combat to exclusively melee methods are a mistake in all scenarios besides prologues. Regardless, don’t make the same mistake I did: mind your melee options.
Like I mentioned in passing, the game looks gorgeous as well. Graphically, it can compete with the likes of any triple-A giant. Only complication there is the game is quite spotty with stuttering and rendering new objects and environments, regardless of graphics settings. Only once did a bug force me to restart, but it’s something you’ll definitely notice now and again. Regardless, it’s still more stable than Fallen Order is five years later, as much as I like that game. Not that it excuses it, just wanted to add that comparison for anyone it might help evaluate the stability of the game.
The story was decent, if meandering at points. The back-to-back plot twists felt too predictable for what should have been game-changing, and it was clear rewrites forced things to be rushed. Which is made especially obvious when a certain someone dies near the climax of the game off-screen. Despite its hiccups, including the at-times confusing motivation of every character, the execution of its alternate history dystopia kept me intrigued enough to stay on the narrative rollercoaster. Granted the ending was strange. The “true” ending was the one that prematurely ended the game, while the “alternative” ending gatekept probably the best boss fight in the whole experience. I can understand wanting to continue the story in the DLC, and I know most people will get the boss fight ending anyway, however It’s a tad odd they didn’t or couldn’t weave gameplay and a satisfying conclusion together at once.
I would likely praise the open world too if not for the foolish decision to tie endless enemy respawning to every corner of the map. I’m not exaggerating when I say that you’ll not have more than a minute of peace in any square foot of the open world. The enemy spawn points, patrols, and respawns are brutal with a capital B. Kill them as many times as you want, some repair bots will show up to fix them up quicker than you can say gesundheit. I only hope they learn to relax the chaos in future installment/DLCs, because I would have liked to explore more than I was encouraged to.
Not without some very real flaws, I hold firm that Atomic Heart shows enough heart and genuine talent to overcome the weight of its issues. All the same, I would still strongly advise going into this game with a healthy serving of patience. For fair reasons and bad ones, Atomic Heart is a very polarizing title in the fickle, ever ebbing and flowing gamosphere, but it’s a title deserving of a fair shake.
Unfortunately, with as talented as a studio Mundfish clearly is, they haven’t yet nailed down dialogue, or for that matter quality voice acting. Going into the game I was no stranger to the fact that the dialogue and voice performances were less than stellar, so I made an executive decision to use the original Russian language setting and just turn on subtitles. That didn’t fix the clearly sophomoric and needlessly edgy script, but it made me roll my eyes just a teensy bit less when I had to read it instead of hearing it. Would definitely recommend doing that for anyone being held back from playing by memes they’ve seen online of the game’s writing snafus.
Because where Atomic Heart lags behind ten years in dialogue quality it more than makes up for in gunplay and graphics. Modifying guns with elemental mods, upgrading your high-tech glove to shoot electricity, frost, and telekinetic grabs, and perfecting the surprisingly reactive movement feels fantastic once you figure out what works against what enemy. Furthermore, the enemy designs were AWESOME, and what’s more they gave an actual reason to try different strategies what with their built-in immunities and weaknesses. Sometimes that means that you have a much harder time ahead, for when you don’t have the tools to most easily take down the boss in question, other times it’s a massive relief and provides a nice burst of happy brain chemicals when you can just melt the enemies because you’re armed for all occasions and have been upgrading smartly and in a wide range of upgrade paths. The only enemy that raised my blood pressure beyond enjoyment was the Plyush, the fleshly figures. Now that might be because I didn’t upgrade my combat axe particularly far, but I also think that limiting effective combat to exclusively melee methods are a mistake in all scenarios besides prologues. Regardless, don’t make the same mistake I did: mind your melee options.
Like I mentioned in passing, the game looks gorgeous as well. Graphically, it can compete with the likes of any triple-A giant. Only complication there is the game is quite spotty with stuttering and rendering new objects and environments, regardless of graphics settings. Only once did a bug force me to restart, but it’s something you’ll definitely notice now and again. Regardless, it’s still more stable than Fallen Order is five years later, as much as I like that game. Not that it excuses it, just wanted to add that comparison for anyone it might help evaluate the stability of the game.
The story was decent, if meandering at points. The back-to-back plot twists felt too predictable for what should have been game-changing, and it was clear rewrites forced things to be rushed. Which is made especially obvious when a certain someone dies near the climax of the game off-screen. Despite its hiccups, including the at-times confusing motivation of every character, the execution of its alternate history dystopia kept me intrigued enough to stay on the narrative rollercoaster. Granted the ending was strange. The “true” ending was the one that prematurely ended the game, while the “alternative” ending gatekept probably the best boss fight in the whole experience. I can understand wanting to continue the story in the DLC, and I know most people will get the boss fight ending anyway, however It’s a tad odd they didn’t or couldn’t weave gameplay and a satisfying conclusion together at once.
I would likely praise the open world too if not for the foolish decision to tie endless enemy respawning to every corner of the map. I’m not exaggerating when I say that you’ll not have more than a minute of peace in any square foot of the open world. The enemy spawn points, patrols, and respawns are brutal with a capital B. Kill them as many times as you want, some repair bots will show up to fix them up quicker than you can say gesundheit. I only hope they learn to relax the chaos in future installment/DLCs, because I would have liked to explore more than I was encouraged to.
Not without some very real flaws, I hold firm that Atomic Heart shows enough heart and genuine talent to overcome the weight of its issues. All the same, I would still strongly advise going into this game with a healthy serving of patience. For fair reasons and bad ones, Atomic Heart is a very polarizing title in the fickle, ever ebbing and flowing gamosphere, but it’s a title deserving of a fair shake.