Atomic Heart

Atomic Heart, developed by Mundfish Studio and distributed by Focus Entertainment, finally met with the game lovers. We are taking a look at Atomic Heart, an FPS action and adventure game set in an alternative universe. Let’s see if the game, which is claimed to be one of the bomb productions of this year, can satisfy us?

Set in the 1950s, Atomic Heart tells an alternative history. The Russians win the Second World War and technological innovations are on the rise. Encountering a Russian-made game is not always the case! Let’s move on to our review without waiting.

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The story starts well!

Dr. Dmitry Sechenov calls us to his side after the Second World War, who also rescued our main character, Sergey Alekseyevich Nechaev. When we go to meet him, we witness that he is speaking to a very large crowd. Then, Sechenov asks us to do something for him. On the way to do what he wants, we are suddenly attacked by robots. When we come to ourselves, we learn that Petrov betrays Dr. Sechenov and makes new robots attack humans. We are asked to deliver Petrov alive, and so begins our adventure.

Without giving any spoilers, I can say that the story starts well. But of course, the story gets very predictable and boring over the next few hours. But seeing a Russian game rather than an American game really feels different.

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Character dialogues are well written

I can’t help but say that the person who wrote the character dialogues understands the modern meme culture. Our character gets a boost from somewhere and rants against the famous Spanish Inquisition. There is a power-up locker in the game and the dialogues with it are amazing. As you can see, the game doesn’t take itself very seriously, it’s more like a funny Prey, if I had to compare it.

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Enemy variety is low

Fighting the same kind of enemies every time is a bit boring. As the game progresses, it is really sad that you have to fight the same type of enemies. In addition to this disadvantage, the bad enemy animation is also a very bad combo. While the animations of the enemies are 28FPS, the world flowing behind is 144FPS. So, it really does not look good like tackling enemies and non-fluid animation.

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The atmosphere looks good!

The game should not be dishonored. Because the atmosphere of the game is very good. The Soviet theme suits this game very well. It’s hard not to like the opening sequence of Atomic Heart because the environment design and far draw distance look great. Of course, Unreal Engine 4 fits here very, very well. The graphics are grin in some places, but I can say that it is quite satisfactory.

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Weapon and Skill variety could be more

Our only long-term companion in Atomic Heart is the ax we have. You won’t need to use any other weapon throughout the game, because your melee weapon becomes more and more powerful than ranged weapons. In short, you usually do not have a reason to prefer weapons because weapons are weak. The fact that there are a total of 12 melee and ranged weapons is the part that kills the diversity.

We have 6 active and 1 passive skill trees in the game. Active abilities, on the other hand, give features such as throwing electricity from our hands, freezing enemies and blowing them up, while passive abilities increase our health value, run faster and dash twice. Rather than increasing active abilities, it makes much more sense to increase passives first.

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Other issues I want to talk about quickly

NPCs are all dead just waiting, there is no animation difference between humans and robots. It feels really good to see a game from a different culture. But, the mission designs are really annoying, we have to wait for 5 minutes on a platform somewhere in the game, but let’s say you fall down, this platform suddenly teleports to the beginning and you wait for 5 minutes again. Our character and our glove talk too much. This issue may also make some players unhappy.

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Evaluation

Now let’s come to the 59.99$ question, is it worth buying Atomic Heart? I would not recommend giving 59.99$, but instead you can finish it in one month with XBox Gamepass. I don’t think it’s a game you can go back to and play again. There isn’t much you can do again. If you have XBox Gamepass, I can say without hesitation that it is a game you should play this year.

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Author: Can Çiftci
Translator: Hilal Kopuz
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