Atomic Heart- The game you didn't know you needed. . .and you do need it. . .Feb 21, 2023

Anyone picking this up tomorrow? Reviews have been mixed but my main reviewer ACG said rated it as a “buy”. Looks pretty badass even if some of the minor issues like corny dialogue/bad voice acting are true

It's on my wish list, but horror-esque isn't my normal genre, so I'll probably catch it on sale unless it starts getting crazy good reviews.

Tons of reviews on Steam saying how people that have bought/plan to buy this game are helping fund the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

I just wanted to add the pics to the post. The funny part is the reviews.

It is interesting the game comes out on basically the anniversary of the invasion starting. Not sure why they didn’t delay it especially to not compete so much with Hogwarts.

Bruh idk that looks like prey which was terrible

Prey wasn’t terrible what the hell?!

I put 3.5 hours in yesterday. Some quick thoughts

Performance
Playing on PC at 4K with 3080/9900K. Runs like a dream, FPS well into the 140s with DLSS Balanced on. They do some trickery where cutscenes and big/fast objects are rendered at a much lower frame rate, but it's not too distracting. Very well-optimized overall, I'd imagine it runs great on consoles. Please note that there is no FOV slider which absolutely blows, and there is forced mouse acceleration (cringe)

Visuals
Game is beautiful. Everything is well-animated, art direction is stellar, enemy design is amazing. The art/world design can 100% carry this game.

Sound
Mixed bag. Voice acting is horrible. Music is great (as expected - Mick Gordon is the composer). Diegetic sounds are very good for the most part.

Writing
Atrocious. Feels like a group of middle schoolers wrote the script after learning how to curse. Some bad translation/localization too (a crafting resource is called "chemistry" instead of "chemicals" lol, i.e. "you found 2 chemistry"). In addition to the character saying WTF and "frick my life" every 5 seconds, there are just some really weird expressions like "what the sweaty hell was that" and there are a ton of utterances of "Crispy Critters!" before he shares his thoughts. Really strange. The whole script is just totally at odds with what's going on in the game. Tons of attempts at humor, but nothing has been actually funny so far. The upgrade machine is a rapey female AI that says shite like "squirt your polymer in me baby" and it's just not funny lol. Between your character and your on-board glove AI, there are never any quiet moments. For the first time in my life, I wish the protagonist was silent. I'm so sick of every game having this bullshite quippy/Marvel/Justin Roiland/dorky type dialogue, it's embarrassing. I'm exploring this techno horror apocalyptic science complex and my guy is saying shite like "well crispy critters, THAT just happened!"

Gameplay
The on-rails introduction section is very long but gets rolling soon afterwards. The upgrade trees are more robust than I expected, lots of different options for character and "plasmid" upgrades. Lots to craft too - tons of different resources you can collect in the world to upgrade various components on your melee and ranged weapons. Different power moves you can unlock too. Looting is amazing, total opposite of RDR2. You basically just hold down a key and aim at drawers and cabinets and your glove just vacuums everything up. There's a little material reference area where you can see which resources drop from which enemies with pictures, very convenient.

Combat is alright, I've mostly just used melee so far. You have a fixed movement speed (no sprint) that you can upgrade, and dodging feels good + it has a short cooldown. The enemies are very readable (they have glowing red auras when they're doing power attacks), but I wish there was something more tactile to indicate when you're getting hit by normal attacks. You don't really feel them hitting you in the back and you just see your health going down. I'm playing on Normal and the fights take longer than they should. You end up kiting around 4-5 droids and just whack them with your power attack over and over.

There are some first person climbing mechanics which are functionally okay, but practically they're not very fun or engaging.

Exploration feels fun and rewarding. There are a TON of hidden crates/chests to loot. Some areas are surprisingly vertical and that allow you to platform and reach some little nooks and hidden areas.

There is a standard lockpicking mechanic that I've only gotten to use once, but most doors have locks that must be solved with a rhythm game, a spatial placement puzzle, or a pattern drawing deal where you have to find a document telling you the pattern. I'm not gonna lie, these started to get old really fast.


Overall
Make no mistake, the game is janky. Despite that jank, however, I can say something that I don't say often - I didn't want to stop playing. The world is so well-designed and keeps you wanting to experience more. The art team did an impeccable job. 2 biggest complaints for me: 1) The atmosphere. As I said earlier, the constant jabbering from the main character and the glove just kill all sense of atmosphere that the rest of the game is trying to create. Horrible creative decision on the dev's part. 2) The pacing. Everything is very drawn out and every area goes on a little longer than it should. You're always looking for a key or battery cell or other miscellaneous doodad. You finally get 2 battery cells to escape an area...surprise! It just opened an adjacent lab and now you have to go find 4 more batteries if you really wanna move on. Hard to feel like you're really advancing, but maybe it's just like that early on. I'm still in the first main complex and haven't gotten to the open world yet.

Bottom line - If you are looking for a Bioshock/System Shock/Prey (2017) experience, this is a must play. It may wear out its welcome later on, but at least in the early going, the incredible art/enemy design is enough to press through the negatives. Can't wait to play more

Carson it’s really moving that you’re standing with the trans community and not playing the Harry Potter game

quote:

---

Carson it’s really moving that you’re standing with the trans community and not playing the Harry Potter game

---