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Atomic Heart is frontloaded and underwhelming

7K View2023-02-24

Atomic Heart (Reviewed)

Developer: Mundfish

Publisher: Focus Entertainment, 4Divinity

Released: 20 Feb, 2023

Price: $60 USD

Atomic Heart takes place in the Soviet Union's most important scientific research facility, Facility 3826. You play as Major Sergey Nechayev (P-3) a Wartime veteran with serious memory issues as a result. The Soviet Union has made strides in robotics technology, and wishes to expand this technology to take over the entire world. The commander has complete control over P-3, which functions as his right hand man, much like a mercenary dog.

You'll be carrying out orders from your superior as you go through the stories many bunkers that house hours of monotonous and repetitive puzzles that have no other purpose than to be a hinderance to keep you longer than necessary.

Outside of the attractive robot females, there were several flaws that I discovered while playing through this game all the way to the conclusion.

Gameplay

The gameplay is somewhat fragmented, making it very linear and not really fun.

As I advanced through the game, the number of glitches and things I disagreed with increased. Defects, errors, and repetitious motions don't do much for this game when compared to others at a lower price with longer gameplay time.

The Soviets Dystopia

The fantastic beginning that drew you in before departing and travelling down to the planet's surface is never revisited. This is a tremendous disappointment.

You only ever return to this dystopian world is when you confront the final boss, which is equally as disappointing as I was expecting it to be difficult not easy.

Characters

Except from Granny, the few characters in the primary tale are very forgettable. More effort could have been placed into making the characters sympathetic or, at the very least, likeable rather than obnoxious and dated in terms of style.

Most of the characters were bland, with pretty flat and boring speech between each other that felt more like a soap opera than the intended atmosphere.

Issues

Missions are too long and tedious

The game dumps you into a type of bunker for research teams, and you'll spend the next 2-4 hours running around fighting bullet sponges since you can't enter sealed doors without the key, or without being disrupted by swarms of tiny critters and robots knocking you over while you're trying to solve puzzles.

It really does nothing but waste time. The game would have been more or less a 6 hour game rather than a 15 hour irritation. I pretty much almost gave up.

Music rarely plays

Whether you're in a boss fight or just running around the overworld, it's often quiet and devoid of any emotion or flare; it's only when you enter the important boss fights that the music begins to kick in, and when it does, it's actually quite underwhelming because the song simply doesn't match the fight.

Settings

There is currently no FOV or other crucial adjustments accessible to remove the game's dreadful visual controls. It has a lot of vibrations and screen swaying during melee attacks that just don't feel right. This is being worked on, however.

Jumping

Because of the way it interacts with things and creatures when they corner you or get beneath you, it's sporadic and will get you killed 90% of the time.

That is, if you jump backwards, up a flight of stairs, or even on a ledge while an robot or mutant is behind or near you, there is a very good risk that you may become trapped and unable of move away to safety causing you to die.

Adding to the fact that there is no ability to block while using melee.

Lack of a world

There are no side quests or NPCs to interact with outside of the characters circling around the main storyline, thus you must complete those missions.

If you search about, you'll find dead humans locked inside their bodies via their minds, but they don't provide much more than meaningless dialogue.

A mini-map within bunkers is absent so is access to the normal map like in the overworld. It's not even that good of a world, the areas to scavenge for some treasure and blueprints are not needed to continue the story, nor do they really do much beside waste your time and slow down your progression really.

The car is useless

You can drive around in a really ugly red car that is all over the place with no variety in terms of styles or colors, and it is just dreadful to drive around in.

This car will only unlock once you're basically beaten the game and you will have to walk everywhere during the actual main storyline, which is irritating.

You'll also spin out the moment you hit a few enemies, and the car will also explode after running over 5 or so robots, so there's little point in driving it around other than to provide you with a mode of transportation.

Combat

It really doesn't get better

When it comes to combat, not much has changed from the beginning. In fact, I believe it got worse and more deficient when I improved a lot of my weapons to cope with bigger bosses and adversaries. It didn't appear to make much of a difference because they all felt fairly bullet spongey.

A lot of the bosses took a long time to kill, even with maxed out gear, while everything else was trash mobs that didn't put up much of a fight until you started facing off against a lot of the upgraded robots, which seemed silly because they also took a long time to defeat normally, not to mention most boss fights had maybe 2 or 3 rotations of abilities and didn't do much else.

The normal robots had one easily exploitable flaw that prevented them from bouncing around and making it more difficult to kill them. Water + electricity to permanently disable them as long as you maintained applying additional water to maintain the effect keeping them disabled until they were killed.

Mutants and others were the same but with Water and Frost.

Conclusion

It's not that impressive

There isn't much to say about this game, honestly. It has elements we've seen before in other titles, but done worse, and has a sensation of being rushed.

The issue here is that this is a $60 game with numerous issues.

Such as a lack of music, a lack of anything other than a mission-styled fetch quests, and boring repetition of bullet-sponge bosses and constant door puzzle locks that really hinder your ability to progress in a timely manner.

Granted, most games published have issues that are eventually solved, but I just don't see the benefit in a game like this. The boss fights are boring and slow, the world is empty and uninteresting with not much to show once done.

I don't believe this game is worth your time

I finished the game, and all I got to show for it is... nothing.

The ending was highly unsatisfying, as was the final boss battle.

If you take the leisurely approach and listen to all dialogue, the game only takes 15 hours to complete, although the game itself is probably about 6 hours long and offers very little satisfaction besides (2) dreadful endings to select from.

This concludes my review of this game, while my opinions may be met with criticism, that's what makes gamers unique, you don't have to like the same things that others do, nor do you have to agree with them.

If you would like to catch me during one of my streams or find me on social media, you can find me at these following locations listed below:

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- Pawkt

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