Bioshock was a massive influence back for the 7th generation of gaming, and that influence can still be felt to this day across the board. Especially for making “Immersive Sim” a more prominent sub-genre that’s truly brought about some great games, including Dishonored and Prey. And one of the most anticipated titles for the last decade is the impressive-looking Atomic Heart, which is basically stated by its developers as Bioshock meets the USSR. You can expect to see everything from a vast and detailed world, filled with danger, exploration and all manner of quirky and surrealistic elements (yep, those twins will be mentioned in this review), from a first-person view.
So, does the highly anticipated Atomic Heart manage to make an atomic boom in the genre and gaming as a whole?
Read on.
What is Atomic Heart
As mentioned, the best summary for most of Atomic Heart would be Bioshock meets Soviet Russia, involving killer robots, special powers and a whole lot of quirk to make the bloody venture through madness a spectacular one.
Atomic Heart brings players into a utopian version of the USSR in 1955, where the world has found peace, the east and the west are best of pals, and technology has advanced so immensely that art and culture is thriving beyond anything we could have dreamed of. Basically, the opposite of what we have now. Everything is looking perfect in the world and will only get better as a new golden age of scientific advancement comes closer. That is until **** hits the fan and ruins the harmony between humans and the loyalist robots who serve.
You play as gruff veteran Major Sergey Alekseyevich Nechaev, who is sent to the technologically advanced super research centre, known as facility 3826, to meet his handler and start a new mission. Everything appears to be absolutely idyllic as thousands attend a massive parade of marching worker robots, people are relishing in various artistic ventures and the unveiling of a brand-new robot-controlling system, that allows humans to communicate with robots telepathically.
It's all wonderful, and peaceful and represents a world at true peace. Yet, you know the drill, and of course, something goes horribly wrong, causing all robots to go haywire and attack their human masters. Hundreds are dead, facility 3826 and the surrounding floating cities are bathed in blood and any remaining humans are stalked and brutally murdered by mechanical fiends.
It’s now up to Major Sergey (also known as P-3) to save the day, accompanied by his ultra-advanced talking glove, Charles, who provides him with a lethal advantage over the enemy.
Welcome to Mother Russia
Atomic Heart’s world is a truly spectacular one, which engages you on so many scenery levels via its beautiful art style, advanced technology and the grand scale and complexity of floating cities and mega underground labs. It was a world I felt went above and beyond compared to most other game worlds, where I wanted to explore as much as possible, read up on its history in fine detail and find every secret I possibly could.
The mad, and sublime nature of a peaceful world post WW2, where a famed Russian scientist made a new compound which changed the world, allowing humans to advance in science and art and create a societal renaissance is immensely fascinating. I loved the art deco-inspired design of the world, with the integration of 1950s pop culture robotics and sci-fi, and the varied scientific wonders which humans have made really immersed me thoroughly into Atomic Heart’s universe.
And yep, those robot twins are also very cool (okay, the developers must of have known the can of lude fan art they were opening … It’s Lady D all over again).
Atomic Heart doesn’t simply let you see the aftermath of a crazy, killer party, much like the OG Bioshock did back in 2007, but allows you to see what is at stake, and what is lost. It’s a really neat setup, and the fall of the utopia is quite horrifying. But venturing through this fallen paradise and finding the many underground labs in ruin always kept my interest and pushed me forward to see what would come up next.
Yet the story is tremendously weaker than the vastly interesting lore and weird science. For the first couple of hours, I was intrigued and while not an original setup, I was keen to see where things would go. But after those couple of hours, I could see where the plot would go beat for beat.
While there are some wild moments here and there (and no, I don’t mean a rumoured 6-hour-long sex scene between man and twin robots… but that would have made the plot more interesting!), the beat for beats can be called out so easily and it’s made even worse by the leading man himself. I didn’t totally dislike P-3 as he has a couple of cool moments, and he and Charles have a mostly pleasant repour which leads to some funny lines. But he’s just so unbearable at times, being massively arrogant and rude to those who are helping him out, and for no reason. That, and he's a complete idiot who blindly follows the orders, without realising certain red flags ….
It doesn’t help as well that P-3’s dialogue at times sounds incredibly animated, making me feel some of this was written by a chatbot AI or the fact he always asks Charles for his help like a clueless child, then snaps when there’s a locked door (oh there, there are a lot of locked doors). But at least he has a funny catchphrase which I did enjoy hearing from time to time. Oh, and there’s a vending machine character, who’s basically a sex pest looking to have input from the man himself …. Yeah, it’s so weird and disturbing I couldn’t help but laugh.
But while the main plot is not as compelling as it could be, or immensely clever like Bioshock Infinite. I do wholeheartedly admire the amazing design, the lore and the absolute strangeness of the crazy science, wonderous gadgets and robots as some of the best world-building in gaming.
I love the silly, mustachio’d robots who would beat the crap out of me, the beautiful and artistic construct of this idealist alternate USSR and the creativity to make it all so immensely breath-taking.
Crispy Critters, frozen man-bots and … what the **** is that!!!
Atomic Heart, like so many other Immersive Sims, focuses on enriching exploration, intense combat and tactical survival where you will have to plan, adapt and manage your resources in order to survive. Players will be able to explore a massive open world, which harbours plenty of useful gear, exceptional secrets and of course, a multitude of dangers.
Now, I recall watching a trailer for Atomic Heart and being simply blown away by the combat spectacle I was seeing. But I was also a little fearful that this was all fluff and no guff. Thankfully, Atomic Heart nails its combat and several other gameplay elements, to bring a hugely rewarding and gratifying sense of conflict. The exploration is also incredibly good, with a real sense of depth and scale, allowing you to pillage and scavenge anything and everything you need to make yourself a handy combat axe for smashing robot brains in.
As the game begins, players will be massively limited in resources and equipment, meaning you have to take things slow and steady, making the experience feel somewhat like a survival horror game. Even down to having safe rooms, which act as nice safe havens. After the first couple of hours, you’ll pick up a couple of powers and new weapons, allowing you to expand your range of attacks and thus explore further and further.
The beginning stages are within a claustrophobic series of labs, where the exit is only accessible by collecting 4 key items (again, very much like Resident Evil), and it’s here you see the variety of environments, bizarre puzzles and combat encounters which will only expand as the world opens up.
After this section, you’ll enter the open world, which spans several key areas, featuring drivable cars, plenty of dangers and even more secret underground labs which host lateral challenges and epic rewards.
I feel the world’s density and the amount of scavenging you’ll be doing is quite impressive, as there are a lot of beautifully destroyed places to go and find loot. And collecting loot is such as fun thing to do in Atomic Heart, thanks to the nifty glove that vacuums up all scrap. But it’s the labs which really stand out as the highlight here, as they’re all varied, and interesting and offer compelling lateral/combat challenges to complete. I love areas such as the underground theatre, which offered some of the best level design and combat in the entire game. But pretty much all interior levels were really excellent, with each one feeling different from the last, having unique puzzles to solve and plenty of daring fights that would range from simple scuffles to full-blown miniature Gundam epics.
The combat in general is extremely satisfying, and the powerhouse feeling of obtaining new, powerful weapons, and abilities is really awesome. Players will be able to obtain your classic roaster of weapons, including a shotgun, the Soviet classic; AK-47, to the more exotic including the “Fatman”, a bulky little RPG, railgun and some insanely cool looking melee tools including a buzz-saw bat, wielded by Mr Jensen Ackles himself in the most recent trailer.
It's a solid assortment of tools, and the powers are for the most part on the same level. Frostbite allows you to freeze enemies into place, which is super helpful and maybe a little overpowered. There is also Shock which gives enemies a good old zap, and the trusty telekinesis which can grand slam enemies from up above, and straight into the ground. These were the most reliable and the most fun, as seeing enemies freeze into blocks of ice never got old, and finishing them off with a shotgun blast became the best practice. Other abilities didn’t hit the mark as much, and there could have been more interesting ones (such as a flame one), but the weapon selection and use of canisters which attach to guns to give bullets various elemental effects does round up the impact of the arsenal to an impressive degree.
You can also level up your character traits and abilities, to expand on your effectiveness in combat, including more health, faster run speed, a larger zone which freezes before you, and the ability to pick up heavier enemies. It’s a good selection of traits and powerups, that really only make combat more fun and varied.
I do wish that certain environmental effects could have occurred, like zapping water to make it electrified would have been great, but instead, there’s really nothing like that. You do get an ability which shoots out a substance that can be electrified or set on fire, but it never truly felt effective, until max out.
The range of enemies is also really impressive, with plenty of different robot baddies to freeze, explode or batter with your axe. There all felt believable in some way to the world and offered their own tactics and attacks to keep you on your toes at all times. While most of the bosses did feel somewhat similar in how you deal with them, they were all visually amazing and some offered intense and punishing encounters that looked good, and made you feel like an absolute boss when they went down.
Not such a Utopia comrade?
On the opposite side of the spectrum is the open world, which in all honesty is just plain bad. While a selection of small sections looks cool and has some neat exploration, the general design, tiresome scale and the overbearing nature of using stealth to venture through just make crossing the top side an absolute chore and a bore. I feel the big problem is how Atomic Heart wants you to be stealthy in the open world sections if you get caught by one of the many cameras, all hell breaks loose, and you will most certainly die very quickly. There’s very little you can do to fight off the endless waves of enemies as your alert status goes from 0 to 10 within a few seconds, and you can barely hide as there is usually very little cover in the wide-open areas.
There is a way to switch off cameras and robots within a small area, but this won’t last long and it’s a chore to do repeatedly, just to venture through to the next location. There is the fact that enemies and cameras when destroyed are repaired within a short space of time by these annoying drones. As soon as an enemy dies or a camera is destroyed, a couple of them Swope in to repair whatever you’ve destroyed. In some cases, they take a little longer than usual, but they’re always around to counteract anything you might have done.
But this I could tolerate and wouldn’t mind so much if the stealth mechanics were much, much more substantial. When reviewers have said a game has bare-bone stealth, they will be eating their hats when it comes to Atomic Heart, as even the basic meters of detection, and logics are not present.
Enemies patrol so quickly, making quick turns and unpredictable manoeuvres while P-3 moves so slowly and is unable to catch up within a reasonable time. There’s not even a way to upgrade your crotch speed or obtain any other stealth mechanics to make life somewhat easier. It’s also annoying that enemies can see you a mile away and the aggro on some of them, especially when they pull off heavy attacks that down you, is just infuriating.
And there’s no point in driving, as the cars will explode if anything like a butterfly touches them.
The open-world sections are not very good at all, and just become tedious episodes of trial and error, endless scanning as everything is so hard to visually detect sometimes, and the unbalanced nature of enemy aggro and alertness, just infuriates you, in between the more excellent linear areas of the underground labs.
Access denied
The last thing I wanted to touch on was the lack of accessibility, which was very sad to see. I understand and realise not every game can have high contrast mode, but there should be some basics and staples include.
First, the subtitles are so small! Like smaller than those in OG Dead Rising, it's insane. And there’s no way to increase the size of the text, it’s all so small. Section, you can’t remap your controller config, and there is not even a controller map, so you can see what buttons do what. And the list continues, with things such as colour blind mode (which would help out in a couple of puzzles) and other smaller inclusions, which add up to making the game more approachable. It’s so baffling why there is a total lack of accessibility, or quality-of-life options here in a massive AAA game, which looks amazing, sounds amazing and for the most part, is so much fun.
I'm super disappointed that I couldn’t even increase the text size or look at what button loads an elemental canister to my gun., in a game that looks, plays and sounds in such high quality.
Overall?Atomic Heart is hugely ambitious, and one that could have been the game of the generation if it weren’t for some immensely poorly executed elements. But for the elements which do work, they do so phenomenally well! I absolutely loved the lore, the world-building, the combat, exploration and various linear complexes you venture through, which combined together make a stellar chunk of the game in total. While the open world is bad, the lack of stealth mechanics and accessibility are disappointing, I can’t deny the excellence in the combat, and the weirdness you encounter within the more refined and beautifully crafted sub-sections of the world. Atomic Heart is an impressive game in certain areas, and I can highly recommend it, despite the bad stuff.
The best way I can describe Atomic Heart is an ambitious, creative and immensely beautiful rough diamond.
++ Intense, brutal and entertaining combat and action
++ The world is a pure joy to explore and discover
+ Great lore, and highly creative world-building
+ Some great puzzles, and set pieces
+ Looks and sounds amazing!
-- The main plot is far less interesting and predictable
- Open-world sections and stealth gameplay are very lacking in depth
- Some crazy difficulty spikes and balancing issues
- Lack of basic accessibility options
We would like to thank the publisher for providing a review copy of Atomic Heart for Xbox Series S/X for this review.
