Atomic Heart

Today marks the embargo date for Atomic Heart, the bizarre new sci-fi game from Mundfish, which has attracted some manner of controversy given its ...

With an incomprehensible storyline, weightless combat, and frustrating first-person platforming, Atomic Heart is left to stand in the shadow of the video games that so clearly inspired it.” [Twinfinite (4/10)](https://twinfinite.net/2023/02/atomic-heart-review-missing-more-than-a-beat/): “Despite what is a promising combat formula as well as the supporting systems behind it when it comes to skills, crafting, and upgrades, there are also several equally frustrating aspects of it that hold the game back. [GamesRadar (5/10)](https://www.gamesradar.com/atomic-heart-review/): “Atomic Heart has a lot of big ideas, but it doesn't do a good enough job with the basics. And my friend Skillup gives it a big old “Do Not Recommend.” This isn’t just my favorite game of this year, it might be one of my favorites of the decade.” In the broader context of the video game landscape where GOTY contenders hit above 90, studios get bonuses at 85+ and anything under a 60 is an utter disaster, I would declare these scores “fine.” Today marks the embargo date for Atomic Heart, the bizarre new sci-fi game from Mundfish, which has attracted some manner of controversy given its connections to Russia.

You'd be forgiven for getting stumped right at the start of this first-person shooter, out now for PlayStation, Xbox, and Windows PC. How to use the scanner in ...

For instance, during the “Made in the USSR” mission, you have to find the “voice, the symbol, and the sprout of the Motherland.” Activating the scanner will highlight the three items — a radio, a hammer, and a plant — you need to progress. If you hold the scanner over a specific enemy, you’ll be able to see a list of their resistances and weaknesses, plus a rundown of the loot they’ll drop when defeated. Whatever struggles you’re having while learning how to use the scanner, know that it’s not a bug (probably).

Atomic Heart reviews are extremely mixed, with some praising the game for its reality-bending elements, and others calling it disappointing.

With such a mixed response, it does appear Atomic Heart will be an acquired taste. ‘A simple playthrough of Atomic Heart will take players around 25 hours to beat, which is a solid playtime generally. ‘There are floating Soviet laboratories in the sky, home to a networked artificial intelligence which could signal the evolution of human consciousness; a veteran USSR operative who can’t recall his past, and an army of rampaging robots designating the populace of Facility 3826 as enemy combatants after a software malfunction … It also noted Atomic Heart does little to endear itself to players, and that its storyline fails to do justice to a ‘cool premise’: Others have called the action laughably bad, with the game’s narrative and characters being major sticking points. Some reviewers have praised the game for its eye-catching visuals, unique puzzles, and sleek combat.

Atomic Heart is a highly imaginative, atompunk-inspired attempt at picking up where the likes of BioShock left off that makes missteps but definitely has ...

Atomic Heart is smart to keep this process fast by allowing us to extend out a hand and suck up reams of resources like an industrial shop vac, but it still becomes a little tedious having to ransack the same sets of desks and cabinets arranged slightly differently in a hundred-or-so different rooms. But now, after centuries of servitude, Renfield is finally ready to see if there’s a life away from The Prince of Darkness. There is a way to fry all enemies within a zone for a while if you’re patient, and the robot hordes do become a little less intimidating as P-3 and his arsenal grow stronger throughout the story, but that’s a process that takes some time. It’s a shame that some better context wasn’t baked around these occasional fetch quests because Atomic Heart’s underground chambers feel like a ripe opportunity and are largely great otherwise: eerie, deadly, and mostly devoid of life – unless you count the mutant freaks with skulls shattered into fanged, floral arrangements or the dead bodies that communicate via the confused ramblings of their fading brain implants. The foul-mouthed and amnestic P-3 is admittedly a bit of a relic of games gone by – and his default English-language voiceover doesn’t exactly do him a lot of favours. At any rate, there is a Russian-language/English subtitle option for purists, but I would’ve simply preferred an English script that was more tempered for the setting and era. There are some especially tiny touches in Atomic Heart that smack of a great deal of consideration, like the way there are different reload animations for unspent magazines compared to empty ones – the latter of which are flicked away while the former are grasped by the same hand sliding a fresh one in. Okay, that’s a bit reductive – rather, Charles is basically an intelligent system embedded in P-3 who is capable of granting him seemingly supernatural abilities, manifested by a set of small, squid-like tentacles that extend from a glove on P-3’s left hand. Its range of robots is particularly strong, from its sleek and sinister moustachioed terminators that charge at us without ever averting their gaze to its pot-bellied parking meters with mouth tubes that make them look like they’re sucking at the drawstring on an invisible jacket. Atomic Heart’s outstanding aesthetic also extends to its large range of partially ruined labs, facilities, and transportation hubs – each filled with long, snaking globules of the liquid polymer that powers the advancements of this fantastical 1950s. For its part, however, the background does largely fade away as Atomic Heart peels back the layers of its false utopia. There’s a lot to be said about unapologetically single-player games like Atomic Heart: its entire focus is on creating an intricate world for us to explore and discover for ourselves.