Atomic Heart Game Review

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Atomic Heart makes no secret of its BioShock Infinite inspirations. The game starts in a city in the clouds, features elemental and reality-bending powers that you can employ in your fight against advanced robots, sees you scavenge for resources in an idyllic city that is falling apart, and stars an amnesiac protagonist struggling with the overtones of free will. When you reach the climax of the story and are asked to visit a lighthouse, you know what happens. Where Atomic Heart most differs from its inspiration is in the lens through which it approaches its narrative, exploring the concepts of free will through Soviet Russian collectivism rather than US individualism. However, its intriguing premise seems let down by a deeply obnoxious and a predictable story that does nothing interesting with its brilliant ideas.

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In the alternate history of Atomic Heart, a scientist named Dmitry Sechenov starts a robotics boom in 1930s Russia. In the 1950s, the working class was abolished in the Soviet Union and replaced entirely by robots controlled through a hive-mind network called Kollectiv 1.0. The game picks up a few years later, just before the public unveiling of Kollectiv 2.0, which will allow all humans equal access to the hive mind to remotely control robots via a thinking device connected directly to their brains, as well as connect and share information to each other at great distances. Basically, it’s the internet connected to your brain and available 24/7.

In 21st century hindsight, we know that the Internet will not end up being a 100% good idea, even though the main character, Major Sergei Nechaev, an agent in Sechenov’s employ, fully believes in the dream of a world where everyone has equal access to each other and to the vast amount of information that is sure to be shared. Assigned to investigate a disturbance at Installation 3826, the Soviet Union’s foremost scientific research facility, Sergei teams up with Charles, a sentient gauntlet who grants the agent an array of polymer-powered technological powers such as telekinesis and cryokinesis , and provides a sound. together for Sergei’s often annoying and offensive collection of unfunny jokes and replies.

inside the rooms now soaked in blood and the flashing lights of the partially destroyed underground installation, Sergei discovers that the experiments in the mutations have gone badly and discovers that the robots of the assistants who once have the diapers have been thirsty for blood . However, the real horror does not come until later, when Charles speaks with Sergei of the ways in which Kollettiv 2.0 (which is already installed in Sergei) may not be completely advantageous. Didn’t Sergei realize that all those audio logs he found and the computers he accessed only give him information relevant to the progress of the assigned mission? Wow, it’s almost like an algorithm is feeding you insight into what he thinks you should be watching and listening to the most, masking it in a way that he can’t detect tampering with. It’s not as overt a form of control as a voice command, but Charles suggests that humans can be directed just as easily as robots once they’ve all accessed the same hive mind of information, especially if there’s a way. to check that information.

Atomic Heart has a healthy diversity of enemy types. However, there’s nothing you’ll face you probably haven’t fought a variation of before in other games–ranging from dog-like enemies that try to circle you before pouncing in your direction to turret-like adversaries that shoot at you from afar to bulky foes who heavily telegraph their attacks but can take a hit. The same goes for the weapons and powers you use to fight them. The pump-action shotgun hits like you’d expect a shotgun should, for instance, and the cold polymer power freezes enemies in their tracks just as you’d assume. There’s nothing revolutionary to how combat plays out, but it all works as it should. It’s familiar but still fun.

Looting is surprisingly the most enjoyable aspect of Atomic Heart, as, with just the click of a button, Charles can use telekinesis to pull loot into Sergei’s pocket. In practice, this causes drawers to fly open, cabinet doors to almost swing off their hinges, and the bodies of enemies to erupt as the magnetic pull of Charles rips the resources of a room towards Sergei. It never got old to enter an unexplored room or clear out a group of enemies and then sit back to watch as everything around me exploded into a whirlwind of paper and scraps of metal, sucked into my coffers like a greedy tornado. Of course, you can then use these resources to craft new firearms, ammo, weapon attachments, and items, but the sheer delight of the act is almost enough of a reward in itself.

It’s an intriguing concept, fueled by the idea that Atomic Heart is a video game, so we, the players, have always directed Sergei’s actions. So it’s not just Sergei being manipulated into seeing the game world in a certain way based on a fictional internet algorithm, it’s us as well. But as interesting as it is, exploring free will through the scope of a video game story has been done before, and Atomic Heart doesn’t do anything spectacularly new with the concept. In fact, his protagonist actively intrudes into the exploration of this concept, angering Charles because he doesn’t have the time to wax poetic about the assumptions. He can’t be bothered to offer any kind of insight because there are robots that need to be stopped and a villain to blame that needs to be killed. Time and time again, Charles brings up the morality of his mission and the wider implications of what is happening, and repeatedly Sergei doesn’t care, citing that he will leave the idea to Sechenov. The first and second time this happens, you’re hoping this glitch is creating some form of character development for Sergei. When 10 hours have passed and Sergei is still walking around in the same pattern and showing no signs of growing as a person, you can’t help but wonder how anyone could be so stubbornly stupid and annoyingly naïve.

Sergei is also deeply unpleasant as a person. He is antagonistic to everyone around him, including Charles, who he always helps out, and it’s never explained why, leading to the slow realization of the painful truth that you’re just playing a fucking human. You don’t feel good playing Sergei every time he opens his mouth to talk to someone. I empathize more with the people who have to put up with his barrage of unfunny insults than I do with him.

It’s familiar yet fun.

Despite being an idiot, he knows how to fight. Wielding polymer abilities with his left hand and a variety of firearms and other weapons with his right, Sergei is a hard hitting fighter. While the robots and mutants he faces are much faster than he is, you can easily outrun the swarms by using Sergei’s dash to reposition yourself, making for a frenetic hit-and-run combat experience. While relatively straightforward at first, combat becomes a more immersive experience as more enemy types are introduced, each with their own attack patterns and weaknesses.

After completing the first mission, Sergei takes a monorail to the main area of ​​the game, where Atomic Heart expands into an open world format. At this point, the game’s narrative slows down to an annoying drag as Sergei travels to one of several facilities to complete a mission, return to the open world surface, travel to the next facility, and repeat the process. Even if you don’t take the time to freely explore the map, complete optional challenges, and scavenge for materials to unlock special attachments for your firearms, the journey between landmarks still bogs down the story. Nothing of narrative significance happens outside of the contained linear levels of the various structures, and combat benefits from the carefully structured design of those contained levels. The placement and type of enemies are also selected to fit specific areas of the linear levels, and that careful selection is lost in the vastness of the open world. I’d often get in the car and drive straight to the next beat of the story, because that’s where the best gameplay is. It makes the open world superfluous, adding content at the expense of fun.

Thankfully, some of the main levels have a distinct flavor and attractive themes to them, helping them stand out from the largely forgettable open world. My favorite of these levels takes place in a theater known for being the first to feature an entirely robotic cast. The level has Sergei chasing after a man who used to work there, who has turned the theater into a macabre art exhibit, just like in BioShock. There’s this trail of diary entry crumbs you can find that reveals an engineer coming to terms with the strange parasocial relationship he’s developing with one of the robot dancers, a clever puzzle that incorporates ballet poses and blood splatters, and an awesome time where you’re battling waves of enemies during a ballet that gets a hip-hop remix 

It’s a great level, and I’m sad we didn’t like it better or at least we didn’t get more examples of using music to transform a familiar combat scenario into something more memorable. Atomic Heart has a fantastic soundtrack filled with hard-hitting, high-energy music by Doom composer Mick Gordon that will make your head spin even during the toughest battles. But these powerful beats are generally reserved for boss encounters, meaning that much of the best music in the game is fleeting, only appearing for one encounter before being heard from again. That moment in the theater is great, but it’s the only time something like this has happened in the game. Atomic Heart doesn’t rely on him to deliver more moments like this; indeed, there are some instances where a powerful soundtrack feels wasted because the large composition being reproduced does not match the mood of what is being played. you are currently doing. Why play hard rock during a stressful fight in the dimly lit space of a morgue? It’s just not good.

There are certain parts of Atomic Heart that just don’t quite fit together, and these disparities create an experience that often feels at odds with itself. That disparity is most apparent in how interesting the world story in Atomic Heart makes for an intriguing conversation about the nature of free will and collectivism, but then the unsympathetic protagonist repeatedly prevents that topic from being explored. Atomic Heart is sure to appeal to some people, especially those looking to relive BioShock Infinite, but it’s not an easy recommendation.