Atomic Heart Reviews

The game has an incredible setting and premise, but the execution is awful. The game is boring as heck: constant fetch quests and locks that stop your progression on the spot and make you feel like you are not advancing the story. Annoying platforming. Clunky combat. Annoying constant dialogues. It's just not a fun time. I love shock-like games, but this is not a good one.

The game have an amazing style and art direction but the gameplay bores me to tears, I don't even have the want to finish the game. Psuedo Open World with respawning enemies is just shat all around and the story is very predictable least I got it on sale if i buy full price i would be so disappointed. The general combat in this game is just whailing your mace over and over again to the most janky robots enemies who you can face tank. Upgrade system is ass since 95% of your enemies are robots so why the hell do you even need the one that increase dmg to Organics. I'll probably go back to playing this game someday but so far it's meh and uninteresting.

Just not very fun unfortunately. The LONG intro was just boring. When I got to the open world part, I thought to myself "yes this is when it gets good!" I was very wrong. Cameras and robots EVERYWHERE mixed with the worst stealth mechanics I've ever seen. It's like playing gta and trying to get through the story with a 5 star wanted level that doesn't go away. Oh and the platforming fucking sucks. I just felt like I was playing the worlds worst puzzle game with shooting being an afterthought. Good idea, bad execution. I probably played it too long for a refund too because I wanted to give it a fair chance.

I really like the game overall to the point I am in the story, gameplay and all, but just because of this hell of optimization, if you can even call it that, any ounce of good faith is gone. You look in the wrong direction too fast? FPS drops to 8. You look in the weapon upgrade menu? FPS drops to 4 You wanna craft a weapon? FPS drops to 1 frame per once in awhile. You DARE open the map? The game completely crashes with no save. You climb a ledge inside a building? Your head clips right through the wall every time without fail. You DARE jump, by mistake near a rail or anything with even an inch of space between it and the wall? Yeah, you might get stuck there with your last save being either 3 mins ago or 40 mins ago, depends on your luck. You alt-tabbed once by mistake? Yeah, the game just runs like crap now for no reason. It's really a shame what happend with this game, since I've heard these problems were present day one and it's been 2 years. I'll try to finish the game, and when I do, no matter how good the story or gameplay will be, my review will still be a thumbs down, what a waste.

Its as if Bioshock and Portal were written by ai. I think the story is alright but sometimes is all over the place. It has good graphics but not for the space and power it takes up on your pc. It has quite a bit of bugs and most of the weapons you'll end up finding a new and better one before upgrading the current one. Its not awful and it has its moments but all and all i don't think i would rebuy it. I think for one boss fights it was more of a cut scene and wasn't what i was expecting.

Soviet flavored Bioshock 4 with lots of love poured in. And comRAIDs, lots of comRAIDs.

This was the most anticipated game for me since its release. I finally got it, completed it, and can say that, overall, it was an enjoyable experience (except for the "Trapped in Limbo" DLC, which was just horrible). The gameplay is solid, the story is interesting, the graphics are great, and the music is really good. I encountered a few bugs, but nothing that made me regret purchasing the game. Hopefully, the developers learn from these "small mistakes" and make the second game even better. Looking ahead, this is a promising start. Thanks!

This is a bit of a mixed bag overall; With it's Bioshock-esque story, design and action crossed with a "sort of open-world" non-linear approach. In regards to the former it's an enjoyable experience with responsive combat and a decent amount of options to how you engage enemies. You get a good mixture of types of guns and paranormal skills in battle, and it feels great to play in the focused areas. When it comes to the latter is where it falls apart just a little bit. The outdoors environment is big enough that you'll want to find a car to get around, but it also isn't quite making the best use of all of that space. This isn't Elder Scrolls with immense quests and secrets to find in every nook and cranny, and its noticeable that none of your weapons are ever of a long enough range to make sniping viable. The stealth aspects are fairly basic whether you're in a contained area or not, but it's most apparent when you're outside as encounters come down to brawn rather than brains. The immersive elements tend to feel a bit limited compared to other games. With it all boiling down to more up close and personal shooty-shooty-bang-bang it doesn't justify having a more expansive area with more expansive game-play. Something I played before this was Ghost Of Tsushima and this feels a bit bare-bones when compared to how involving every aspect of that title was. Similarly this doesn't stand up when compared to the likes of Dishonored or Deus Ex. There's a certain level of scale to an environment where it rewards experimentation and Atomic Heart doesn't quite find the right balance between its tool-set and locations. It's nice to have the choice when it comes to how you proceed, and it always has been just that little bit more rewarding when you're not being ferried along from point A to B to C in a linear fashion. Yet there's something lacking here that's difficult to pin down. On the one hand you have side-missions where you can get extra equipment that proves useful in combat, as it changes how weapons function or provides boosts to your abilities. To find these items requires solving a modest puzzle and then doing a further platforming / puzzle challenge that can be rewarding. On the other hand these challenges might require certain skills you haven't unlocked yet, and so there is a tendency to do that towards the end of the game when you have the means. Doing one after the other did get a bit boring despite their design being solid; there's no fast travel across the map to get to them, combat encounters along the way can be a mild slog and they don't mix up the game-play during these missions. These "quests" tend to be short areas solely orientated around puzzles and platforming, and as a consequence feel a bit bitty. The reward for your effort is worth it and the process can be enjoyable by itself, it's just getting there that can be a smidge tedious and it leaves this "open world" feeling a tad hollow. I get why they designed it this way, as it is a "fresh" (somewhat) element that widens the scope and player agency. But in this case it's not as compelling as something like Fallout for narrative or choices, and it doesn't have quite the same level of depth to its stealth mechanics as Far Cry, or the variety of Dishonored or Prey in how you approach it. When it's good, its great. Those sequences that are linear work well, and if they just stuck to that element it would be up there with Bioshock or the Metro games for enjoyable first-person action and set-pieces. There's an excellent flow to these encounters and the boss-battles are quite nicely designed and challenging. It's just...underdeveloped(?), or pales slightly by comparison to other titles, when it comes to the non-linear stuff. The spectacle of the world-building is there and its impressive technically, but the substance is slightly lacking. The remaining nit-pick is some quite crass story-telling on occasion that takes away from an otherwise reasonably mature plot. To be fair it can also be quite funny whilst still at the same level of immaturity, so its swings and roundabouts as to whether you'll chuckle or cringe. If this is the developers first game then overall I'd have to say its quite decent despite my gripes with it, and I would have said it's a promising sign for a follow-up. Going by this title it seemed like they could have matched the trajectory of the Metro games and for me that's fairly high praise. With a few stumbles to be addressed but overall a pretty strong foundation to improve upon. However...the sequel has been shown and it's bigger and even crazier. Perhaps they needed to focus on refining the building blocks before being even more ambitious, though only time will tell on that. For now this is a flawed release that comes very close to being awesome, but doesn't quite quite get everything right.

Amazing aesthetics, world building, music, and overall feel of the world. I really liked how weak I felt in the start and how slowly I actually upgraded my gear - not too fast, not too slow. However...the story went from an amazing idea into a sluggish mess, characters from someone that looked cool and unique into tropes we already seen so many times before, and most weapons can be skipped over for their better counterparts. The most annoying thing was the lack of open world information. The game never tells you that all enemies can be rebuilt by drones that come from a hive that is IMMORTAL. This means, exploring the open world is only useful if you never come back to a part of the zone more than once. You clear as fast as you can, loot everything and leave. This was easy at some parts, but extremely difficult at others. Even if you disable the towers that control the reviving drones, it only goes down in the area nearby, and has a 10 min cooldown. Another thing that was never mentioned, is that you will go through many points of no return without the game telling you you hit one. And yes, the previous points are not accessible anymore, so good luck getting that one thing for an achievement you missed. Now...the characters...Main character is stupid and dense af, borderline dumb. They feed you plot points and info about antagonists constantly. I liked the twist at the end tho, that was nice. The other important character(s), aka the Twins, are both overused and underused. There are multiple cutscenes focused on the sexuality and flexibility of those Twin poster robots, and they last for 3-5min every single time. Outside of that, you will not see them outside of 3-4 cutscenes and in one of the endings. Talking about sexual themes, why is the game forcing it EVERYWHERE? The manikins that are all over the place are all in sexually-suggestive poses, and even the moving machinery in underground facilities are usually just pistons going through holes, serving no real purpose. Not to mention, the vending machine (also your crafting and upgrade bench) is for some reason so into you, she wants to be with you from the first moment you meet, and she pesters you because of it every time, even in one of the DLC's - it got annoying really fast. Now, let's talk about DLC's: DLC 1 - Continuation of the story where NORA (the vending machine) took over everything - bunch of puzzles and very fast and annoying enemies. DLC 2 - You will spend 99% of the time in this DLC playing Counter Strike Surf that is done really badly. That is it. You do all that for one important cutscene at the end that just leaves the story open for DLC 3. DLC 3 - the only DLC that feels somewhat worth it - continuation to the story and making it to the point where end is in sight, preparing the MC for final DLC that should come soon (:tm:) Overall, it felt like the devs wanted to try and do something between Prey, Bioshock and Doom, however it is nothing but a copy from some of their parts. Nothing is unique, and nothing feels worthwhile talking about. I somewhat liked the game, but cannot recommend it because the direction looked like it switched paths many many times during the game - was it budget or time, I don't know, but it made the game very "meh" in the end. 6/10

This game is like waking up in a Soviet utopia, only to be chased by robots gone rogue and yelled at by your talking glove who thinks it's smarter than you (it is). The plot is chaotic, confusing, and completely unhinged, just like Mother Russia intended. It’s like BioShock got drunk on vodka, punched Cyberpunk in the face, and then tried to juggle philosophy, communism, and slapstick horror—all while ballet dancing on hardbass. Thus, BLYATPUNK !! 10/10 would flirt with the fridge again.