Anybody who’s ever performed Irrational’s BioShock Infinite shall be instantly aware of the opening sequence of Atomic Heart. You arrive at an ‘idyllic’ utopian metropolis by boat — a metropolis that occurs to be floating amongst the clouds of a post-WW2 land dominated by Soviet science — earlier than a brief guided tour takes a flip for the more serious. While Atomic Heart swaps Infinite’s early twentieth century Americana for a Fifties depiction of communist Russia, developer Mundfish wears its inspirations on its sleeve proper from the get go. Unfortunately, Atomic Heart by no means actually builds on the strong foundations such an introduction units up, leading to an uneven journey the place the concepts behind its world are finally stronger than the ultimate sport that takes place inside it.
Once the sport’s intro strikes on from pure strolling simulator to hectic first-person shooter, Atomic Heart settles right into a rhythm fairly rapidly. You’ll usually plunge your self into underground amenities to progress the storyline, the place numerous puzzle rooms and fight eventualities play out from a first-person perspective. These ‘dungeon’ areas are extra puzzle oriented to start with (though fight performs a component from minute one) earlier than they completely change into extra shooty-bang-bang by the top of Atomic Heart’s roughly 15-hour journey.
Now, you might have seen pre-release materials showcasing an open world filled with aggressive robotic creatures out to spoil the social gathering. While such eventualities do exist within the sport, Atomic Heart’s construction is hard to wrap your head round. The ‘open space’ segments nearly function stepping stones between the sport’s fundamental dungeon-led missions, and sadly, they’re an enormous missed alternative when you think about how intriguing the sport’s world is.
We’re not saying we wished a Ubisoft collectathon out right here, however Mundfish simply hasn’t packed sufficient significant content material into Atomic Heart’s open world to justify a lot exploration earlier than transferring on to the subsequent fundamental mission. We did do a little bit of exploration for the aim of this evaluate, and located little past some pointless fight encounters and assets for upgrading weapons or skills. In reality, it wasn’t value losing the assets wanted to efficiently navigate Atomic Heart’s overworld past utilizing it as a car to move to the subsequent fundamental waypoint.
Having mentioned that, in case you’re into your brutalist soviet structure and the way the sport meshes this aesthetic with a high-tech robot-led society, then perhaps it is value a bit of little bit of a wander occasionally. Again, you will not discover a lot that the sport’s introduction and fundamental missions do not already exhibit, however we actually did get pleasure from simply taking on this planet of Atomic Heart each every now and then. The sport’s retrofuture model is downright lovely, and watching on because the world’s suspended rail line snakes and weaves by way of the mountainous atmosphere is a sight to behold. Just be careful for them sneaky robots, they ain’t the kinds for an informal stroll among the many hills.
Right, again to the meat of Atomic Heart’s fundamental marketing campaign – its story-led dungeons. This is the place you may spend the vast majority of your time with Mundfish’s journey, and so they’re largely pleasing if not a bit repetitive come your journey’s closing phases. The amenities sometimes take form as multi-room dungeons that includes hectic fight sections, mini boss fights and a few gentle puzzling right here and there. The puzzles by no means actually posed an enormous impediment for us — which we favored given the sport’s general give attention to taking pictures — and in reality they’re largely omitted from the sport’s closing few missions.
As for the fight itself, Atomic Heart’s first-person taking pictures is pleasing when every little thing works proper. We discovered the early-game pump motion shotgun helpful all through, and mixing it with the sport’s freezing or telekinesis powers gave off some critical BioShock plasmid vibes. There are a lot of different weapons and talents to get caught into as properly, and we might undoubtedly see ourselves using a reasonably completely different strategy to combating when replaying the sport.
However, there are just a few slight caveats to fight. We ploughed by way of our journey at a brisk tempo and for giant elements we did not have the assets to craft new weapons or purchase completely different skills from the sport’s numerous merchandising machines. We scooped up as many bits and items we might discover utilizing our glove’s very satisfying approach of looting, however it could be value taking a bit extra time to scour each nook and cranny if you wish to experiment with Atomic Heart’s full arsenal.
Also, on console a minimum of, a few of the sport’s controls simply merely do not work. Aiming down sight is totally pointless as a result of some kind of goal acceleration throws every little thing off, and the truth that you may’t modify goal sensitivity by itself means there is no solution to repair this concern at launch. Also, Atomic Heart options weapon ‘cartridges’ that apply a modification to your weapons, and err, we discovered no approach to truly be capable of use these items. You discover them, they seem in your stock, however in contrast to the sport’s different objects there is no ‘use’ or ‘equip’ possibility. We hope it is a bug that is mounted shortly, as a result of it prevented us from getting caught into the sport’s weapon mod system.
As beforehand talked about, these dungeons are the place Atomic Heart normally progresses its fundamental storyline. The sport’s numerous cutscenes seem usually right here, and are impressively put collectively, giving the sport a ‘AAA’ sheen all through. Because of our general intrigue with the sport’s setup, world, and the premise of its Russian robotic apocalypse, we discovered ourselves suitably wrapped up in Atomic Heart’s fundamental marketing campaign.
Even with our consideration largely held all through, the sport’s general plot does not make that a lot sense past ‘the Soviet Union pushes science too exhausting and the sport’s equipment begins to take over’. Your fundamental character is wrapped up in all of this in methods we cannot spoil right here, however the plot is messy and we would have most popular a a lot bigger give attention to what is going on on on this planet round us slightly than the protagonist’s personal involvement. Oh, and get used to him — P-3 as he is identified — shouting ‘CRISPY CRITTERS’ each time he is irritated at one thing. Yeah, he does that lots…
A fast be aware on the general efficiency right here; Atomic Heart is beautiful and runs very properly on Xbox Series X in our expertise. We got here throughout the odd stutter right here and there, and we obtained caught within the atmosphere a couple of times, however nothing main. Mundfish has carried out an awesome job at pulling all of this collectively on a technical stage, and if the workforce can iron out these management points we talked about, it’s going to be an much more spectacular feat on this regard.
Conclusion
So, yeah, the place will we even begin with summing this one up? A suggestion relies upon by yourself curiosity with the world of Atomic Heart, we should admit. The sport’s premise stays intriguing all through, and its fundamental missions present some nice fight eventualities to get caught into, particularly in terms of utilizing powers and the ability tree system to create character builds. Yet, the sport’s overworld is essentially skippable which is a big bummer, and its fundamental storyline does little to reinforce the extremely attention-grabbing world Mundfish has created. Atomic Heart is properly value a play for the immersive FPS fanatics on the market, however it’s clever to mood your expectations when names like BioShock and DOOM are being thrown round as compared. Atomic Heart is a strong alternate-history shooter, however it takes a bit greater than constructing an intriguing world to change into a real nice within the style.
