Atomic Heart Review

Atomic Heart is set in a utopian world where humans live in harmony with their loyal and fervent robots. A few days before the launch of the latest robot control system, a tragic accident occurs where robots go haywire and turn on their owners. In comes Major Sergei Nechaev, a.k.a. P-3, and his trusty Polymer Glove named Charles to go head-to-head with enemy robots and failed biomechanical experiments all the while trying to survive his own deteriorating mental state.

At first glance, Atomic Heart comes across as a typical first-person shooter where you go around various areas and blow up enemies standing in your way while dodging attacks. Well, you’re half right. The game also has a decent emphasis on puzzle solving and a lot of fetch questing. There’s also quite a bit of reliance on stealth, especially in outside areas as enemies are relentless once you’re spotted. Combat implements elemental resistance/weakness, but it has a minimal impact. Some enemies will be resistant to guns meaning you need to use melee weapons and vice versa.

As you trash the robotic menace and explore every nook and cranny of available surface, you’ll find gear and resources that will allow you to craft new weaponry (as long as you found the necessary recipe), ammo and consumables, upgrade weapons, but also unlock new skills by visiting NORA. While our protagonist is a highly skilled soldier, his glove will come in handy as it’s how he can use skills such as Ice, Electricity, and Telekinesis. Special abilities and character skills such as health and dodging can be upgraded for an additional edge in battle. There’s interesting swimming sequences where you swim in Polymer; translucent water like canals that allows you to swim upwards.

The game does look great; the environments are highly detailed as well as the character models. There’s also a decent enemy variety. You’ll find highly creepy robots with porn-staches, disgusting bugs that spit fire, and infected humans that look like Clickers; just to name a few. The outdoors are just beautiful to look at and the whole game has a bit of a Wolfenstein/Bioshock feel to it. The atmosphere is top-notch; whether it be outside being chased by crazy robots or in closed quarters where everything feels eerie. The soundtrack is also noteworthy for the most part; my favorite is definitely the boss battle theme. The voiceover is also spot-on; lines are delivered with conviction, however, the banter between P-3 and Charles gets old really fast. It gets a bit interesting a few hours in when the glove explains the backstory.

As much as this pains me to write, the game is riddled with issues such as multiple accidental wall clipping and not being able to get out without resetting the game and it also kept crashing when reloading a few saves types of bugs. Then there are the annoying QTEs. When enemies are up close, they can grab you and you’ll need to successfully pull off consecutive button prompts in order to escape their grasp. If you miss, you die. Even on Easy difficulty setting. There are a handful of diverse ways to lock pick, but one of them is quite annoying as it requires the player to press A when the light is green near the lock is infuriating if you’re struggling with timing.

Furthermore, the game’s announcement and following trailers showed a beautiful, near-realistic environment and setting, but unfortunately, Mundfish pulled a Ubisoft as the game doesn’t look near as good and crisp as the trailers. And finally, the lack of accessibility features is just baffling at this point. Being able to adjust subtitles (font size, color, etc…) or skip annoying QTEs should be a no-brainer and commonplace in gaming.

Also, the platforming is incredibly annoying; as it is in most FPS. It’s not as bad as DOOM Eternal’s neverending platforming sequences, but it’s enough to bring the game’s flow to a dead stop. Furthermore, being constantly harassed by relentless enemies makes exploring incredibly frustrating, especially when certain areas have special robots that will bring back to life the recently trashed bots. Also, every time you craft something at NORA, it will kick you out until you pick up the crafted item, meaning you can’t just go in once and craft everything.

Atomic Heart is a thinking gamer’s type of game. This is not the type of game where you run and gun everything. Every time it gets good and intense, the pacing is absolutely murdered by annoying platforming, puzzles, or fetch-questing; 3 things that feel wildly out of place in an FPS. Combat is blood-pumping and intense (great boss battles!) however you can sometimes be easily outnumbered and massacred quite unfairly. There’s nothing that makes it stand out from other shooters. If you have GamePass, definitely give it a try. If you don’t, sub for a month to GamePass; you’ll get the chance to try better-paced FPS.