Of course, Atomic Heart was not made by several teams.
Its the debut game of just one, Mundfish, and as a first attempt its impressively ambitious.
For the motherland, yeah?
The Irrational inspiration is clear.
Like I say, its ambitious, and a lot of the time it all works quite well.
All the components for a great shooter are here, then, but there are problems.
The first is that Atomic Heart stretches out certain encounters far too long for its own good.
Not to mention a drain on already limited ammo and health supplies, necessitating yet more drawer-rummaging.
The selection of glove powers is disappointing too.
Which is even more of a shame, given some of the marvellously designed arenas.
P-3 himself presents another duality problem.
Those opening hours, with their survival horror focus?
This guy talks through them like an annoying cinemagoer.
“Fuck my life”, he moans, unironically and about sixty years before it became a phrase.
Another: the open world.
But besides acting as a transitional space to reach them, the open world serves no structural purpose.
Other concepts might have a stronger logical basis, but are then left undeveloped or even dropped entirely.
Why bother with her in the first place?
Yes, Atomic Heart may possess the look of a AAA blockbuster, but it hasEurojankDNA.
This is not to downplay Atomic Hearts technical accomplishments in other places.
The same card and prefs will generally stay above 70fps at 4K, too.
Outside of the dialogue issue, Mundfishs sound team have also done great work.
In addition to the synthy OST, Atomic Heart is peppered with licensed songs from Mundfishs native Russia.
In other words, Atomic Heart is probably not a soft power weapon being wielded by the Putin regime.
It is, however, dangerously close to USSR fanfiction.
Im not outraged by it, but its definitely uncomfortable to watch, especially given the real-world circumstances.
For every miserable onslaught of respawning bots, theres an intoxicatingly tense run-and-gun battle.
For every work of artistry in the sound design and environments, theres a scene of utterly sub-par scripting.
