The fear of robots coming to life was limited to movies for the past few years, but now with the advancement of artificial intelligence and seeing their abilities, they are slowly approaching reality. The game Atomic Heart also tries to depict a similar scenario. A scenario that we have seen many times in different mediums, but this time it is going to have special charms. Mundfish Studio’s Atomic Heart looked like it wasn’t doing well on release day, but it suddenly became one of the hot picks for 2023.
Atomic Heart
- Users score
-
Metacritic score
75
- genre
Action-adventureFirst person shooter - Platforms
Xbox Series XXbox OnePlayStation 5PlayStation 4Pepsi - Game publisher
Focus Home Interactive - Manufacturer
Mundfish -
Game Mode
Single - Age rating of the game
Suitable for 17 years and above
Take all the technological progress of today and take it to the 1930s to 1960s. When the Soviet Union was still at work and war with the West was still one of the options on the table. After a technical/industrial revolution, the Soviet government acquires the technology to build robots and artificial intelligence. The Soviet effort is to become more powerful by mass producing these robots and exporting them to the West in addition to huge profits.
These robots are made in different types and for different purposes. From defense against the influence of foreign forces to help in logging, providing services, etc. Everything looks good from the outside, but the point is that robots have built-in capabilities for aggressive behavior. This capability could have become a plan to conquer the world by supplying robots to the Western country, but the Soviet Union would fall into the well it had dug for others. The aggressive mode of the robots is suddenly activated and they turn the whole city into a huge ruin after killing people.
Your task as Major Nechaev, or in other words one of the special agents of the KGB organization, is to find the hands behind the curtain and the perpetrators of this great disaster, in addition to controlling the situation and ending the killing of people. Of course, the story of the game has its own unique twists. Nechaev forgot his past after an accident and repeatedly mentions this issue during the game. This issue, along with the politicization of the loss of control of the robots, will lead you into a cascade of accidents whose experience in the world of Atomic Heart is extremely attractive.
Atomic Heart is exactly what we expect from a video game in 2023. Eye-catching visual effects, captivating storytelling, fun gameplay and most importantly, decent performance on PC! After going through things like Hogwarts Legacy and Forspoken, I couldn’t believe that I was getting between 110 and 140 frames with Atomic Heart at its highest graphics settings. That too on the 3060Ti graphics card and 16 GB of RAM, which seems to be struggling with many problems these days to experience new games.
I can’t remember the last time I enjoyed a first person shooter with sci-fi elements this much. Everything in Atomic Heart is designed in the best possible way. A new technology in the form of a polymer glove called Charles is in your hands, which has many functions. From looting the room to giving electric shocks to the enemies and… This glove is also considered as your companion artificial intelligence. Almost 95% of the game time you are talking to him and these conversations entertain you in addition to clarifying many issues and points of the story along the way.
One of the things you never get tired of during the game is looting the environment. All you have to do is point your glove at the chests and drawers of a room by holding a button, and then you will be faced with the charming animation of all of them opening and the items scattering in the air. The environment of Atomic Heart is designed semi-open and has prepared many surprises for people who are considered curious. Some of the rare items or designs related to the construction of attachments and weapons can be found in parts of the game that your path does not meet in normal mode. Of course, the ability to scan with your gloves makes you not miss anything in the surrounding environment. Even with this, you can identify the enemies and find a way to deal with them.
The duration of the game
Story: 20 hours
To complete: 30 hours
In Atomic Heart you are free to choose your weapon. Of course, these weapons will become available to you over time and you can upgrade them by finding the required items. An ax that gives an electric shock to the enemy or a shotgun with a lot of kick and of course a terrible effect. You are also provided with interesting individual abilities that are not available from the beginning of the game, but by progressing and spending the points you collect, you can use them to make Nechaif more powerful. Atomic Heart, by using role-playing elements in this episode, makes each person’s experience different from the other, and everyone moves the story forward in their own way. Even if you want, you have the option to go stealthy, which is really useful at times.
An important part of the game consists of puzzles and locks that you may have seen in other games. The same variety of puzzles help the rhythm of the game at critical points and save it. On the other hand, Atomic Heart owes part of its charm to the presence of Mick Gordon. The composer who is best known for his heavy and heavy riffs in the last two episodes of DOOM. Just get to a bass fight and that’s where the beat of the music captivates you. Visually, nothing special can be said about Atomic Heart. The game is extremely beautiful and made with the latest technologies of the video game world. On the other hand, its optimality for most of the system makes you not have any problem to experience it.
Is Atomic Heart perfect? No. Sometimes the combat system of the game (especially with the use of Melee weapons) becomes annoying. On the other hand, the creators of the game have greatly dragged out some events and incidents of the story to prolong the experience. 3 hours of Atomic Heart gameplay can be spent finding the keys to a door, and this is an issue that is repeated several times in the game. But in general, we are facing one of the best games of 2023, which can make up for the lack of a good Bioshock for a few hours.
Atomic Heart game has been reviewed with the PC version code provided by the publisher to Vijayato.
To summarize that…
Atomic Heart game entered 2023 with full hands. The correct use of role-playing elements along with the design of a dynamic and semi-open world has made Atomic Heart’s storytelling more memorable than we expected. The fear of robots dying and the hostility of artificial intelligence is something that Atomic Heart beautifully portrays.
I will buy it…
We haven’t had a Bioshock in years, but how many first-person shooters with sci-fi/semi-open environments do you know that have made good use of that potential? Atomic Heart is an attractive option for fans of these elements.
I don’t buy it…
If you’re not into sci-fi/fiction, don’t like first-person shooters, or want to spend your time playing something else, check out Atomic Heart! Because there is practically no special reason not to experience this game.
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Vijayato score90 - Users score
- Metacritic score75
