Atomic Heart

I wonder what is it with Cyprus in particular that makes it a desirable place for Russian game developers to allegedly start operating from, but both Owlcat Games and Mundfish have opened an office there: to hide their nationality that is currently very unpopular in Europe, and maybe to have an easier time with transferring finances with the sanctions and whatnot. I doubt that either company have actually moved an entire studio's worth of personnel to another country -- I think some sort of "façade office" scenario is more likely.

Since Mundfish recently released a new game (Atomic Heart), they've been more in the spotlight and accused of a handful of controversies. Whatever the verity of those claims may be, I'm pretty sure of one thing: paying for a product or service from a Russian company will in the end support the invasion war at least in the form of taxes paid to their government from that transaction. It may also be true that following the path of any money trail will eventually lead to an undesirable destination. In this case it just feels so unnecessary because a video game isn't exactly an absolute necessity to have.

At least my support was undirect and not very sizeable either: Atomic Heart was merely one of the games I played during a month of PC game pass at the price of 1€. Microsoft had already (presumably) paid the publisher -- whom for the Western market had been found in the French Focus Entertainment -- and who in turn (presumably) paid to Mundfish or their CIS publisher VK. All that my payment (and everyone else's who play the game via game pass) did do directly, was to tell Microsoft that there was some value in getting the game on their service.

Strong but imperfect debut

I think Atomic Heart had been announced and footage from it already shown a good while back but I became aware of it only like last fall when one of its trailers was in some showcase event. I found its Soviet retro-futuristic visuals, especially enemy design, to be charmingly unreal: otherworldly. The game appeared to be a first person shooter, and I hoped it would be even more: an immersive sim, or at least have elements of one.

There was some skepticism going around before release; people having serious doubts about the quality of the game. And even though apparently not all previously shown stuff made it into the final product, Atomic Heart turned out to be a solid game. It wasn't without bugs and flaws but definitely far from the disaster of an experience some were expecting. I waited a bit before starting my playthrough, and during that week or two, it got more than one patch. Achievements weren't fully working yet during my run but since I wasn't playing on Steam -- where I care about my average completion percentage -- that wasn't too big of a deal.

One thing a patch had added was a field of view slider. It's amazing how first person games keep on getting released without one even though time and time again it gets criticized and the slider usually added later. I could tell Atomic Heart hadn't been developed with a wider FOV in mind because during a takedown animation I sometimes could see my character's legs in a position that made it look like there was someone standing behind (which was a tad creepy). I think I read a more recent patch having fixed that though.

BioShock on its sleeves

Atomic Heart takes place in an alternative 1955 on the grounds of Facility 3826, a Soviet Union research hub. The nation has become the global leader in robotics, largely thanks to scientist Dmitry Sechenov developing Polymer, a practically magical substance.

You play as agent P-3 or Major Sergey Nechayev, a World War II veteran, whose boss Dr. Sechenov is. Nechayev is on his way to assist in the release of Kollektiv 2.0 that improves on its previous iteration by allowing humans too to interface with the interlinked robots via a Thought device. Something goes terribly wrong, however, as robots start suddenly attacking and murdering everyone. It falls to you to get into the thick of things and find out what's going on. To keep him constant company, Nechayev has a talkative AI polymer glove Charles.

Nechayev's reactions to things often seem unreasonably rude or overblown. Many criticized the writing but I think slightly for the wrong reason: I reckon a lot of it is intentional to give an impression something not being quite right with Nechayev. The problem is that Atomic Heart's BioShock influence comes off so strong that from the very beginning I could tell what was going on. The writing is not clever nor subtle enough for such a twist build-up. There's not enough material to keep it going and it becomes grating when even at the end of the game Major Nechayev is still piecing things together when you figured it out already at the start. I wouldn't call the entire plot predictable though because at least I didn't quite expect the ending panning out quite like it did.

Nechayev and Charles end up discussing about the problems of communism over the game too. It's the usual some animals being more equal than others stuff -- not anything new there either.

BioShock references sure are plentiful and constant in Atomic Heart though. The game goes far enough with it to assert that it's set in the same universe, which I think is tacky. It's kind of like announcing your fan fiction to be an official part of someone else's work. My favorite reference was the game implying BioShock's Andrew Ryan having been born as Andrey Rayanovsky. What made it so amusing to me is how the real life American author and philosopher Ayn Rand too was born in Russia (as Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum). It's like a double layered reference.

"Crispy critters!" -- Major Nechayev

I saw a lot of comments on different platforms latching onto Nechayev's frequent exclamation. I guess it stands out for being an unusual phrase. (In Russian, it's something akin to "fucking pies", or so I've read.) It's not even used in lieu of swearing: Nechayev has no issues doing that. I didn't find the crispy critters that odd: just a personal quirk. And if you play the game long enough, Nechayev's tendency to use the phrase does actually get a backstory.

I did initially start playing the game with Russian voices but there's so much talking everywhere in the prologue that following it just by the game's miniscule and rolling subtitles was impossible. Based on the brief time I played with the Russian audio, I have to say that they managed to cast very similar sounding English actors for the game -- at least for the people I heard in the prologue. I thought the English cast was good too. They were clearly considered secondary, however, as the actors are listed in an alphabetical order in the credits without their characters, making it impossible to figure out who's who.

It's kind of interesting too how the English voices don't have an acted Russian accent. I wonder if that's because the developers themselves are Russian: you don't want to hear someone imitating your own accent. Like how Ubisoft didn't have problems having the voice actors in Assassin's Creed II put on an Italian accent but then in Assassin's Creed Unity, the French characters have British accents on English voices. (Or so I've heard: I'm still to play that game myself.) I didn't mind the American accents in Atomic Heart. Most American accents sound so generic, like neutral, to me that I didn't have trouble with suspending my disbelief in that regard, ignoring where the game is set.

Meaty combat

The combat of Atomic Heart felt very good to me. Enemies telegraph their attacks clearly and you have a quick and responsive dodge move to avoid them (as long as you don't corner yourself like I did few times). I particularly loved the absolute menacing purpose in the enemy androids' movement. They're like the working joes in Alien: Isolation but even more threatening (though more amusing as well with their silly mustaches). They react in an extremely satisfying manner to being hit by a shotgun too.

The shotgun -- called KS-23 in the game -- is a great weapon. Even though it's tube-fed, it's not as slow-ass to reload as it would be in games like most Far Cry titles or the more recent Redfall. With upgrades, Nechayev shoves two shells into the gun at once -- and with urgency too -- making the gun viable in situations where a box-magazines-using gun would usually be much better. Once I managed to have the shotgun reload animation play at the same time as I was looting, making it appear as if Nechayev had three arms. That was pretty funny.

Looting is one of Atomic Heart's gimmicks: by holding down the button you can suck containers clean from a distance without going through them manually. It's a novel idea but in practice collecting everything still takes a considerable amount of time. It was very nice the developers made items transfer into your stash when inventory is full, avoiding the usual hassle many games have.

The KS-23 is one of the regular weapons in the game: there are also more futuristic energy weapons and a surprisingly wide selection of melee weapons. Melee combat is hardly anything special but it works -- and quickens the recharge of the energy weapons.

As far as immersive sim elements go, there's not really any. There are no alternative paths, barely any interacting elements; Atomic Heart is very much a straightforward first person shooter, although it does have (mostly optional) traversal puzzles and quirky hacking minigames.

Your polymer abilities are too modest as well, not even having the proper combos of BioShock Infinite. The Shock ability is always useful against the numerous robotic enemies, but the Levitation and Freeze ones seemed to be redundant with each other. And the Shield I didn't find worth using -- might as well just dodge enemies. There is also Polymer spray you can use first to amplify elemental effects but it felt completely useless: just use your rocket launcher to kill those bosses. You can re-distribute your points at will -- at the sultry vending machine Nora -- so you're free to experiment with what there is at least.

Unnecessarily wipe map

Atomic Heart begins in a fairly linear manner but once you get out of the introductory areas, after a train ride, you'll find yourself in a rather wide open map that connects the rest of the game's locations. The purpose of the open world is questionable. I suppose it is more immersive that way but gameplay-wise the overworld doesn't offer much outside added travel time and tedium.

Your base movement is fairly fast but you can't sprint. With sprint sliding would have been cool to have too -- I've gotten kind of used to having that in first person shooters. Ledge grabbing could be more universal too. The way it is, is pretty much like Far Cry games: janky and fiddly.

You can find generic crafting materials in the premises and on destroyed robots but it soon becomes counterproductive: Destroying a robot summons endless repair drones to fix the robots who then no longer drop loot. There are a few dead bodies to find for (potentially working) achievements and I think twice there was some searching involved in unlocking an optional laboratory -- or dungeon, as Nechayev likes to call them. Charles tries to give you an in-game reasoning to search the places but Nechayev then goes to remind you that you're playing a video game. That kind of meta writing I would personally leave out of a non-parody game; no need to purposefully try to pull the player out of the experience.

I was feeling adventurous and decided to go do all the optional places the moment the game opened up. With the exception of maybe one, you can get into the places right away too. Based on my experience, however, I would say it's not worth it to rush to them. Getting the additional weapon part designs earlier doesn't benefit you all that much and you waste time due to having to do same journey again when following the story since there's no fast travel. It's a better idea to drop into the optional places when you're going past them later.

I'm not sure if the game should really tell you beforehand the important loot you will find in each. It makes sense that Charles is able to pull that information from the Facility's network but I reckon Mundfish could've left it a mystery as well; have them be fun surprises for the player. I did like the dungeons though. They could have had more complex and varying puzzles that require your polymer abilities, but even as they were, I did greatly enjoy the action-adventure they offered.

Unique presentation

Like I mentioned, I found Atomic Heart's visual design to be great. The game's color palette wasn't to my liking though. I'm not sure why exactly, maybe the it's the leafy green with blood red and sky blue or maybe its overall simplicity -- definitely a personal dispreference regardless. I guess really it's the outdoors' colors I don't like: all the indoors locations look a lot more pleasant to my eyes.

I think user interface art is also one of the weakest parts of the game -- the small subtitles for instance. Some screens are so unclear too. Thin, 1-pixel wide dashed borders must look even worse on resolutions above the 1080p I played the game in.

Atomic Heart's soundtrack is an intriguing and unique mix. There's a lot of different Russian songs, operas, tangos, and then heavier combat music. It all works well too. One combat track in endgame was outright power metal -- and that doesn't happen often in video games. Mick Gordon contributed to the soundtrack and I recognized at least one of his compositions. (He later donated his fee to charity to support Ukraine.)

I'm not sure if Atomic Heart is worth replaying after going through it as thoroughly as I did. But for one playthrough it was without a doubt a good experience. The game's getting DLC but because that is unlikely to be included on game pass, I won't be visiting it anytime soon.

Edited 2023-20-05: Added more thoughts to voice acting, movement, and ability sections.

Absolutely love the brutalist style in the founders' hall