Atomic Heart - Where is the truth? Is Pandora's Box worth touching?

Scandals, harassment, gallons of bile, illusory allusions to the promotion of an ideology based on blatant Nazism, and the propaganda of communism - this is by no means a complete list of the things that are commonly attributed to Atomic Heart. Is it any joke, that the Ministry of Digital Transformation of the Ukraine demanded not only that access to the game be restricted, but that Atomic Heart be wiped out altogether? You probably heard about the decision to sell the game on VK Play, about the deliberate underrating on Metacritic - and it didn't break Atomic Heart... On the other side of the scale of adequacy is no more: the crowds of bloodthirsty patriots. Behind the flood of accusations and radicalism, the quality of Atomic Heart itself faded into the background. The marasmus has reached its climax. Only a tiny fraction of all the reviews on the Internet are true...

...No matter what "trusted" sources you turn to, you can only count on half-truths. But there's one fact that's beyond question: all the previous scandals pale into insignificance with the release of Atomic Heart. The whole thing feels like another joke of a lifetime. Imagine with what thoughts did Mundfish start to work, what goals did they strive for, and what was the price of a dream come true?

Pressing issues

The most important question: Is Atomic Heart a product of pro-Russian propaganda? Yes and no. On the one hand, it's impossible to try the game while ignoring the theme of communism. Mundfish have put tremendous effort into visualizing the lost Soviet utopia. Even the prologue is completely dedicated to portraying the Soviet Union in a positive light. I will say more: at first, Atomic Heart is perceived as the reverse side of 1984, if the famous novel had been a utopia rather than an anti-utopia.

For those who miss those days, Atomic Heart will be a gift that can even bring on a stingy, nostalgic tear. For example, already at the beginning of the game one of the robots is standing in recognizable glasses, shaking his head in time with the music, playing on a synthesizer a remix of Igor Sklyar's "Komarovo" performed by musician DVRST.

But for those who long for the BioShock game formula, but have a great deal of disdain for Soviet aesthetics, Atomic Heart will either be a test of the psyche, or even cause gag reflex after half an hour of play. To assess the gameplay, mechanics, quality level in any case will not give prejudice.

Atomic Heart, on the other hand, tries its best to smooth the edges, so that no one is offended in any way. How? First, in that famous tourist episode, where the protagonist observes the local town of Chelomei from a bird's-eye view, the first hint at the Mundfish's position already appears. The protagonist of the game,-Major Nechaev, hears a cartoon news on the radio about the problems of unemployment in the United States, but immediately switches the wave, cursing: "Fuck politics." It feels like Mundfish has spent a lot of time making sure that their game is perceived not as a political statement in support of the current government, but as a visualization of the dreams of the older generation in the CIS.

Mundfish is not thrilled with events after February 24, 2022, or at least they carefully pretended not to be. So in one of the episodes the famous glove of Nechaev claims that war is the engine of progress, to which Nechaev bluntly goes into denial, Nechaev is against war...he is for cartoons. You will not find an explicit protest, still had to make a statement so that those who want to understand will understand.

And last but not least, does the game idealize communism? Answer: Yes. But here, too, Mundfish tried to cheat fate and sit on two chairs. We are facing an alternative Soviet Union. In the world of Atomic Heart, in 1938, there was no mass repression, but the newly invented technology, polymers, was being developed at full speed. Polymers are liquid information storage devices which allow many times faster data transfer, retain the memories of living beings even after death, and even control electronics with the power of thought. Polymers were invented by the brilliant scientist Dmitri Sechenov, who gave the Soviet Union a major technological leap forward. World War II ended with the defeat of Nazi Germany, but before surrendering, the Germans spread a kind of Brown Plague. In Atomic Heart there is no direct portrayal of Stalin, he is mentioned only in passing, there is no Trotsky, but there is Molotov, a controversial historical character. As a reminder, it was Molotov who made Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia part of the Soviet Union by force. Of course, the developers at Mundfish had to play this point somehow, so they turned Molotov into a negative, power-hungry character.

Rumors about the romanticization of the USSR turned out to be true. Mundfish does portray the Soviet Union as a paradise on earth, albeit in the context of an alternate history. But the closer to the final credits, the more criticism of the problems of the Soviet regime the player will see between the lines. Everything here is according to Orwell's and Zamyatin's precepts - he who knows, he will understand...

...But it would be a mistake to whitewash Mundfish in every way. On one of the locations of the game world is a refrigerator... with a picture of Donetsk from Soviet times. And in the game, in addition to the enemies, there are also animals - but with them all is not so straightforward. There are cocks, cows and ... pigs. That would be OK, but the game allows you to kill animals. And the behavior of the animals also makes you think: the cow is obviously friendly, but turns away when meeting with the player, but the roosters attack the protagonist. On maximum difficulty, the aggressive roosters do impressive damage, and the pigs are skittish. But if you corner a pig, it will fight back, screaming its heel. If you know who associates who with what animals, everything falls into place...

...But that's not all. A series of interesting screenshots of the game's UGA has been circulating around the Internet. If you believe the screenshots, in the depths of the game's user agreement it is written in black and white that by signing the agreement the player allows the Russian secret services to know his IP address and keep tabs on his computer. Add to that the rumor that the Kremlin sponsored the development, and you get a very dubious, foul-smelling cocktail. It is difficult to vouch for the authenticity of either rumor, but it is up to the end user to decide: "There is no smoke without fire" or "Believe only your own eyes".

Otherwise, Atomic Heart leaves the impression of a politically neutral game. If all of the above seems like an anti-advertisement to you, Atomic Heart is not your game; if all of the above doesn't confuse you, let's continue...

Ambiguous and out of touch with reality...

Second question: Is Atomic Heart really a bit boring? The truth is always somewhere in the middle. Rumors of a dull combat system turned out to be nonsense. Yes, the control of cold weapons really doesn't strike the imagination. There is only a set of powerful strokes with a melee weapon without the possibility to influence the direction, say, by moving the mouse. Also disappointing is the almost nonexistent damage with the initial weapons. So, for example, to destroy a VOV-A6 robot you'll need about six quick blows or two heavy blows. Heavy attacks take five seconds to charge, so almost every skirmish becomes a long dance. It's a good thing that the viscous melee combat system doesn't apply to all edged weapons, but only to the medium and heavy classes. There's no problem with a light cleaver. Plus, the game counts damage to opponents along the entire amplitude of the blow, not in the center of the screen. Added to all this is the fact that all enemies' bodies react correctly to different blows. Another thing is that not all of the game's features are equally effective and useful, and some mechanics are completely useless.

Since we're talking about an ideological successor to BioShock, I'd like to use abilities like Telekinesis when the game allows you to do so. In Atomic Heart, the same Polymer Jet is a completely useless skill, which also does not work without additional investment. Telekinesis, on the other hand, is an super-useful skill, because it makes it possible to avoid unwanted skirmishes and saves the player a lot of time and effort.

The firearms, on the other hand, were ambiguous. The impact, voice acting, animations, sense of weight, and appearance are all on point. On the other side of the scale is the lack of variety in the firearms themselves. For each type of weapon there is only one gun, which is pumped up to the digestible characteristics and changes the appearance at the same time. And everything would be fine if each gun had an alternative, but no. Only edged weapons give you a chance to play with different styles of play. Firearms feel the same, saved only by modules that change the mode of fire.

In most cases, the best modifications for weapons lies in the polygons. It is possible to get into one after hacking the "Chamomile" camera. Hacking cameras in fact turned out to be a little more interesting than on footage or from someone else's stories...

...But you still have to get to the cameras, not everyone has enough patience. The thing is that Atomic Heart feels exactly like one of the last parts of Resident Evil at first: the enemies are rare but powerful, giving a lot of problems; the ammo is always short; sometimes the player is put in the "run or fight" position among the narrow corridors; resources for weapons and character improvement drop out of each defeated enemy. Not without backtracking: as in any Resident Evil, the story will have to return to the place where you have already been, and insert the "key" to unlock the door. There is even the age-old, not the most obvious Resident Evil chip "Collect 4 fragments and open the way to a new chapter. Add to all this another Resident Evil trick - riddles, we get the fact that Atomic Heart in the first five hours of gameplay - it's Resident Evil 7 + Resident Evil Village, but in the entourage of underground Soviet complexes.

There are plenty of non-obvious similarities to Resident Evil. For example, the first firearm the protagonist inherited. Hello, the scene in the garage from Resident Evil 7, where Jack Baker killed the policeman with a shovel!

The tautology with the title of Capcom's masterpiece cannot be avoided, because the gameplay formulas of both games are almost identical. Deja vu is amplified many times over with the appearance of a new kind of enemy, the kultish. Kultish are archetypal zombies infected with the archetypal disease. Battles with them are almost always the same, but allow you to take a break from the ubiquitous robots and have a natural massacre.

Atomic Heart is an amazing game. It is both BioShock, Resident Evil, and Pray, a drop of Dishonored, Doom Eternal, and FarCry. Atomic Heart inherited its pathologies from the latter: an empty open world, a sweep of "towers" (i.e. so-called Polygons), and not the best driving system. Aside from searching for weapon upgrades, the open world does not motivate the player to explore. Earned resources as you go through the story is enough, and weapons improvements only with rare exceptions affect the gameplay. But visually Enterprise 3826 is done above all praise, even the invisible walls do not bother.

You will drive around the Soviet utopia in a Moskvich... and here again there is trouble. The car has weight and inertia, but as soon as you hit a curb, the car ignites, as soon as you hit a tiny stone, the car flies into the stratosphere and twists an Arabian somersault without registration and SMS. In addition, the hood of the local "Moskvich" is made of papier-mâché, and now and then obscures the view.

All of this somehow mystically combines into one game, almost never disintegrating into separate components in the tone of the narrative. Not everyone is going to like the narration, but without it, the game would feel extremely drawn out - the variety helps. Sixteen hours isn't a lot if you first play a typical movie, then a survival-horror, then recall Ubisoft's best years, then solve puzzles, then catch déjà vu over Doom Eternal, and then recall where everything started - with BioShock.

The sexualization of robots was good, and the mix of genres was not bad.

You know what else Resident Evil Village and Atomic Heart have in common? The mega-attractive female characters. Dimitrescu passed the baton to Left and Right, which is the name of the Twins. Mundfish deftly captured the fact that, despite her paltry screen time, Dimitrescu was able to enamored thousands of players and make it into the top 5 of orange YouTube. Before Atomic Heart, only the Japanese and Koreans allowed themselves truly sexy images, and now the Russians can be added to this list as well. But as characters, the Twins are of no value. "Sex makes sales" is the silent message that the Left and the Right send us. Charisma steel ballerinas deprived, two lines of voiced text and about zero role in the story. And even that role is limited to...okay, further plot spoilers, let's not.

There are plenty of vulgar jokes in the game. Eleanor's vending machine has been crushed by everyone who is not lazy. The funny thing is that Mundfish tried to reason logically why the machine craves hot big guns and begs to be filled with...polymer. The explanation for this behavior was unconvincing, but ironically there are only two interesting characters in the game: the horny vending machine Eleanor and... the erudite glove Nechaev - HRAZ. It is unlikely that Mundfish originally planned this anecdote of a lifetime, but the fact came out funny.

None of the jokes evoke anything but a smile. All of the jokes are flatly written, but they create the right mood for the game. Given the overall non-serious, redundant tone of the game, the pinnacle of comedy would be foolish to expect. What do you expect from a game in which the corpses complain about how they were killed, and some of the dead even ask to put them down prettier so that the rescue team won't see a twisted body...

The number of references also hints at the fact that this is clearly not a Shakespearean drama. References to Orwell, to the Strugatsky Brothers, to Bioshock, to Love, Death and Robots, even to Don't Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood.

Because of the desire to reach as large an audience as possible with an abundance of recognizable things, Atomic Heart loses in immersion. Mundfish had a unique setting, unique artistic talents, but no unique ideas. When a game feels like a hybrid of BioShock Infinite and Resident Evil Village with a little splash of FarCry, it's not a verdict, but it does require savvy.

Another thing is that the story itself in the game constantly stumbles on the developer's rake. Half of the locked doors could have been left open without code locks, puzzles, or puzzles--there are about three hours of real time to solve the puzzles. Where you could get by with a simple push of a button, there will be a lock that is easy to pick. Another lock, a puzzle, another lock, then another lock - the routine.

Closer to the credits, you begin to feel the fatigue of the developers transferred to your hands through the gamepad: there inserted an endless spawn of enemies, here for some reason closed unremarkable door, here put a marker a mile and a half away from the player.

The fatigue of the developers can also be felt in the development of boss battles. The fears that the bossfights from the trailers would be the best were confirmed. For example, the hyped fight with Hedgehog has both staging and music by Mick Gordon. At the same time, The Callisto Protocol's malaise has been noticed, which is that four completely identical bosses meet in different places. When that boss is first encountered, its appearance is accompanied by both a commentary by the protagonist and a micro-guide. On the other three occasions that boss was inserted without any logic, he works as a keeper there. Why?

I boldly write "developer fatigue is transferred to your hands through the gamepad," for playing Atomic Heart on the keyboard and mouse, there will be no challange. The player is presented with tasks that any average gamepad player can handle. No challenge for shooting skills, no difficult to control guns, no overly complex bosses.

Closer to the end, you catch yourself thinking that you don't get any new information. All the developers show is a slightly altered concept art that was seen three hours earlier. The only mechanic that is sure to please until the final credits is the loot collection mechanic. A lot of what was shown in the trailers turned out to be marketing and pretty wrappers.

You won't find any depth in this game. If in the first half of the review I was comparing Atomic Heart to Resident Evil Village and Resident Evil 7 in favor of the latter, now I have to admit that Resident Evil 7 is in many ways better designed. In Resident Evil 7, the selected difficulty depends not only on the health and damage of enemies, but also on the location of some quest items, and the complexity of specific moments. In Atomic Heart, the difficulty is just about not letting the robots get you into a corner or onto a texture. Repeatedly, you will have to die not through your own fault, but because the game has glued the protagonist to the rock...

Conclusions

Atomic Heart is a lot like a techno-demo. It's an ordinary, but high-quality linear game without any revolutionary mechanics or deep storyline. More to the point, Atomic Heart should not be regarded as something breakthrough or innovative. Going into the game with high expectations is fraught with the risk that you'll abandon the game halfway through, or even sooner. Fortunately, Atomic Heart makes sense to go through from cover to cover, for the ending does not disappoint. No, there are no unexpected plot twists. It's just that throughout the story, Mundfish diligently loaded Chekhov's gun, which even if it fires blank cartridges, but without misfires.