Agent_4Seven
Tears of Nintendo
So, 25+ hours later, I think it's time for me to give my 2 cents. I''ve decided to split my thoughts into parts, each covering one or more specific aspect of the game (visuals, gameplay and gunplay, open world, worldbuilding, exploration, character progression, enemies etc.), cuz there's a lot to talk about here in regards to each one and I think it'll be better this way. Plus, I wanted to offer a different perspective when it comes to this game and more detailed one at that. Anyway, without further ado...
Worldbuilding:
The game takes place in alternative 1955 in Soviet Russia (USSR) after the WWII and right from the start you can clearly tell that Mundfish invested a ton of time in the world and lore of the game, from various posters, ads, lore dumps everywhere from character interactions to various emails and voice recordings. Not only that, but they even have detailed explanation on how each device / robot / tech works, what it is and so on and it's for every tech or device you'll find in the game, literally. Same goes for various robots, transportation systems etc. and everything fits the world perfectly with clear references to various Russian words and stuff of that time. It is honestly the most impressive worldbuilding I've seen in "immersive sim" since.... Arkane's Prey. There's also tons of Soviet and 90s Russia music (both original and modern mixes) in the game to set the mood along with modern stuff like Boris Brejcha. Mundfish even thought about it and explained why there's modern music playing on the radio which is 40-65 years in the future. Can't say much about the story since I haven't finished the game yet, but I like what I've seen so far and the worldbuilding helps immensely to keep my interest as well as relationshop between the main character and Eleonora and the glove as well- which are not as simple as you may think by just playing the first couple of hours - it gets complicated the more you play the game, explore and interact with the world etc.
Visuals and tech:
Easily one of the most impressive UE4 games ever from art and art-design perspective alone. The most obvious comparison is of course BioShock infinite, except the world in Atomic Heart is filled with Soviet Russia style architecture, art and sci-fi designs. The sense of scale is also impressive and far more so than in BioShick infinite. But not everything is perfect. I honestly don't know why that is, cuz clearly Mundfish has very talanted level designers and interior and environment artists, but I can hardly say that the game is visually consistend most of the time and it's not like there's a few bad textures here and there and in a corner somehere, no, each game has this kind of visual imperfections and lack of polish, but it's more than that in Atomic Heart. I hardly believe that these locations were designed and created...:
... by the same people who designed and created these:
Wha...? You're saying it's not fair? Well, how about these then?:
So, clearly it's not just terrible lighting, blending with the rest of the world of varions objects, missing shadows or almost complete lack of everything mentioned, it is also clearly visable and unmistakable lack of attention to details and just lazy copy & paste design - there's more houses and rooms that look like that in the game, which also makes me wonder if it was the reason for locking most of the houses and buildings in open world - they just decided not to even copy & past symplistic designs. Anyway, outside of these very noticeable visual and design blemishes, which makes overall visual asthetic of the game suffer a bit cuz of the lack of consistency and polish, the rest of the game looks absolutely fantastic:
It is without a shadow of a doubt one of the most impressive and unique looking games I've ever played from the pure art and art-design standpoint alone. Extremely impressive work and especially for their only and the very first game of this caliber. As I've said already, it's not always perfect, but 95% of time it clearly is. The game has very unique and distinct visual design cuz even though the world of the game is based on sovier russia period, I'd say there's far more uniqe work in this game made from the ground up in terms of desing and art.
Open world, exploration and character progression.
There reason why I decided to talk about these aspects in one sections is because they're connected and tied together. So, the way character progression works in this game is not only tied to you fighting robots, but also to exploration and open world. See, yeah, you can, say, grind resourced by killing robots and such, but the game will only let you upgrade so much while the rest of the progression is tied to world exploration, solving various puzzles etc. in the open world and sort of dungeons you can find and explore. It is realtively easy to find most of the weapon blueprints in the early parts of the game, but considering that there's like at least three upgrade paths for almost every weapon in the game, you won't be able to upgrade everything without finding bluprints for new weapon parts which are located in various underground facilities (research polygons), each of which are uniquely designed and handcrafted and the way you get access to them is also varies.
You'll know where each part is in terms of location in the world, but no one is telling you how exactly you can get to it, so you have to find a way on your own which is great. Now, the way you actually get the parts is pretty straight forward though, you just need to find 3 unique chests and I wish they were well hidden and hard to find, but that's not the big deal though since exploring research polygons, the way you find and unlock them is a reward in itself. Obviously, there's also a ton of lore for you to find as well etc. - but I don't want to spoil everything. How exploration works? Well, you can either travel on foot or drive a car to get to places, the world is relatively big (some parts of the world are unavailable due to story progression, you need to progress the story to be able to explore some more) so car is peferable way to travel since there's no fast travel, thankfully there's always a few of them around each area.
Here's the thing though, the game has gigantic quest marker on the screen which is always showing you where to go, but I'm playing the game from the start with this mod installed and 0 UI on the screen and it makes exploration far more enjoyable and in my opinion, you really don't need any UI in the game at all. Sadly though, map is not great and I think the map could be designed better in terms of visual help, cuz outside of cameras and very few other locations, you can't really tell what the rest of the icons mean. The game tells you what each device is doing, but you can't identify it on the map and at first you don't understand what you can do with them and how exactly. You'll figure it out eventually, but I think at least some visual help won't hurt the game. I sort of get where they're going with all this, but some of it is not explained well or not explained at all, so you might end up wasting time figuring shit out and pacing suffers a little bit cuz of it at first, but it's much less of a problem once you'll figure out.
Combat:
So you've a few options here, either you're using melee weapons or varions ranged weapons from standartd handguns to rail guns and rocket launcher. As I've said before, each weapon has at least 3 upgrade paths, say, huge club with two circular saws can have strictly melee attacks or you can equip a mod which'll launch saws towards enemies completely changing how you're using the weapon, there's of course less drastic changes as well but there's at least plenty of variety in how you want to use weapons with which mods etc. And the most brilliant thing about all this (and character progression as well - see below) is that you can respec at any time at no cost whatsoever and you'll get all your resources back, so the game encourages you to experiment and find a playstyle you'll like to use, but again, first you need to find the blueprints to get access to upgrades. The way you upgrade weapons is by using vending machine Eleonora (I've talked about her in other thread, so I won't be repeating myself here) and various resources you'll find. But the way you actually do that is one of the most cool things about this game - you literally suck them out of various boxes, tables, dead enimies etc. using your glove, so no more context boxes, no more long pick up animations and the need to press and hold buttons for conformations 2-3 times, no, you just walk into a room and suck everything out of it by just holding one button and moving camera around. Fuckin' thank you, Mundfish! The absolute best way to loot stuff in the game ever, period. You can also use various glove abilities, sort of like plasmids in BioShock. There's lightning (effective against robots), freeze (freeze enemies), polimer (sort of like oils which you can ignite with lighting and set enemies on fire, shield (blocks attack etc.) and telekinesis (selfexplanatory, haven't used it yet though). Unlockable skills and passive character upgrades also have noticable effects during gameplay.
I wish I can say there's also environmental interaction which you can use in combat but.... it's not in the game? Idk, at one point there's water on the floor and when I shot a lightning at enemies they got electrocuted, but only when I directly attacked them and not shot the lighting at the water. So, unlike Bioshock, you can ignite the oil to set groups of enemies on fire or electrocute a lot of them if they're standing on the water. Also, the lighting looks visually weak and lack visual impact, which I think is very easy to fix by just making the effect more visually pronounced at the very least. Moreover, Idk why but lighting is not so great at stunning enemies and I think it should work more like an upgrade you get for electric pistol which has AOE attack that stuns all robotic enemies around you, but instead of AOE attack, visually it should look like a chain of lighting that keeps enemies in places and damages them as well. Overall, I think combat is great and there's more than enough variety for you to experiment on how you want it to work.
What is not great though is....
Enemies:
But hear me out on this one. It's complicated. So, what's not in the game is the lack of enemy variety, but it's just... the actual enemies (or at the very least most of them) are not so great to fight with at all. The very first enemy you'll encounter in the game are Vovchiks, they're probably the most boring enemies in the entire games cuz they're stupid af and just running at you and trying to beat you with stupid melee attacks. I mean, FFS, Mundfish, could you instead let them crawl on walls, attack from sealings, transform hands into blades, handcannons etc. to make it more difficult and interesting to fight them? Nah, we'll just make them run at you and use very basic attacks. Now, sure, later on they'll get shileds and energy-based attacks, but tbh they're just no that interesting or different from black Vovchik using laser and again, they're mustly just run at you 90% of the time. There's also various flying enemies, be it robots or organic flowers - which are actually pretty cool as they act like headcrabs from Half-Life or enemies from Dead Space that turning corpses into necromorphs. Sure, infected corpses also running at you and mostly using melee attacks, but at least there's far more to them in combination to flying enemies and they're far more easy to kill (unless it's a big one with the hive on its back). There one enemie in particular which is even worse that Vovchiks cuz they're almost immune to gunfire and can only be killed using melee weapons and it's so boring, like, it has a shit ton of HP and has the same boring attack patterns as Vovchiks, even though they're visually different. I mean, ugh.... I wish there were far smarter human enemies in the game as well like in F.E.A.R. for example to add more variety and change things around. There's various robots as well with unique attacks and stuff which are more enjoyable to fight with, but you're spending far more time with the most boring enemies in the game. There's not enough visual and soud feedback and impact when it comes to some enemies as well, but despite all that though, it's very satisfiying when you do everything right, freeze a group of enemies in place, use a bunch of powers and weapons in combination, but it's not like there's enough apportinities to do that. It's much more interesting than any BioShock game though with their toy-like, stiff and wooden gunplay, which never was the best part of any Shock game in the past anyway. Can't say I liked bosses I've fought so far too. The first one was okay, but main character is just way too slow and you just can't circle strafe cuz you can't run sideways which defeats the purpose of the big arenas in the game - dash also doesn't help here and you can't time it so say slow time. All in all, the combat is 50/50 for me so far, I like it, but at the same time I don't cuz of the reasons above.
The conclusion (sort of):
Honestly, despide all the issues and imperfections, it is the best game made in Russia (S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and Metro series were made in Ukraine) since... Cryostasis? I mean, I've played a lot of very ambicious Russian junk over the years like Xenus, Parkan etc. which were way too ambicious for that time and for the teams that made them, they were also tried to do everything (open world, driving cars, fly helocopters, use boats etc.), hense weren't very good in even a single aspect.
Atomic Heart is the first game in years and years from a Russian dev team, that actually and finally made a great game and for the most part succeeded at everything they've tried to do and achieve. Sure and again, it's not perfect, there's plenty of rough edges, but considering it's their first game and it's that good in comparison to what was before and of this quality... I think we have one more and extremely talented team to follow here, cuz if their first game is so good and so well crafted overall, what's going to be next? I can't wait to find out.
Oh and, I would argue that Atomic Heart is way more polished, way better crafted and much less junky than original S.T.A.L.K.E.R. trilogy and the first two Metro games, not to mention that it's far more ambicious game as well with more variety in gameplay and gunplay overall (stealth is shit though, that's why I haven't mentioned it - there's just nothing more to say about it). That's just my opinion though, nothing more, nothing less
P.S. I'll fix typos later if I there's any left
Worldbuilding:
The game takes place in alternative 1955 in Soviet Russia (USSR) after the WWII and right from the start you can clearly tell that Mundfish invested a ton of time in the world and lore of the game, from various posters, ads, lore dumps everywhere from character interactions to various emails and voice recordings. Not only that, but they even have detailed explanation on how each device / robot / tech works, what it is and so on and it's for every tech or device you'll find in the game, literally. Same goes for various robots, transportation systems etc. and everything fits the world perfectly with clear references to various Russian words and stuff of that time. It is honestly the most impressive worldbuilding I've seen in "immersive sim" since.... Arkane's Prey. There's also tons of Soviet and 90s Russia music (both original and modern mixes) in the game to set the mood along with modern stuff like Boris Brejcha. Mundfish even thought about it and explained why there's modern music playing on the radio which is 40-65 years in the future. Can't say much about the story since I haven't finished the game yet, but I like what I've seen so far and the worldbuilding helps immensely to keep my interest as well as relationshop between the main character and Eleonora and the glove as well- which are not as simple as you may think by just playing the first couple of hours - it gets complicated the more you play the game, explore and interact with the world etc.
Visuals and tech:
Easily one of the most impressive UE4 games ever from art and art-design perspective alone. The most obvious comparison is of course BioShock infinite, except the world in Atomic Heart is filled with Soviet Russia style architecture, art and sci-fi designs. The sense of scale is also impressive and far more so than in BioShick infinite. But not everything is perfect. I honestly don't know why that is, cuz clearly Mundfish has very talanted level designers and interior and environment artists, but I can hardly say that the game is visually consistend most of the time and it's not like there's a few bad textures here and there and in a corner somehere, no, each game has this kind of visual imperfections and lack of polish, but it's more than that in Atomic Heart. I hardly believe that these locations were designed and created...:
... by the same people who designed and created these:
Wha...? You're saying it's not fair? Well, how about these then?:
So, clearly it's not just terrible lighting, blending with the rest of the world of varions objects, missing shadows or almost complete lack of everything mentioned, it is also clearly visable and unmistakable lack of attention to details and just lazy copy & paste design - there's more houses and rooms that look like that in the game, which also makes me wonder if it was the reason for locking most of the houses and buildings in open world - they just decided not to even copy & past symplistic designs. Anyway, outside of these very noticeable visual and design blemishes, which makes overall visual asthetic of the game suffer a bit cuz of the lack of consistency and polish, the rest of the game looks absolutely fantastic:
It is without a shadow of a doubt one of the most impressive and unique looking games I've ever played from the pure art and art-design standpoint alone. Extremely impressive work and especially for their only and the very first game of this caliber. As I've said already, it's not always perfect, but 95% of time it clearly is. The game has very unique and distinct visual design cuz even though the world of the game is based on sovier russia period, I'd say there's far more uniqe work in this game made from the ground up in terms of desing and art.
Open world, exploration and character progression.
There reason why I decided to talk about these aspects in one sections is because they're connected and tied together. So, the way character progression works in this game is not only tied to you fighting robots, but also to exploration and open world. See, yeah, you can, say, grind resourced by killing robots and such, but the game will only let you upgrade so much while the rest of the progression is tied to world exploration, solving various puzzles etc. in the open world and sort of dungeons you can find and explore. It is realtively easy to find most of the weapon blueprints in the early parts of the game, but considering that there's like at least three upgrade paths for almost every weapon in the game, you won't be able to upgrade everything without finding bluprints for new weapon parts which are located in various underground facilities (research polygons), each of which are uniquely designed and handcrafted and the way you get access to them is also varies.
You'll know where each part is in terms of location in the world, but no one is telling you how exactly you can get to it, so you have to find a way on your own which is great. Now, the way you actually get the parts is pretty straight forward though, you just need to find 3 unique chests and I wish they were well hidden and hard to find, but that's not the big deal though since exploring research polygons, the way you find and unlock them is a reward in itself. Obviously, there's also a ton of lore for you to find as well etc. - but I don't want to spoil everything. How exploration works? Well, you can either travel on foot or drive a car to get to places, the world is relatively big (some parts of the world are unavailable due to story progression, you need to progress the story to be able to explore some more) so car is peferable way to travel since there's no fast travel, thankfully there's always a few of them around each area.
Here's the thing though, the game has gigantic quest marker on the screen which is always showing you where to go, but I'm playing the game from the start with this mod installed and 0 UI on the screen and it makes exploration far more enjoyable and in my opinion, you really don't need any UI in the game at all. Sadly though, map is not great and I think the map could be designed better in terms of visual help, cuz outside of cameras and very few other locations, you can't really tell what the rest of the icons mean. The game tells you what each device is doing, but you can't identify it on the map and at first you don't understand what you can do with them and how exactly. You'll figure it out eventually, but I think at least some visual help won't hurt the game. I sort of get where they're going with all this, but some of it is not explained well or not explained at all, so you might end up wasting time figuring shit out and pacing suffers a little bit cuz of it at first, but it's much less of a problem once you'll figure out.
Combat:
So you've a few options here, either you're using melee weapons or varions ranged weapons from standartd handguns to rail guns and rocket launcher. As I've said before, each weapon has at least 3 upgrade paths, say, huge club with two circular saws can have strictly melee attacks or you can equip a mod which'll launch saws towards enemies completely changing how you're using the weapon, there's of course less drastic changes as well but there's at least plenty of variety in how you want to use weapons with which mods etc. And the most brilliant thing about all this (and character progression as well - see below) is that you can respec at any time at no cost whatsoever and you'll get all your resources back, so the game encourages you to experiment and find a playstyle you'll like to use, but again, first you need to find the blueprints to get access to upgrades. The way you upgrade weapons is by using vending machine Eleonora (I've talked about her in other thread, so I won't be repeating myself here) and various resources you'll find. But the way you actually do that is one of the most cool things about this game - you literally suck them out of various boxes, tables, dead enimies etc. using your glove, so no more context boxes, no more long pick up animations and the need to press and hold buttons for conformations 2-3 times, no, you just walk into a room and suck everything out of it by just holding one button and moving camera around. Fuckin' thank you, Mundfish! The absolute best way to loot stuff in the game ever, period. You can also use various glove abilities, sort of like plasmids in BioShock. There's lightning (effective against robots), freeze (freeze enemies), polimer (sort of like oils which you can ignite with lighting and set enemies on fire, shield (blocks attack etc.) and telekinesis (selfexplanatory, haven't used it yet though). Unlockable skills and passive character upgrades also have noticable effects during gameplay.
I wish I can say there's also environmental interaction which you can use in combat but.... it's not in the game? Idk, at one point there's water on the floor and when I shot a lightning at enemies they got electrocuted, but only when I directly attacked them and not shot the lighting at the water. So, unlike Bioshock, you can ignite the oil to set groups of enemies on fire or electrocute a lot of them if they're standing on the water. Also, the lighting looks visually weak and lack visual impact, which I think is very easy to fix by just making the effect more visually pronounced at the very least. Moreover, Idk why but lighting is not so great at stunning enemies and I think it should work more like an upgrade you get for electric pistol which has AOE attack that stuns all robotic enemies around you, but instead of AOE attack, visually it should look like a chain of lighting that keeps enemies in places and damages them as well. Overall, I think combat is great and there's more than enough variety for you to experiment on how you want it to work.
What is not great though is....
Enemies:
But hear me out on this one. It's complicated. So, what's not in the game is the lack of enemy variety, but it's just... the actual enemies (or at the very least most of them) are not so great to fight with at all. The very first enemy you'll encounter in the game are Vovchiks, they're probably the most boring enemies in the entire games cuz they're stupid af and just running at you and trying to beat you with stupid melee attacks. I mean, FFS, Mundfish, could you instead let them crawl on walls, attack from sealings, transform hands into blades, handcannons etc. to make it more difficult and interesting to fight them? Nah, we'll just make them run at you and use very basic attacks. Now, sure, later on they'll get shileds and energy-based attacks, but tbh they're just no that interesting or different from black Vovchik using laser and again, they're mustly just run at you 90% of the time. There's also various flying enemies, be it robots or organic flowers - which are actually pretty cool as they act like headcrabs from Half-Life or enemies from Dead Space that turning corpses into necromorphs. Sure, infected corpses also running at you and mostly using melee attacks, but at least there's far more to them in combination to flying enemies and they're far more easy to kill (unless it's a big one with the hive on its back). There one enemie in particular which is even worse that Vovchiks cuz they're almost immune to gunfire and can only be killed using melee weapons and it's so boring, like, it has a shit ton of HP and has the same boring attack patterns as Vovchiks, even though they're visually different. I mean, ugh.... I wish there were far smarter human enemies in the game as well like in F.E.A.R. for example to add more variety and change things around. There's various robots as well with unique attacks and stuff which are more enjoyable to fight with, but you're spending far more time with the most boring enemies in the game. There's not enough visual and soud feedback and impact when it comes to some enemies as well, but despite all that though, it's very satisfiying when you do everything right, freeze a group of enemies in place, use a bunch of powers and weapons in combination, but it's not like there's enough apportinities to do that. It's much more interesting than any BioShock game though with their toy-like, stiff and wooden gunplay, which never was the best part of any Shock game in the past anyway. Can't say I liked bosses I've fought so far too. The first one was okay, but main character is just way too slow and you just can't circle strafe cuz you can't run sideways which defeats the purpose of the big arenas in the game - dash also doesn't help here and you can't time it so say slow time. All in all, the combat is 50/50 for me so far, I like it, but at the same time I don't cuz of the reasons above.
The conclusion (sort of):
Honestly, despide all the issues and imperfections, it is the best game made in Russia (S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and Metro series were made in Ukraine) since... Cryostasis? I mean, I've played a lot of very ambicious Russian junk over the years like Xenus, Parkan etc. which were way too ambicious for that time and for the teams that made them, they were also tried to do everything (open world, driving cars, fly helocopters, use boats etc.), hense weren't very good in even a single aspect.
Atomic Heart is the first game in years and years from a Russian dev team, that actually and finally made a great game and for the most part succeeded at everything they've tried to do and achieve. Sure and again, it's not perfect, there's plenty of rough edges, but considering it's their first game and it's that good in comparison to what was before and of this quality... I think we have one more and extremely talented team to follow here, cuz if their first game is so good and so well crafted overall, what's going to be next? I can't wait to find out.
Oh and, I would argue that Atomic Heart is way more polished, way better crafted and much less junky than original S.T.A.L.K.E.R. trilogy and the first two Metro games, not to mention that it's far more ambicious game as well with more variety in gameplay and gunplay overall (stealth is shit though, that's why I haven't mentioned it - there's just nothing more to say about it). That's just my opinion though, nothing more, nothing less
P.S. I'll fix typos later if I there's any left
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