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I rarely write reviews but this one deserves it.
I'm glad to see this game has mostly positive reviews. But whenever I read some of the negative ones saying the story is bad or "meh", I ask "wtf did these people play?" Then I ask, "do they have the reflexes of a Galapagos tortoise?" when they say the combat was trash. Spoiler alert: I'm going to disagree in fine detail.
Atomic Heart is probably one of the best new original IPs in terms of story and world building. Before I got it, I regarded it as a Russian Bioshock. After playing it and the DLCs (I can understand the critique of the 2nd one) I think it's a disservice to the game to think of it as a Bioshock clone. This game definitely has it's own identity, which is obvious from the art direction, soundtrack, and the world it brings to life.
It's well written, set in an alternate history timeline around the 1950's were the USSR became a near Utopian futuristic society. This game's story broaches topics like the communism (duh) and how political ambitions will always challenge the intended ideals, the need to be critical of governments, science's impact on human evolution, retro-futurism, and the concept of consciousness itself (various characters in this game could be argued to not be 'alive', but yet they're participating in the story). The 2 ending choices can be argued to be underwhelming, I can grant that. But the journey itself, was worthwhile. The dialogue between the protagonist, P-3, and his AI companion was great, with an almost comedic dynamic between the two. Getting to know the world itself, through some of most novel and creatively designed environments I've seen in a while was great. Also through the chirper (audio) logs and the lore docs, which were super interesting. As you would expect in a world where science has reached a level where people can speak to you even after they've already died. The game's weird too. Oh and get ready to be sexually harassed by a fridge.
English VO: Okay everyone, but myself, hates P-3's voice in English. They say he's whiny, he curses too much, and sounds immature...I can't deny it. But that pretty much describes me and how I'd react to everything around me if I was in his position after a murderous robot uprising, so I rolled with it. So maybe don't listen to me and set the language to Russian, idk.
Combat: I read complaints about your character being too slow.
You can upgrade to have 2 dodges, as well as character speed upgrades in the skill tree, and consumables can boost your movement even further. I've also read complaints about none of your loadout feeling powerful.
I felt overpowered half way through the game. Some of those reviews had like 5 hours on file. Leads me to believe they simply didn't realize the skill tree starts to expand your abilities like crazy when you really hone in on a play style. Or that the weapons were upgradable. The game allows for free respec'ing of your skill points, which is great and let's you really mix up and experiment with your power glove's abilities. There's an elemental aspect to combat as well. Your abilities and the weapons, which are all upgradable with different mods, can be boosted with elemental damage, which also can cause things like being lit on fire or being stunned via electrocution. If you think this game's combat system is lacking, it's actually your creativity. I've had such a blast fighting in the different scenarios the game puts you in. The game includes a pretty nice diverse amount of enemy types, which makes some of the fights really crazy when they all jump you at the same time. You'll have like 2 humanoid androids hitting you with a 2 piece combo and and ax kick, respectively, while a laborer model launches a buzz saw at you, with robo-butler about to spear you, all the while a flying drone tries to cut you in half with a laser beam from the air. This was the best kind of first person shooter and that's coming from someone who prefers 3rd person. Kinda felt like discount store Russian Doomguy at times lol.
The boss fights were pretty fun imo, a lot of them having a fun sense of scale usually involving some towering mech or biological abomination trying to liquefy P-3.
The weapons upgrades were solid. The PM with the revolver mod comes to mind, the handgun becomes a handCANNON, with an extended clip and thermal sight making like a mid range rifle for robot headshots. Another example is upgrading your AK to allow for elemental shots, then combining it with cryo rounds to unload a clip on an enemy and watch it freeze solid.
One critique is that the game lacks in reasons to traverse the world map other than advancing the story. The one exception is locating weapons mods, so the weapons add a little more game content in that way as well. But honestly, I don't care for this game to have enemy checkpoints to "clear" or whatever other pointless crap studios like Ubisoft pad their open worlds with so, do with that what you will.
The skills could've had a little more variety, but handful there is were fun to mess around with. There's a shield, that by end game literally protects you from just about anything, while regenerating you. Telekinesis as a lone skill could get you out of most jams and give you time to think and reposition. Using consumables like condensed milk or dynamos would boost P-3's performance by huge margins in combat (health / energy regeneration, etc.) I could go on but I'll save it.
My only critiques of combat is, I know they meant P-3 to be a badass, but by the time I was at the end I felt like an OP god. Fights would be anticlimatic cause the music would just be starting up by the time I wiped out the mobs lol.
I loved the first DLC. A lot for story reasons, but also cause it locked some skills out while adding a new one and a new weapon. It really forced you to change your fighting style depending what skills you had equipped and got used to in the main game. I played it on the hardest difficulty. It kicked my ass, think FromSoftware amount of retries lol...and it was all the more rewarding for it.
The 2nd DLC was weird and not what I expected. I played through it since I really like the storyline but it was strange. I wouldn't call it bad per se, but it wasn't particularly good either. Still amped for the 3rd one coming up, hoping it'll be a lot more like the 1st.
Stealth is kinda weird and not consistent in the game. But keep in mind I didn't fully understand the alarm system, but it wasn't really a concern cause I pretty much played the game 100% aggro all the time (unless a camera was really easy to sneak by). So it might be bad / might not. Not sure.
Oh and the F*CKING SOUNDTRACK. Haven't replayed a game's soundtrack like this since the Hotline Miamis.
Chef's kiss 🤌👌
In conclusion, my pp hard. 9/10
If you're curious about this game, and can actually appreciate decent world building with a little (no, a lot of) weirdness, and have the comprehension to understand that skill trees need to progress in order to improve your character's abilities, give this one a shot. I think it was one of more awesome surprise releases of 2023, even though I played it in 2024.