izigame.me

Note: This review comes from my beloved girlfriend.
Annihilation Instinct is in almost every way a let down of a DLC. The first act is decent mostly because of the new enemy type which I thought was a very clever and creative subversion of something we've already witnessed plenty in the main game. The second main enemy of the game however is the complete subversion of that in all the worst ways possible. They spawn in millions, poke at you and immediately retreat to a safe distance so that using melee on them becomes nigh impossible. The only enemy more obnoxious than that I could envision would be some sort of a teleporting enemy that does so on every hit.
The DLC in question is quite a significant departure from the main game. The main game had a Bioshock approach to level design. In contrast to that Annihilation Instinct consists of mostly very claustrophobic combat arenas, which I'm not sure jells well at all with the gameplay seeded in the main game. The boss that comes back twice is also quite atrocious as it's just a combined version of the aforementioned grating enemy.
I've seen people complain about difficulty, and yes I understand that. Had I not used my broken dancing blades build I'd be in the same place, because the amount of enemies at one time is just stupefying. It's literally dozens upon dozens of them and they just keep coming and coming and coming. It's a total cluster****. And once you have that I think you've lost it as a game designer unless we're talking about games like Vampire Survivors in which such things are precisely the point. And again, the point is that Atomic Heart is ill suited for something like this and that's what makes it a bad design decision.
To add insult to injury the DLC is hopelessly buggy. You can install cartridge modules onto your weapons, the problem is that cartridges have been completely taken out of this DLC. You can't craft them, and I've never found a single one as loot. Moreover you can't even craft weapons, which might lead you into a soft lock because you can still dismantle them! I also had an issue in which the objective wouldn't trigger after I killed every enemy, soft locking me, as a consequence I had to restart a rather brutal fight. Very frustrating to say the least. Finally there's constant issues with music. Mostly music being played from different sources with a slight delay (the music in the game is mostly diegetic). Let's just say it's very distracting. Also during the final boss fight the puzzle music stuck and kept playing throughout the fight, after the fight during the parting words and even during the pre-rendered cutscene! Suffice to say all of this needs to be fixed a.s.a.p. as it's pretty obvious the DLC was pushed out bypassing a lot of the QA.
The story is okay. It picks up from the cliffhanger of the main game. And this is the only reason to play it if at all. So unless you're allergic to watching a four hour walkthrough on YT, and can survive throwing away a tenner, then go for it. Otherwise stay away at all costs (but not the cost of a tenner).