showing Atomic heart in bright trailers, gameplay demos and numerous screenshots, the studio mundfish he diligently tried to convey to the potential audience the key essence of his project in the most accessible way.
Throwing away all the superfluous, Atomic Heart positions itself as a dynamic adventure game about evil robots in the aesthetics of Soviet retrofuturism.
Having met him personally at the last closed presentation in Moscow, organized with the support of VK Play, the above characteristics can be fully confirmed. But in full on Atomic Heart, it will tell you next to nothing… the game is much more complex than it appears from the outside.
There are really a lot of evil robots in Atomic Heart, they can be beaten with an ax, hit with a weapon, disassembled for parts and stunned with electricity, doing many other interesting manipulations. Of course, against the background of Soviet retrofuturism. Caricatured and cartoonish, but from that and so expressive.
Taking as a basis various manifestations of the Soviet Empire style, Mundfish artists did not hold back their imagination and completely dispersed. Majestic buildings stretch with sharp spiers to the sky, wide marble columns remind of your insignificance, an expressive monument catches the farthest corners of the horizon with a glance, and the granite cladding of the interior shines solemnly and majestically with pleasant halftones.
Even household items, such as Soyuzpechat kiosks, the designers managed to ennoble with a mass of insignificant, but touching details. Almost all external accessories deserve the same praise – the design of enemies, weapons, scenery. Atomic Heart is a colorful style game that hits fountains from any angle.
The preview build presented by the developers offered several sections at once from different parts of the game world. First, we got to know the game’s opening scenes: a passive journey through the virtual museum of an ideal utopia, where scientific and technological progress catapults Soviet society into a brighter future.
As part of the setting, people live in prosperity and peace of mind – car mechanics are ready to take on almost any hard work and provide any service.
It is this moment that will probably cause direct analogies with the first hours for the most part Infinite Bioshock – there is beauty and grace around, the all-embracing presence of which only violates the sarcastic tone of the protagonist.
Also, out of clear context, the preview moves on to the expected episode of rich gameplay. Funny robots are tired of being funny, they want blood and destruction, which is why the protagonist, ex-military Sergei Nechaev, has to go to study one of the underground complexes of Object 3826.
Since Nechaev now has a sharp ax in his hands, and cars no longer serve delicious drinks in faceted glasses, here Atomic Heart begins to introduce its mechanical internals and rhythm: resources are limited, the hero is not very mobile and weak, mistakes are quickly punished.
Surprise. It turns out that behind the screen of a lively touch shooter, Atomic Heart has been hiding its other features all this time. So, the first full-fledged fight with a simple Vovka robot turns into almost a full-fledged boss fight – the enemy makes a lot of quick and painful attacks, and the window for a counterattack with an ax is very small. You have to dodge, finding the opportunity to make a couple of retaliatory strikes (the developers admitted that they love Transmitted by blood). There is also a shotgun in the arsenal, but there is almost no ammunition for it – it’s better to leave the weapon for later. You involuntarily recall the classic moods Resident Evil – a safe save room with a cute theme song is also nearby.
In order not to be so scary, you can walk through the scattered rooms. There, in drawers and boxes, resources are hidden – modules for restoring health and other useful things. The very process of “looting” is simplified and quite comical – the magic glove on Nechaev’s hand literally sucks all the treasures into itself, saving time due to the lack of hunting for interactive object zones.
Not having time to recover from the nightmare of underground corridors, where one kick in the stomach of an insane automaton can send the hero to the nearest checkpoints, the test build of Atomic Heart goes on unabated.
The corridors are finished. Instead of them – fields, roads, trees. Robots hide in the fields, robots run along the roads, even robots suddenly fall from trees. There is no more time to swing an ax, you need to shoot – a lot and fast. The melody has changed, and with it the general perception of the game. You simply do not have time to remember the danger and your surroundings, since Vovchik is no longer a threat, now the threat is Nechaev himself. An assault rifle cuts off a “bee” hovering above his head in one volley, a gauntlet throws advancing turrets into the air, and a salvo from a grenade launcher destroys enemies who rushed to the rescue.
However, victory is still far away. Need to relocate. There’s an abandoned car on the road – it’s on the move and can take you very, very far. The main thing is to open the map and choose a route. Here Atomic Heart is unexpectedly reminiscent of Far Cry. The open hub available for study boasts an impressive size, where there is something interesting in several places.
But there’s no time to go looking for something interesting: the game session was limited to only an hour and a half. But there is a large level further on, mainly focused on puzzles related to the environment – yes, as in some Portal. Atomic Heart also has giant bosses with their own arenas and cyclical attack patterns, also not really typical of the genre.
The randomness of the Atomic Heart experience could easily be explained by the limitations and conventions of the preview build. But in fact, the game itself is really not shy about switching masks with lightning speed – different episodes focus on completely different things, which greatly affects perception.
The swinging focus was even reflected in the narrative elements. Outwardly, the debut development of Mundfish diligently depicts a nightmarish story, where the bright and the good turn into the evil and scary. Aesthetically, the project draws a very romantic and authentic image of an unprecedented past: home and loved ones.
But here some awkward Westernized artistic clichés slip out. Nechaev, like the canonical hero of a traditional mid-budget action movie, casually comments on what is happening, swears vulgarly and does not want to waste time on trifles that distract him from the mission. Grandmother Zina throws away her faithful staff and takes a large grenade launcher out of the box, curses vulgarly and fires a volley at the approaching enemy.
The mood of such scenes and dialogues is extremely understandable: Atomic Heart creates an aura of malicious and comic hooliganism around itself, but within the framework of such a pronounced setting, the plot presentation causes a sharp dissonance. As if the picture of a sweet grandmother was not made up of thousands and thousands of old ladies who spend their old age on the benches at the entrance, but was written by a certain John Doe from Colorado.
Impressions from narrative fragments are also stimulated by somewhat strange Russian voice acting: the actors are recognizable and clearly trying, but the sound mixing in the preview version left much to be desired. Voices are randomly integrated into the game and sound like a studio recording rather than a natural part of the game world. But Atomic Heart is still in the active stage of production and some technical issues, including the soundtrack creation process, may be far from complete.
In order not to further inflate the material, some details and features of Atomic Heart have not been mentioned.
For example, the game has a large and complex RPG system – you can improve both the hero himself, supplementing his skills with new tricks, and a large arsenal of weapons. Guns are not only more powerful and efficient, they also change their appearance. The developers are making a serious bet on pumping as a whole – Mundfish representatives noted that some difficult sections of Atomic Heart can be significantly eased by spending time on effective character development. The music in the game is often strictly diegetic: fervent Soviet songs are heard from the speakers hanging from the towers.
In the open hub zones, Atomic Heart offers a whole complex system of hide and seek and collision with cars. Being detected by enemies or special cameras, you get the opportunity both to worsen your situation by unleashing the wrath of the local defense system on yourself, and to strike back in time by stunning the computer mind, which will again allow you freely and without Threats to study level
The mechanics described above are something the Mundfish team is particularly proud of. It was important for the developers to provide the virtual world with internal logic and coherence, so even the basic, strictly game tools, such as the process of generating opponents, are integrated into the prescribed setting.
Science takes courage. Being a game about the wonders of science, Atomic Heart doesn’t hesitate to declare its courage. Under the cover of one game, a whole bunch of genre styles and trends has developed. At first glance, almost all of them are made to a competent level, but in February we will see how well the mosaic fits into the big picture and whether it will have enough nuance to form its own gaming identity.
Atomic Heart will be released on February 21, 2023.
Read also: Granny, robots and the Soviet Union: New 4K screenshots from shooter Atomic Heart.
