Atomic Heart

I probably won't play this until I finish Dying Light 2 but I picked it up and did a little play test. Without DLSS or frame generation I'm getting 120FPS at 4k max everything. Every once in a while you might get a single stutter but generally it's really smooth with reflex enabled it feels great. Game looks pretty good, but it's art design is more impressive than it's technical merits. I'm hoping they will have RTX enabled by the time I make it to this game. Leaving it out without saying anything until launch day has left a nasty taste in my mouth. The intro is long and I haven't had enough time with it to comment on the gameplay. Looks interesting but I'm going to throw this one on the backburner for a little while.
 
They later posted a disclaimer regarding the removal of RT. A developer stated they would reevaluate what the gamer wants at a later date *shrugs*.
 
My guess is they used Nvidia to promote the game and then didn't bother to get it working in a stable condition before launch. So, here is to hoping they deliver on their advertising but these days you never know. Like Dying Light 2, Atomic Heart doesn't support HDR either. It's like games are starting to lose quality as time goes on. Oh well, I'll revisit it in a few months. It does look unique and charming though. From what I played it was cool to look at and had an interesting setup. Very stable and runs nice performance wise. Looks like it's a best seller so it's doing well.
 
Played over four hours, got through the first facility and am now in the outside area. here's my random ramble.

The game looks great and runs well for me (some textures are really high res). So far the story is not grabbing me much and the dialogue feels pretty childish / amateur. Char-les (hand AI) and p-3 (you) talk a lot to each other, which basically acts as narration with quips and arguments. But so many times the game gets in its own way with audio work, as they'll be talking and you pick up a chiper (audio log) and have to wait for them to finish to listen to it. Or you'll interact with a vending machine thing and their dialogue stops completely and never resumes. There are dead bodies that talk and these are occasionally interesting. The computer terminals usually contain very very boring text. Game feels like it needed a huge trim and rewrite.

Gameplay wise it's okay. I still don't really like the melee combat although it's usually effective. You can do special attacks and dodge. The bots can grab you which means a QTE, which I don't like so I prefer sticking to guns at range. The guns are adequate but limited ammo etc makes them a bit annoying. The game is designed to get players using a lot of the tools rather than what one they like, since you have cooldowns and weaknesses etc. I find it a bit clunky. You vacuum resources from rooms but this is honestly really slow and tedious. In something like bioshiock you press a button twice to grab everything in a drawer. here you hold a button for a few seconds to get all the stuff from desks, only sometimes you don't hold it long enough. And some rooms have like 12 loot containers, so it takes a silly amount of time.

The first outside area is pretty terrible to be honest. They have lots of security cameras and bots that repair the cameras, so you kill camera, bots come, kill more bots, kill cameras that have been repaired, kill more bots. Just progressing forward feels slow as molasses and I think that's probably generally going to be how this game plays out. There is one spot where you have to fill a canister and these small flying things just spawn from nowhere a few times to stop the progress. So many sections feel padded out unnecessarily
 
I know it doesn't factor into gameplay, but I'll wait for RT and bargain basement prices to buy this one.
 
Played it for a few hours and then uninstalled. I hate...absolutely hate...the constant chatter between my character and his glove. Plus the writing is standard Russian-to-English oddball jank. And don't get me started on the S&M-loving robot vending machine that you have to interact with in order to get upgrades.

So in summary:
Graphics: 7 - decent enough, about the same quality as Bioshock or Fallout 4. The asthetics are nice and they really nailed the alt-universe Soviet communist party propaganda vibe.
Gameplay: 5 - About as generic as you can get for a FPS. I got bored of the combat very quickly. There's very little to interact with. Shooting at TVs, bottles, lamps, etc...does nothing but leave a black smear.
Audio: 7 - Good use of spacial sound and music.
Story: 4 - Generic and uninspired, full of standard tropes, and ultimately the least interesting part of the game.
Writing: 2 - Good grief. The cringe is real.
Total: 5/10. Not worth finishing IMO. Glad I got it on GamePass.
 
Ouch, that doesn't sound promising. Doesn't shock me though, reviews seem to be mixed and the project looks like it went through some development hell.
 
The writing is pretty bad, but often it's just poorly delivered. It feels cramped and clumsy and amateur so often. Then it drops silly technobabble for minutes that is barely comprehensible.

I find a lot of the above surface stuff also just messy and badly structured. There are vehicles around you can drive, but if you crash a few times the thing catches fire and you DIE shortly after. I'm about 12 hours in and one objective sent me to the other side of the world and I bypassed huge chunks of the surface because I don't really enjoy fighting bots that will be fully repaired a few minutes later. I've done a few of the testing grounds and these are boring, maze-like, and overly long puzzle chambers. But they're the only way you can get some weapon upgrades.

Overwhelmingly I just find the game clunky. Using the vending machine and inventory, clunky. Map is clunky because you can't set waypoints and it takes a few seconds to open. There's no map in underground areas which blows. There are lots of locks you open, they're clunky to open and use. Lots of actions take way too long which reminds me of Scorn. You get knocked down in combat and even grabbed, which makes the action clunky.
 
I would suggest playing the game in russian language, with english subs. cuts down on the campiness imo. about the robots in the outside areas. you can basically disable all the robots in an open area for about 15 minutes if you find and destroy a main hub. the game is designed so you cannot linger in an area at your leisure. sometimes you need to cut combat and just move along.
 
Native Russian language probably the way to go being a Russian company and dev team so would play out better than translated I would guess.
 
Ok after playing the first 10 minutes or so (will play mor ein case I am missing the point) but it feels like a propaganda program, the main protagonist is an arrogant SOB, the pro-Chine and Russia theme is very in your face and once you hear that then its hard to not hear it in everything that is said. But... will continue to see if this actually a good game (looks great) or just a swipe at the west via a game.
 
Ok after playing the first 10 minutes or so (will play mor ein case I am missing the point) but it feels like a propaganda program, the main protagonist is an arrogant SOB, the pro-Chine and Russia theme is very in your face and once you hear that then its hard to not hear it in everything that is said. But... will continue to see if this actually a good game (looks great) or just a swipe at the west via a game.

Isnt the whole story a pro russia wins the world crashing and burning into a post apocalyptic event?
 
Isnt the whole story a pro russia wins the world crashing and burning into a post apocalyptic event?

Not at all. The whole thing is pretty much isolated to the USSR. A rogue scientist has done bad things, and the robots are basically stuck in the middle. Best way I can describe it w/o spoiling. The scientist who invented this polymer breakthrough indicates he wants the whole world to have access. But then insert the rouge, military who only wants the USSR to benefit. And in that rogue military thing, you can basically insert any military in the world today ;).
 
Most of the game is about how the Soviets fuck up and do bad/horrible things. To me it's just like Rapture in BioShock. Smart dudes doing cool shit, and bad stuff happens.
 
Started this. Getting some stuttering and tearing using frame gen. Might need to enable vsync in this one.
 
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