Atomic Heart

ого, загон открыт спустя 3 года и 5 с половиной месяцев! всего-то нужно было подождать! спасибо, киприоты

It just gets better and better
Disclaimer: I play with all assist on and on easy mode, life is stressful enough already. Don't be ashamed wanting to actually enjoy a game without it getting annoying.

Atomic Heart plays something like a mix between BioShock and Half-Life. While some aspects of the game are genius, others feel bafflingly amateurish.
On one hand you have the presentation. Mundfish takes some big swings and most of them connect. The visuals impress, both on a technical and design level. Environments and set pieces are detailed and often impressively creative. The sound also deserves mention. Music is eclectic, but the quality undeniable. You won't like every piece, but you're sure to love some of them.
On the other hand, you have the gameplay. Endlessly spawning, self-repairing enemies. Dull, tedious fetch quests and puzzles. Repeatedly entering/exiting different menus and rewatching long-winded animations. Several times I asked myself: "Am I doing this right? Is this really how I'm supposed to play?"
Despite introducing a lot of cool high-level sf concepts, the story somehow manages to feel quite uninteresting. It's also laughably contrived. Throughout the story, basically every named character is revealed to be working for the opposite side. I also found the tone a little strange, it definitely feels like something was lost in translation (and the English dub doesn't help).
A severely flawed but commendably bold and ambitious game. A unique experience. Weakest of recommends.
Good to know:
Quite difficult
Fully playable on the Steam Deck
100ish GB install

---{ Graphics }---
☐ You forget what reality is
☑ Beautiful
☐ Good
☐ Decent
☐ Bad
☐ Don‘t look too long at it
☐ MS-DOS

---{ Gameplay }---
☐ Very good
☑ Good
☐ It's just gameplay
☐ Mehh
☐ Watch paint dry instead
☐ Just don't

---{ Audio }---
☐ Eargasm
☑ Very good
☐ Good
☐ Not too bad
☐ Bad
☐ I'm now deaf

---{ Audience }---
☐ Kids
☐ Teens
☑ Adults
☐ Grandma

---{ PC Requirements }---
☐ Check if you can run paint
☐ Potato
☑ Decent
☐ Fast
☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer

---{ Game Size }---
☐ Floppy Disk
☐ Old Fashioned
☐ Workable
☐ Big
☑ Will eat 15% of your 1TB hard drive
☐ You will want an entire hard drive to hold it
☐ You will need to invest in a black hole to hold all the data

---{ Difficulty }---
☐ Just press 'W'
☐ Easy
☐ Easy to learn / Hard to master
☑ Significant brain usage
☐ Difficult

---{ Grind }---
☑ Nothing to grind
☐ Only if u care about leaderboards/ranks
☐ Isn't necessary to progress
☐ Average grind level
☐ Too much grind
☐ You'll need a second life for grinding

---{ Story }---
☐ No Story
☐ Some lore
☐ Average
☑ Good
☐ Lovely
☐ It'll replace your life

---{ Game Time }---
☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee
☑ Short
☐ Average
☐ Long
☐ To infinity and beyond

---{ Price }---
☐ It's free!
☐ Worth the price
☑ If it's on sale
☐ If u have some spare money left
☐ Not recommended
☐ You could also just burn your money

---{ Bugs }---
☐ Never heard of
☑ Minor bugs
☐ Can get annoying
☐ ARK: Survival Evolved
☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs

---{ ? / 10 }---
☐ 1
☐ 2
☐ 3
☐ 4
☐ 5
☐ 6
☐ 7
☑ 8
☐ 9
☐ 10

Played through the main content and all DLC in roughly under 40 hours.
This is a fantastic game. It's like Bioshock, Doom and fallout had a baby.
You got the gameplay and skilltree for abillities like bioshock , extremely fluid and satisfying combat like doom and the humor and jokes of fallout. You got plenty of weapons to chose from and find. There's dungeons or rather "testing grounds" as they're called here where you find weapon blueprints or upgrades and crafting resources. The world isn't really open world but thast's ok. Graphicly the game looks good. the soundtrack and score is IMMACULATE. You got some banger tunes in there , stuff goes from metal to even house music. Story is also really well done. . The bosses are very interesting and later on are incredibly fun as they come with different mechanics that you need to watch out for.
There is one flaw in my opinion:
You absolutely need to get this with the DLCs. The main reason being that the main game has 2 endings and both of them feel VERY open and abrupt. The DLCs tie up the story nicely and give much needed closure (also new abillities weapons etc.)
Overall this was a suprisingly good game that gives you about 40 hours of content with the DLCs.
Most definetly recommended

Verdict: ⭐⭐⭐ (3/5) – “A visual feast served on a plate of chores.”

Atomic Heart is a rare breed of game: it is simultaneously one of the most imaginative shooters in recent years and one of the most deeply irritating experiences to actually play. It feels like a high-budget Soviet fever dream that was built by geniuses but balanced by people who hate your free time.

The Good: A World Like No Other
Visually, the game is a 10/10. The "Soviet-futurism" aesthetic is breathtaking, blending 1950s utopia with terrifyingly sleek robotics. From the haunting ballerina twins to the booming industrial soundtrack by Mick Gordon, the atmosphere is thick, polished, and genuinely unique. When you are moving through the linear, underground story sections, the game feels like a worthy successor to BioShock.

The Bad: The "Repair Drone" Nightmare
The moment you step into the open world, the game’s "chore" factor skyrockets. The core mechanic—infinite repair drones—is a disastrous design choice for anyone who enjoys the "clearing out an area" satisfaction of traditional shooters.

The "Whack-a-Mole" Loop: You kill a robot, only for a drone to fix it 30 seconds later.

Inconsistent Stealth: The game demands stealth but gives you clunky tools to execute it, leading to "Alert Level" spirals that drain your ammo and patience.

Artificial Difficulty: Instead of smarter enemies, the game just makes them "bullet sponges" as you progress, turning combat into a resource-draining slog rather than a skill-based challenge.

The Ugly: The Identity Crisis
Atomic Heart doesn't know what it wants to be. It markets itself as a fast-paced action game, but it plays like a slow, punishing survival-horror game. The protagonist’s constant, aggressive bickering and the repetitive "fetch-key-to-open-door" mission structure make the mid-game feel like a literal job.

I wanted to write a much longer review. But I'm gonna keep it short.
In essence, the game is decent. Not amazing. Decent. The base game has a lot of issues, from gameplay, to story, to not really having a clear vision of what it wants to be.
With the final DLC, I can say that the devs have made steps in the right direction. My biggest issue with the base game is that there was a clear mismanagment of resources, and the team overextended, trying to create a weird semi-open-world, leading to a game that felt as wide as an ocean but as deep as a puddle.
The DLCs fixed that issue by being linear experiences. Which lead to much more concise and enjoyable playthroughs.
The core gameplay loop was also improved in the DLCs. Even though it still suffered from the foundation that was previously set.
The base game was trying to be a mash of DOOM 2016 gunplay and "limited ammo" survival mechanics. Probably trying to immitate the systems in Bioshock or Metro 2033. But it never felt right.
This was fixed in the DLCs by showering you in ammo. Having a lot more combat encounters. And the game in general going for more of a FPS approach to gameplay. Once again, a more focused vision than the base game, and by extension, more enjoyable.
Finally. The story. This is something that sadly was a mixed bag from start to finish.
The writing is not great, the dialogue especially is extremely poor and characters genuinely sound like they're having completely different conversations, or like they're delusional.
A problem that is worsened if you play the game in English. The Dubbing is terrible, I'm sorry. It's genuinely Bollywood levels of bad. Characters basically speak gibberish. Like the script was sent through 2007 Google Translate.
Voices are desynced or delayed. Line delivery is weird and the emotion never feels right. Out of everyone Char-les and Katya I think are the only ones that are more ok. But both don't have lips or faces, so maybe it was more of an issue of trying to line up the English voice-lines to the original animations? I have no idea. Though they still suffer from those delusions I mentioned.
I ended up playing the final DLC in russian, with english subtitles because the dubbing was the worst it has ever been.
Still didn't help the writing. It's not terrible or extremely cringe inducing, but it's not great. Once again I feel like there is a huge indecsion on what sort of tone they want to go for. Is this a retro-sci-fi noir like Bioshock, or is it a comedy? Is this a dark, serious story, or a campy saturday morning cartoon? You can have humor in dark stories, but whatever is here feels really weirdly mashed together.
The one thing that worries me is that there are a lot of moments in the Final DLC where the characters make meta jokes about the game's issues. Comments about how a factory is huge for seemingly no reason other than "we russians like things big" and how no human would ever be able to traverse through it because "it was intended to be automated". Basically the devs joking about how the factory is just a backdrop for the level design, not meant to actually serve a purpose. And a lot of other similar jokes.
Had the DLC been perfect, with the devs showing they have now mastered their craft and know what they're doing now, yeah, those jokes would be funny. Like "ha ha, remember where we started guys? And look where we are now."
Thing is, the DLC is not perfect. The devs still have a lot of learning to do.
Second thing, that imperfect game they're laughing about was sold at full AAA price back in 2023. This isn't a indie game where you can say "Hey, we've never made a game before, go easy on us." It's a full game, with backing from a publisher, with a full team of developers.
My point is that I hope the devs are aware of the areas their work is lacking in. The ambition and passion is there. But humility and self-awareness is something they will need to keep close moving forward. Especially with not just the sequel they're working on, but the MMO, which is a enormous task in it of itself. Which only increases my concern, because now they team might have their attention split between two projects.
After a lot of consideration, I give Atomic Heart a 7.5/10. It's decent for a first attempt. And while the base game is lacking and not worth the full price. The DLC makes the experience more complete. Moving forward, I'll be cautiously optimistic about Mundfish's future prospects. Here's hoping they take what they've learned here and make something truly great next time.