Atomic Heart

f you hate the english voice actor there's something you need to understand.
You take this exact script and read it in english and think "wow the lame protagonist is an insufferable jackass who swears every chance he gets and has the maturity of a 16 year old boy, how is he even in the military?"
I get it, I see where you're coming from. It's jarring and removes you from the experience, kinda cringe too.
Here's the fix for this exact problem. Go to the main menu and change the in game voice language to Russian. BOOM. The constant swearing is now perfectly acceptable because swearing at everything that moves and even completely inanimate objects that you dislike is an essential part of everyday Russian life. Whole game makes sense now, you're welcome. You may now experience an authentic story through the eyes of a true comrade.

Ah yes, Chaotic Soviet BioSTALKERShockCry.
I always wondered what was happening in Russia during the Fallout timeline... now I know.
1 cup of Bioshock, 1 cup of Metro, a tablespoon of Fallout, a sprinkle of Doom, and there you go, a freshly baked Atomic Heart.
It’s Bioshock Infinite without Elizabeth, starring Duke Nukem without the jokes or self-awareness.
Comrades, welcome to Sovietshock!
Atomic heart is one of the greatest games I’ve ever played. This is a game you have to stick with! The story comes full circle towards the end and everything makes sense. Huge plot twists and turns! It’s a movie!!! And the gameplay is amazing you just have to stick with it, it’s a game that gets substantially better as it goes on. I loved this game, and I’m not just saying that because otherwise my hot communist Cuban wife would leave me if I ever bad mouthed communism.
It's an homage to so many games I love with a unique twist and a ton of passion. And while the dialogue can be repetitive, it's so funny, like the one liners and cussing walked straight out of Duke Nukem and right into Soviet Russia. The game has flaws, but there’s something about it that's addictive and makes me want to play more. This explores what happens to the Sweat of Your Brow if the Man in Moscow has his say. So good to know they go dystopian too.
The game has a lot of great things going for it, art style was top notch, and the setting/story was interesting even if a bit derivative of Bioshock. The graphics are absolutely astounding, music is exceptional and the gameplay is fun, and combat is kept interesting. I enjoyed the main characters personality and the over-all asthetic is beautiful, everything is also so damn horny. It’s clearly partially inspired by Bioshock but it actually plays more like a Bethesda Fallout. It has some big flaws but can be very enjoyable.
There were parts I loved and also there were parts I hated. The standard missions and level design were awesome, it felt like Half-life/Bioshock. The puzzle based lab areas were excellent, probably my favorite parts of the game very Portal inspired, and it even ran well on PC which has sadly been rare for recent releases. Once I understood the rythm of combat, using melee weapons to charge eletrical ones it was great. Also using the polymer powers was necessary or at least with my build. The Combat was overall great, but the looting by sucking everything in quickly became tiring, as you have to target so many sections of e.g. a filing cabinet to get all the loot out of it. Cumbersome. The open world sections were also a chore that I rushed only to get to the test sites or story missions, and relentless robot respawns coupled with a useless map made exploring the overworld far more a chore then it needed to be.
The one thing I will give the game above all else was the story. I had fun with the game, pretty much all the way through, but it definitely had its issues and the open world and dialogue could have been easily improved. But man, I really did not expect that ending (the confrontation one) after what was a decent but predictable storyline. The characters (other than the plot twist at the end of course) were not subtle at all in showing if they were a good guy or bad guy but I truly could not have predicted that ending and it completely wowed me, it actually made me want a sequel.
It's a deeply flawed game, but it's worth playing through for sure. Like a 1950s Soviet Bioshock meets Doom in the best ways, and it's the most fun game I've played in a while. Yes there are a few rough edges but I loved it. I enjoyed the combat for all of the options it had. Weapons and abilities/polymers were really fun. The game certainly looked great too. With perhaps another 6 months to a year in the oven it would have been a masterpiece, cause it’s really such an interesting world that’s let down by some game design flaws. Overall though, I very much think it’s worth checking out.
Just wait until it's on sale though. It's not worth paying $70 for it.
8/10

This is a unique but somewhat flawed game. It feels very much like a cross between Bioshock and Soviet Wolfenstein The New Collosus, and that's really cool. The overall world building of the game is incredibly novel, and the presentation is very well done. Where this game excells, it feels like game of the year material. Unfortunately, there are elements in the game which are a lot less brilliant, and these aspects pull the whole experience down from glowing greatness to just good.
One major flaw in the game is the writing. While the world building itself is great, and the overall story is pretty good, the dialogue that carries the story often feels annoying, mostly because of the protagonist, who is a huge whiner. Throughout the game, he doesn't stop complaining about how everything sucks, and that clashes with your own experience of being pretty impressed with the world and wanting to enjoy it. To be fair, the Russian version of the dialogue is better, so it is definitely a fault of translation. Russian cursing has a lot of subtleties in tone and context which the English language doesn’t have (I sometimes like to joke that a true master of the Russian language knows how to curse politely), and all of those nuances are homogenized into a unidimensional tone that often sounds whiny in English. Since most people will probably play this in English, the issue stands, even though the original script is obviously not this flawed.
For the same reason of cultural tone lost in translation, some of the attempts at humor end up being quite obnoxious, like that horny upgrades machine that is a lot more tame in Russian, but goes full cringe in the English version.
Another major problem that spoils the game is the combat, which feels a bit like a chore. The weapons feel underpowered, the reload animations are long, and the enemies constantly knock you down. Overall, the combat is actually reasonably balanced, it's just annoying that the balanced experience is one of you fighting big waves of enemies while constantly being held back by the shooting mechanics, where nothing feels powerful, and things like getting up from a knockdown or reloading feel slow. I played it on the medium difficulty, thinking it's the "regular" difficulty, and it actually feels like the hard difficulty. Playing it on easy is such a better experience, and feels like most other shooters.
There were times when I was hoping to avoid battle using some stealth, but there's pretty much no stealth mechanics in this game. Aside from crawl-sneaking behind an enemy when they are not looking, or keeping a large enough distance, there's no way to pass enemies unnoticed. If you try to hide behind bushes, they'll see you anyway.
In conclusion, the game has great world building and pretty cool level design, as well as fantastic graphics, and a lot of Russian charm, but is dragged down by annoying dialogue and tedious combat. Both are fixable if you play on easy and use the Russian voice acting.

Great Potential
Horrendous execution
I struggle to say not recommended though.....on sale.
Can't describe it any better than that. It's so freakin cool, and so fun, at every interval that it works, until the DEVs apparently decide they don't know what type of game they're making or it feels like a train that veered off a track and suddenly into the nearest wall for no apparent reason.
The boss design when you hit the first "boss" enemy (rolly boi, so I guess technically the second), it's some of the worst I've ever seen in a video game. Okay maybe that's a bit exaggerated. But it's infuriating because everything about it is so cool in concept, except the devs apparently think that they have a game where the player character moves like some mf from titanfall and you can have an a fast style boss that immediately and relentlessly closing distance on you. Which would work, except that the game is designed around slow, clunky feeling combat with limited movement. So guess what? It feels out of place and absolutely. freaking. horrendous. to play through as you can't get away from a giant enemy basically capable of one hitting you. And every friggen time you have to go through the same in game "cutscene" to start the fight again, and why? Come on
There are other examples, but that's basically it in a nutshell. The writing is similar, fantastic concept, great atmosphere, and then the characters for some reason they decide to be.....giga edgelords? Or something?
It's worth it at like 20 bucks because it's fun for sure, but christ, what were they thinking with some of this stuff? So many things are so good but some of the executions and design choices are just straight up baffling. You can clearly see areas where there were big chunks of potential that feel wasted.
Edit: Also, in the accessibility settings, do yourself a favor and just turn on auto qte, it's there. Honestly, I'm comically sick of QTE's in game design, and turning it on makes the stealth "system" feel slightly less terrible. Yet another baffling decision there as well from a design perspective.
Final Edit after finishing the last part of the game: Still the same thoughts really. I enjoyed the journey, loved the atmosphere and the concepts. The parts that I really didn't enjoy, like the open world sections, or the often frustrating combat mechanics, stuck out. The other concern really is that the journey was fun but I wasn't satisfied with the destination, aka the ending, and there is no mission select but there is a new game plus that the game doesn't explicitly tell you about (until you open the new game menu), etc. The NG+ I think might make me want to play through it again...but with some dialogue skips, definitely. In closing, Atomic Heart is as equally flawed as it is interesting. Still enjoyed it overall though.

Awesome graphics, not elden ring difficult, neither solitaire easy, enjoyable story. My life's better after playing it.

I feel that if they had simply lowered the dialogue during the early and middle of the stages of the game and improved the combat, this game would be fantastic. For a game of this magnitude for a company and development team so new to games, it is genuinely quite impressive and overall, I did enjoy it.
Likes:
- The story setting and theme.
- Game optimisation.
- Enemy variety (I am impressed).
- Fridge lady.
- Terekshova
- Soviet Granny.
- Perk trees.
- Door unlocking puzzles.
- Visuals.
Dislikes:
- The main character talks too much. This takes away from the story as I sometimes feel that less is more. As someone playing this game subbed, too much dialogue happens during fight scenes which means I miss it.
- The gunplay and glove abililities are a bit weak, even with upgrades. I wish when you made contact with shots or a melee weapon, it had more pop and more damage was visibile.
- Having to respec part of your character for certain boss battles.
- At times the game can feel a bit boring and empty. It would have been better to see more living people throughout the story, even if some of them die shortly afterwards. Certain areas to feel less open and for exploration (others may disagree, but open world games get a bit samey these days).
- The flying robots that repair destroyed enemies. Get rid of this rubbish. Especially in the outside areas where you want to explore but can't.
- Too many individual boss fights for my liking. I do enjoy the challenge they present, but after a while you get a bit sick and tired of having to respec your characters and then fighting them.
- This game would have benefited from being a little shorter in terms of story length.

Crispy critters, I really enjoyed this game! it reminded me a lot of Bioshock and similar. I enjoyed pretty much everything. My only stressful and annoying moments were in the DLC Trapped in Limbo during the goose part... OMG!!! That was so hard!!! I ended up switching to an Xbox controller for that, but otherwise it was a very fun and sometimes bizarre game. Someday I need to go back in there and just watch all the cartoons. :D (And yeah... I say 'critters' all the time in real life (what can I say, I'm a southern gal) so now my son and I say 'crispy critters' all the time instead.)