Hello Ladies, Gentlemen and those of a non-binary nature, my name is Daibhi, this is the Gamerhub, and this is my review of the game Atomic Heart. For clarity, this game got reviewed on an Xbox One X, with a normal controller for the console. At this point, before I introduce the game, I’d like to make a serious point. Quite recently, we shared an image on our twitter account of a pride themed controller. For clarity, I am not in possession of it, it’s in the office. The image went onto our Twitter account, and was met with mixed results. It therefore behoves me to point out that this site is for everyone, regardless of sexual orientation, transition status or gender identity. The basic rule is just “don’t be a camper in a COD map”. Without further ado…

What exactly is Atomic Heart?

Atomic Heart is a first person perspective shooter game with several elements of other genres thrown in for good measure, most noticeably, RPG elements. It was developed by Mundfish and published by Focus Entertainment and 4Divinity. Due to the current conflict involving Russia and Ukraine, this game has come under heavy criticism, but we discovered when researching this game that it had started development in 2019, and thus our consciences are relatively clear when it comes to reviewing this game. Plus, we opted to review this on Game Pass so that we didn’t give any money towards the aggressors in this bloody conflict. It was released in February on to both Playstation 4 and 5, Xbox One and Xbox Series consoles, and PC. There is no Switch version available or planned.

Plot

Our game’s plot is set in an alternate history in 1955, inside the Soviet Union. Seventeen years prior to the plot, a scientist called Dmitry Sechenov created a programmable liquid called the Polymer and a resource to manipulate it, which sparked a series of breakthroughs in technology. This freed much of the Soviet population from having to do a lot of farming and manual labour. As World War 2 broke out across Europe and then the world, this gave the Soviets the advantage, allowing them to beat the Nazis with ruthless efficiency. However, just before the war had been won, the Soviets unleashed a plague killing millions. This resulted in a demand across the world for soviet robots to help with the worker shortage caused by the plague. During Soviet post-war reconstruction, Dr Sechenov created an AI called “The Kollectiv” which, in this author’s less-than-humble opinion, strays so close to the concept of Ultron from the Marvel Comics Universe, that the author is surprised Disney haven’t tried to sue yet.

In more recent times to the plot, the mad doctor created a neuroconnector. This device integrates the polymer into the body and allows people to wirelessly and remotely work with the robots, to be released alongside the update for the aforementioned AI. In Facility 3826, where this plot takes place, the launch of the AI update goes extremely badly, plunging the facility, and indeed the world into chaos.

Our protagonist is called P-3, and he’s got the worst job on planet earth in this game: track down Dr Sechenov, get to the bottom of why this update has made the Soviet Robot workers go all Blade Runner, and try to prevent the robots from massacring everyone on planet earth.

Gameplay

Let’s get the elephant in the room out of the way: this game plays a lot and feels a lot like you’re playing a spiritual successor of the Bioshock franchise, and some of the people involved in the development of this game have come out of the shadows and said themselves. This isn’t inherently a bad thing, as the way this game plays is incredibly fun. Also, I think everyone who has played Bioshock agrees, the gameplay might not be the most important part of the game, but it’s fun.

As the main protagonist of Atomic Heart, P-3 has some very inventive abilities (hence the bioshock similarities) and some imaginative weapons which can be upgraded at key parts of the game. However, unlike bioshock, no matter which difficulty you play as, you always feel outnumbered pretty hopelessly in this game, which is why you have to be faster, more reactive and use your initiative and ingenuity in this game. Blast and shooting your way through this game is impossible and will get you precisely nowhere. This game requires more brain than brawn and being stealthy here really will work to your advantage. The range of enemies here is seriously impressive, as you can come across many different varieties of enemies at the same time, requiring you to constantly switch tactics to exploit specific robot weaknesses. This game isn’t comfortable to beat, but I honestly think we’d all be complaining if it was.

Visuals

If there’s any reason to play this game, it is the visuals. This game looks stunning, and I’m happy to report that this and the soundtrack are the two reasons you should play this. The retro-futurism of Facility 3826 is spectacular both before and after it turns into an absolute hellscape, with plenty of visual easter eggs to real-world events and soviet-era Russia nostalgia. The Kazakh Mountains, surrounding Facility 3826 also looks brilliant with huge amounts of painstaking work done on the graphics to really show off the setting.

The machines you have to use to upgrade yourself at certain points have an almost Fallout feel to it, and from what we’ve been able to glean, were almost certainly inspired by the franchise. There’s a real aesthetic to this game which I can only describe as a mixture of pre-bomb Fallout 4 and Bioshock, with a Soviet Russia twist. Dear lord, this game is absolutely beautiful and I ended up stopping playing just so I could admire the game’s scenery and graphics. Due to the ethical limitations, I only played this game using the Xbox systems, and it was worth it.

Soundtrack

The music in this game is absolutely glorious, and really gives you a feel for the time period without any of the cringe involved. There are Soviet-era popsongs remixed which really adds to the nostalgia of the time period and helps keep you encapsulated in this world, and having talked to friends who lived behind the iron curtain, apparently this game nails that particular aspect extremely well. As well as using pop songs from that time and place, this game contains some brilliant original soundtrack. It had three composers. The first one I’ll mention is the incredible Mick Gordon, who created the soundtrack for Doom, and by god, he’s on form for this game. The other two are Geoffrey Day and the Russian game soundtrack composer Boogrov. All three bring a perfect Soviet-East-Meets-Hollywood film soundtrack to this game which was more than enough to keep me hooked for more than 24 hours.

Analysis

All in all, this is a very good game to play, with entertaining scriptwriting, amazing graphics and superb music. The plot doesn’t take all that long to play (like Bioshock) but replaying this game to explore the environment is what makes this game worth playing on multiple playthroughs. It also has a lovely New Game plus mode. Due to the ethical reasons, I haven’t bought any of the DLC as it isn’t available on the Game Pass.

Controversy

At the time of writing this review, a conflict has been raging between Russia and Ukraine, with Russia having invaded part of Ukraine and not recognising the existence of Ukrainian people, their country or their culture. This is spearheaded by the president of Russia, Vladimir Putin. Mundfish, who developed this game, are a Russian video games development company with no financial ties or connections to the ruling Russian government. That being said, multiple people on their board of directors have indirect (and two have direct) connections to the Russian president himself. Among Mundfish’s main shareholders is the company GEM Capital, whose founder is the current director of the biggest Russian energy company. The release date was also controversial, due to the game coming out on the first anniversary of the conflict.

This is why, we at Gamerhub, have chosen to use the Game Pass version, so we don’t end up giving money that might help extend this conflict. We hope for a speedy and bloodless end to this war.

Is it worth it?

Honestly? The price point to own this game outright is way too expensive to qualify and the ethics of purchasing this game puts it squarely in the Hogwarts: Legacy category of “Play, but don’t purchase”. If you want to purchase it, then for the Sony Playstation versions cost you £59.99, or £84.99 for the version for the season pass (which includes the DLC). For Xbox gamers, the same is true, but the base game is on Game Pass, which avoids the ethical conundrums of buying the game whilst helping people directly connected to an international conflict. For Steam users, the same is also true in terms of price, but for the next 48 hours, there is an offer going on in their online store.

Joystick Rating

A brilliant (if albeit short) game heavily inspired by two of the all-time great franchises, with superb soundtrack and brilliant graphics, this game is let down by a relatively paint-by-numbers plot, an uninspired villain, and really questionable ethics of purchasing this game. Thus, I have to give this game a rating of 3 Joysticks out of 5. Play it on Game Pass, enjoy it, but ask yourself if you can stomach buying it.

For the Gamerhub, I’ve been Davey, and you are all legends.