Atomic Heart (PlayStation 5)

Atomic Heart is one of this year's biggest surprises, and if you like games like the first Bioshock you should definitely give this one a go.The story is pretty good, but a bit predictable at times. However, the real star of the show here is the game's lore which you discover by reading through people's emails, and by listening to audio logs which you will find scattered throughout the world.The graphics, art style, music are all absolutely amazing. The game is oozing personality, and is an absolute treat to look at and listen to. But I'm gonna be honest and admit that I did hate the protagonist's cringy attitude and catchphrase, which you will probably too, but I decided to stick with it and he ended up growing on me. At one point the game explains everything about why the dude is like that, and I guess I decided to cut him some slack. He also does get a lot less annoying as the story progresses, so that helps. Some people say the writing is bad, but that's like saying that King Joffrey from GoT is a case of bad writing because everyone hated his guts. Maybe not every single character in a videogame is supposed to be likeable right off the bat.To get this out of the way, the game is not "pro Russian propaganda", and any propaganda featured in the game is actually only relevant in the context of the game's world and story, and is used for world building purposes, similar to how a game like Wolfenstein isn't pro Nazi propaganda.The gameplay is really solid, but Atomic Heart is one of those games that intentionally nerf the player's default skills to begin with. To give you an example, at the start of the game you unlock a dash mechanic that you're supposed to use to dodge incoming attacks, but the default version of it has no iframes, so you're going to dodge and still get hit half of the times, until you upgrade the ability and unlock iframes. This is similar to how the dodge feels useless at the start of the game in Lies of P. Weird design choice, yes, but trust me, it does get a lot better.Throughout the game you will be collecting resources/materials used to craft weapons, weapon upgrades, consumables and ammo, and to upgrade your abilities. The game has a bunch of different weapons, both melee and ranged, and the protagonist's glove can also use abilities like electrocute, freeze or mass telekinesis, similar to the plasmids in Bioshock, which means that you can play the game however you like.For example, I played using mainly the AK47, Shotgun, chain electrocute to stun groups of enemies and lower their defense, and mass tk which I was using to lift groups of enemies up into the air, then slam them on the ground. But you can freeze them, spray them with polymer gel and set them on fire with incendiary ammo, blow them up with the rocket launcher, disintegrate them with the railgun, get the shield ability and destroy them with melee weapons. How you play is up to you.After the first few hours of the game you're put in what people have called an "open world", but honestly, that's not a very accurate description of what it is. It's basically a larger, and more open area that you can freely explore between the game's story missions, but it's also walled off with these laser barriers from the rest of the island, which makes it very linear, as it limits you to only a few locations that you can actually check out.Whenever you check your map, you can actually see the entire island with all sorts of points of interest, so for a while I thought the laser barriers would disappear as I progress through the story, and the island would open up for me to explore, but that only happened once or twice when the game wanted to guide me down this very specific linear path. This almost makes me think that the devs had initially planned for the entire island to be explorable, but had to cut it out of the final game for some reason.I platinumed the game and did 100% of the DLC as well, which took me about 60h in total. I played both the campaign and the dlc on the hardest difficulty setting, which was fairly challenging at first, but got progressively easier later on. The DLC was a lot more challenging, and when I finally started getting comfortable with the new weapons, abilities and enemies, it ended, so that was a bit disappointing.I saw some people complaining about the enemies being bullet sponges, but I never felt that way. I would 1 shot most of the weaker enemies with a shotgun blast to the face, but some of the larger/stronger enemies will take more shots. For comparison, enemies take far more shots to kill in any of the Fallout games, The Division or even FF16 (despite there being a stagger mechanic).There's also a new game plus that's locked into the hardest difficulty level, and that gives every enemy in the game a different coloured aura with a specific buff. There's a bunch of different ones, 6-8 in total I think, and each colour has a different effect, like enemies with a red aura will move faster, enemies with a purple aura don't take damage from abilities, orange aura only takes damage from melee weapons etc.Atomic Heart is a flawed game, there's no doubt about it, but it's also a good, fairly challenging and really fun videogame to experience. Objectively, the game is an 8/10, but for me personally it's a solid 9/10, and I can confidently say that I enjoyed it a lot more than Bioshock Infinite or Prey 2017 (which I found dull and not a very good immersive sim). And I hope there's gonna be a sequel.Try it out for yourself. It's a really good time.

A good game which I feel is a mashup between Bioshock, Wolfenstein (in terms of themes of alt history) and a slightly watered down Soulsborn Genre with some small influences from fallout. The graphics are great and the overall environment is stunning. What I don't particularly like is that the intro to the game feels to long giving an exposition dump during the iterative intro and when you get to actually fighting it can become to difficult as it gives little time to adjust especially when you have reached a checkpoint with no health or pickups and no way of backtracking in certain sections.I can also understand the negative views about this game because of the heavy usage and what some would see as a glorification of the USSR (especially due to it releasing nearly a year into the Ukraine war).However I urge people to reserve judgment until they have tried the game as it is pretty decent and for fans of Alt history genre this could be a game that could rival Wolfenstein.

Since it was first announced over five years ago, I have been eagerly anticipating this game. Now it is finally here, I can say that it does not disappoint. While certainly not a perfect game (the English dialogue is lacking at times), it feels great to play and graphically, it is one of the very few PS5 games that feels truly next gen. I think the developers did a fantastic job with the game optimisation and it really puts some well-known triple AAA studios to shame. I highly recommend this game.

I want to start by pointing out this game does not have a political agenda despite what people on Twitter might tell you. Yes there are political themes and conversations but there's lots of conversations about pros and cons on both sides. Now that's out of the way..Atomic Heart seems to be most closely copying Bioshock and Wolfenstein's homework when it comes to game design and art direction but, whilst sometimes this works very effectively, other times it drastically misses the mark. Atomic Heart is a game set after WW2 in an alternate universe where Russia became an even bigger superpower and designed, amongst other things, highly advanced robot technology. Inside a testing facility, things go horribly wrong, as P3 it is your job to investigate and stop those responsible. As a whole, this story isn't bad, but quite predicable and at times blindingly obvious to everyone except the main protagonist. Crispy Critters!Let's do some pros and cons -Pros:- It looks gorgeous. I've been playing this on Ps5 and the art style, the graphics and the framerate are all smooth and well realised. The tech on show here for the most part is impressive.- The soundtrack is very good. Lots of metal and rock mixed with more traditional Russian music and singing. Seriously good all round. Generally sound effects are good as well but nothing outstanding.- Combat for the most part is enjoyable. Be it gunplay, melee combat or using your glove powers, the combat for the most part is chunky and worthwhile.- All the underground sections. These are the game's bread and butter, the linear combat sections generally with a boss at the end. Generally again these are good.Cons:- The protagonist. Yes, never a good sign when the main character is on the cons list. Loud, sweary, dumb and obnoxious, honestly a silent protagonist would have been better.- Writing and dialogue. The story here is a fairly simple one but the plot twists are treated like major revelations, even though most are easy to guess from the start of the game. Some of the acting is also sub par but localisation might have something to do with it.- Bugs. Whilst there aren't many honestly, I had a couple of minor combat and sound bugs but the most agregious are the trophies/achievements. Several not unlocking for no reason, grammatical errors or incorrect numbers to collect meaning you can never earn certain trophies. Just a mess.- The overworld. All of the underground segments are well designed and interesting with a distinct style with good combat and challenges. The overworld is the opposite. Repetitive, dull, infinitely spawning enemies and strange design choices.All in all a very mixed bag, mostly I enjoyed this but some stuff really held this back from greatness. I'm glad I played Atomic Heart but I don't see it being a classic like Bioshock.- 7/10

very quick and worth the money great game will tell friends and family 10 big stars

Buen juego para la pley título recomendable y entretenido

Arrivato in tempi brevi imballato nuovo, ho voluto acquistarlo ma ancora devo giocarci...per molti è stato un bel gioco per altri no..ero curioso...