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An honest (and lengthy) review of Atomic Heart.
3 years ago
General
Alright, folks. Here's the thing before I go into any detail: I'm not here to get political. Both sides of the aisle when it comes to discourse on this game are making shit up, pushing conspiracy theories, and being ugly scumbags. I don't want that shit here. If I see it, we're going to have a problem. If you follow me and have a problem with me playing the game, then I'd rather you kindly fuck yourself, then fuck off, because I'm not going to deal with any political shenanigans, soap boxing or bullshit. There are only two things that need to be taken away from the breakdown I'm about to do:
Is Atomic Heart fun, and is it worth buying?
TL;DR, since I'm sure most people are not going to read the entirety of what follows: Yes, and no. Not at full price, and not in its current state.
Time to get down to brass tacks.
_____________________
For those of you who are unaware, Atomic Heart is a "Shock-Like" inspired by the likes of System Shock, Bioshock, and Prey, set in an alternate timeline Soviet Union where they single-handedly won WW2 after a nazi Bioweapon killed half the human race, and the Soviet technology turned the tide in their favor. The technology, an experimental organic polymer, is basically a Magic Macguffin that can do anything and everything, including picking up music from the future via quantum entanglement, save human consciousness from death in a sort of liminal thought-state, and entirely nullify the need for human work thanks to advancing robotics to an unimaginable degree for the era of 1955. You play a sort of problem solver/Spec Ops Engineer type, Major Nechyev, AKA P-3 (Plutonium), who is called in to take care of a traitor to the state during the preliminary phases of the launch of the Soviet world-wide polymer-powered psychic internet, Kollektiv 2.0. Without major spoilers, something goes wildly wrong before the launch, and all of the many, MANY domestic robots operating in the research area of the game go on a wild killing spree, turning the site into a bloodbath and a battleground.
So far, so neat, right? Regardless of your opinion of Russia as a whole, it's a cool concept. Here's where things go south, though. I'm going to focus, first and foremost, on the cons of the game. This might turn some of you off, being negative-forward, but it helps keep things grounded. And there is a LOT of negative to address.
Our first negative point is that the game's difficulty can be, at times, unhinged, and at others be a complete joke. There are many points early on where, if you go to explore the open world offered to you, new enemies may be presented that far outstrip your capacity to fight them. An example is the Rotorbot, a sort of giant mechanical lawnmower/thresher combo. The game focuses heavily on melee combat, and as such offers you a dodge mechanic to avoid certain telegraphed critical attacks. The problem is, unless you get a single upgrade from the tech tree, you can only dodge once, and the non-telegraphed basic attacks of the Rotorbot are nightmarishly fast and devastating. Many fights end up feeling like a damage race between the enemies, who come in considerable numbers and can be respawned mid-fight by an unlimited number of support drones, and your limited, ever dwindling health supplies. Supplies which you generally have to craft from materials best saved for upgrades.
The second negative point is that the endless supply of respawning drones make every area a drudge to get through after a while. All but one or two models of robot respawn automatically via the drones. You can interrupt them, but they usually outnumber you, and if there are numerous other enemies, you can easily lose track. This isn't too much of a problem, unless particularly annoying robots are repaired while dealing with the stragglers, such as the Rotorbot. You can deactivate the respawn system for a maximum of 20 minutes to an area, but in doing so you choose to disable the game's only fast travel feature. On top of that, robots you've taken out and looted do NOT continue to drop loot, so if you end up needing to use firearms or healing items, it becomes a game of attrition and diminishing returns quickly.
Third on our highlight reel is how buggy the game is. The game is beautiful; the graphics are spectacular in my book, the enemies are gorgeously well designed, and the entire game has a nice polish to it graphically. But that doesn't make up for various graphical and gameplay bugs. From entering an undamaged car and magically bursting into flames that never go out, glitching sideways through a car and becoming trapped forever as it spins into a tree and explodes, one nasty boss enemy replicating itself mid-fight, almost every collectible-based achievement being broken because either the items didn't spawn or the NPCs you need to speak to can't be interacted with, item boxes being uninteractable, cutscene dialogue clipping and triggering multiple times, every television and screen that's meant to be displaying video in the game simply doesn't load... It's clear a lot of love went into development, but ended at the Q&A phase.
Then we have to deal with the grind. There is a neverending grind, and it is brutal, to get enough resources to craft ammo (if needed), health supplies (DESPERATELY needed), and new weaponry (Crucial to your survival). Enemies do not respawn their loot when reanimated, item chests do not respawn, and there is actually RNG on what drops from rare, one-off bosses and foes that may mean you can never finish several achievements due to needing their components to make all of the weapons. I 100% the game up to the point where the achievements were mostly broken (this is the Gamepass version on Xbox, which has been updating, thankfully), and then realized I was at the endgame and had never gotten a single one of the last-tier crafting material needed to build the Railgun, which is needed for not one, but two different achievements. The system is broken, and needs to be rebalanced, point blank.
We also have the weapon and polymer power variety. The weapons include plenty of classic shooter staples, like shotguns, AK-model assault rifles, pistols, railguns, a rocket launcher, and even some energy weapons. I mention these weapons as plural, because you can customize each weapons in several ways that make them operate wildly differently from the other development trees. The issue with this is that, regardless of your own desire to experiment, there are objectively superior upgrades that negate the need or desire to explore other options. The same goes for this game's version of Tonics/Plasmids, the polymer powers. Char-LES is your A.I. companion in a combat-ready glove, and can be upgraded with special polymer power suites. You can get telekinesis, cryogenic blasts, a pure polymer spray that amps up the power of whatever you use, a base shock ability that is hotkeyed to your face buttons on console so you can use three powers in rotation, and others. The problem here is that, once you've found the ones that work for you, it is again pointless to ever bother upgrading or using the other trees. I maxed out Shok, the electrical attack, the cryogenic attack, and the polymer stream. These abilites together make every enemy vulnerable, stuns them, and when maxed out can do incredible damage in a short period of time. I never had an excuse to use any other ability, so they ended up feeling tacked on. Other people's milage may vary, but seeing as you CANNOT change power sets without going to a save point vending machine, you can't switch on the fly as needed.
Minor nitpick here is that we're still using a save room system in 2023 for an open world game. The autosave is finnicky and sparse, and there are many cases where you can get backed into a save room by enemies being permanently respawned. On top of that, there is an incredibly buggy vending machine mechanic with a WILDLY, INAPPROPRIATELY HORNY A.I. that makes every interacting as disgusting as it is confusing, but because of the many major bugs, more than 90% of the vending machines use a generic female voice in place of their weirdly out of place robot vendor rapist. I don't know if THAT was intentional, but frankly I'd rather never hear those scripts again.
Next, we have the plot and dialogue, as well as voice acting. While the plot has a lot of potential and does go to interesting places, it's also wildly predictable and falls very flat. The game has two endings, both of which are negative, and one of which is a complete dead end that stops the endgame momentum instantly. The biggest crime of the plot is trying to live up to the inspirations behind the game, and failing to use their world and premise to the fullest. There are very egregious continuity issues, including a major character's last name being completely different between cut scenes, dialogue for events that HAVEN'T HAPPENED YET loading in optional side areas you can access as soon as you reach the open world, and a strange lack of content in the in-game lore book/bestiary. There are numerous enemies, robot classifications, etc. that do not appear in the lore section, and even several significant ones that have no artwork associated with them. The infamous Twin robots from the advertising and campaign don't even appear in the lore index, nor does the model of robot they're derived from, which appear in other parts of the game.
The dialogue is low B-class at best, and absolutely godawful at worst. Cringe-inducing to a fault. There are explanations given for a couple of oddities in the main character's speech given late-game, but I feel like they were excuses made for an obnoxious verbal tic that never goes away. He constantly exclaims "Crispy Critters!" as his catchphrase, and at no point is is charming, clever or enjoyable. On top of that, people constantly use dialogue that is entirely out of place and out of time in the setting, such as "Step off my grill!", and it's...Very strange, to say the least. Every character in the game save for one, your A.I. assistant Char-LES, is entirely unlikable. Everyone is either a duplicitous piece of shit, an idiot, a violent lunatic, or in some cases all of the above. Several characters come off as utterly sleazy and irredeemable, which may be the point, as the game paints the entirety of Soviet society as little more than a paint job covering up the correction and cruelty against humanity within.
The voice acting of every significant character save for Char-LES feels like high school drama club level work, with wildly overblown inflection, and very frequent instances of conversations that sound and feel like two entirely different threads of thought are colliding. The main character often responds to commentary from Char-LES and others with outright antagonism that makes no sense, only to turn around and play the wise-cracking buddy in the same breath. It was clear the game was not written by, or for, an English speaking audience to begin with. I will say that the main character's voice grew on me, as did Char-LES as the game progressed, but that doesn't mean they were any good. If anything, it's endearingly cheesy and bad at times, like Resident Evil.
A final gripe that I have, and this may just be me, is that despite the Russian setting, the game doesn't... FEEL Russian. A mixture of the dialogue choices, voice acting, and general behavior of many of the characters does not fit the Russian setting in the Soviet era. There is one single instance where P-3 uses a common Russian slang term (Blyat), in the entire game. Otherwise, he sounds like an American pretending to be a Russian. The lack of any kind of Russian accent in the game is incredibly off-putting. Everyone has either an American, German, or weirdly U.K. adjacent accent. There are people with genuinely Scots and Irish accents, despite every single character in the game but ONE being Russian.
Now, I know that's a LOT of negatives to list, but here's the thing: I genuinely still enjoyed the game, even through the frustration. If you made it this far, I'm going to go ahead and tell you why you SHOULD play the game. You can take it with a grain of salt if you like, but there's a lot to enjoy in spite of the bad parts.
First of all, the game is absolutely gorgeous. When things work, they WORK. The lighting is spectacular, the mood is very well set in almost every area you visit, the color scheme is on point, and the pyrotechnics are glorious. There are genuine moments of beauty that are undeniable, and I would put it very high on my list of best looking Open World games of this generation.
The soundtrack is spectacular, as well. Mick Gordon's contributions can't be ignored, and even the tracks he didn't have a heavy hand in are amazing. I will say that certain pieces don't mesh as well into the action scenes they're part of as they could, but that doesn't devalue them as awesome works in their own right. I'm going to let a few of my favorites stand on their own two feet and let you decide:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FThMOpu_9mk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKVXaMeazAQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atTfrAEJPTQ
The combat, as I mentioned before, is incredibly frenetic and hectic at times, but once you get the flow down and know what you're doing, it's every bit as chunky, visceral and fun as I could ever want. It reminds me in places of Doom Eternal, specifically in situations where you're rapidly swapping between weapons and powers to deal with different significant threats in one fight. The melee combat is absent of a block button, but this is made up for by every melee weapon having different speeds, strengths, and via upgrades, different ultimate attacks. Switching from freezing a Rotorbot in place with a mixture of polymer jet/cryo stream, to gunning down rushing Lab Tech bots with an AK, only to finish the frozen Rotorbot with a Fat Man missile, is incredibly satisfying. Mastering the dodge mechanics and various firearm play with the utility of the polymer powers feels a lot like Bioshock at its best stride.
The overall sound design beyond the voice acting is a work of art. Every impact, every gunshot, every explosion, sounds and feels genuinely great. The staccato rattle of the AK, the vicious growl of a charging energy weapon, the absolutely satisfying roar of the shotgun when you've got it upgraded and going fully automatic, can all be felt bone-deep. The satisfying thud of using a blunt melee weapon, and how it changes depending on the material your enemy is bade of, really hits the spot. I'm a sucker for good sound design, and their foley work did its job, and then some. Add to that nice environmental ambiance, and the game's soundscape can really be mesmerizing at times.
There are also tons of little animations here and there that stand out and show the love that the game had in development. One of my personal favorite (easily missed) animation differences is the fact that if you go to reload the shotgun after multiple shots, P-3 loads them multiple shells at a time, one after the other in his palm, to save time and be more efficient. You might not even notice something that small, but it's a touch of realism that adds to the sense that the guy you're playing knows what he's doing. Alternate healing animations, parkour rolling to avoid fall damage, enemies staggering realistically when they take leg damage, humanoid foes crumpling in on themselves when they take a shotgun blast at the midline, it's all very cool stuff.
As I said before, the game doesn't "feel" Russian with the dialogue and voice acting, but the game LOOKS spectacularly Russian. It's an amazing microcosm of Weird Fiction alternate 1950s tech, alongside Soviet imagery. The art department should be lauded on their talent, and the character design goes a long way to support that. There is only one character I dislike the visual design of, and its because I think her overall design doesn't mesh well with what they were going for. Of special note, I'd like to mention the lively movements of Char-LES' fiber optic tendrils when he's speaking to you or interacting with the environment, the beauty of The Twins, who get the spotlight any time they're on camera, and even P-3's rugged appearance. Of special note is that, due to have synthetic retinal implants after a wartime injury, you can see the artificial material when the game gives close-ups of his eyes. It's a small touch, but very interesting.
The Open World aspect suffers from the same flaws and flubs of every open world game: It's too big, with not enough to do. However, that doesn't mean it's bad. The map is large, but not overly huge like some recent titles, and is split into easily navigable, identifiable zones focused around special puzzle dungeons, or Testing Grounds. These Testing Grounds are generally a mixture of two puzzle rooms based on your polymer powers, parkour, and jumping skills, and one horde/challenge arena, with several of them including boss encounters. These dungeons are also home to most of the game's weapon upgrades, as you need special components unlocked before you can work on the most powerful mods. This, coupled with being a massive repository of crafting materials, means they're well worth visiting to help with the grind. Bonus points go to the adorable "Loot Goblin" robots you get your prizes from for each phase of a Testing Ground, Comrade Lootyagin:
https://itemlevel.b-cdn.net/wp-cont.....e-Location.jpg
The rest of the open world is full of worldbuilding and lore, from NPCs to communicate with, to computers full of messages and audio files, to polymerized farm animals going through their respective existential crises over suddenly being self aware, AND dead, with their brains still broadcasting through surgical implants. While there's not a lot in the way of side content, the world never really feels "empty".
Last, but not least in my book, is the potential for the future. They've already released some cheap cosmetic DLC (cheaper on Gamepass), along with a digital making of/art book which I intend to grab. The studio has shown a very forward dedication to continuing to support the game, including constant patching since release, communicating with the community, and plans for four story-focused DLC down the road. No word on a New Game+, as far as I know, which could help with the achievements I couldn't finish, but time will tell. As it stands, the studio actually DOES seem to care about their product; they just failed at Q&A.
So here we are at the end of this INCREDIBLY LONG rant. What's my final verdict, overall, on the game?
I'd give it, as it is, a 7/10. It's very fun when it works, even with all of its flaws. If they could bang out the bugs, polish up the rough patches, and knock it out of the park with their DLC plans for the future, I'd put it at a solid 8.5/10.
But is it worth the money? In its current state, no. Wait for it to drop in price to the $30-35 range on sale, or play it on Microsoft Gamepass while you can. No telling when it'll leave, but I think it's well worth the time, if you can look past the parts that don't work (or don't work well) and just lose yourself in the carnage. And leave politics at the door, as I said at the start. People saying it's Pro-Russian propaganda have not played the game to any degree, and if you give it a chance it becomes pretty evident it's just a game made to be a fun action romp with a somewhat dumb narrative payoff.
Is Atomic Heart fun, and is it worth buying?
TL;DR, since I'm sure most people are not going to read the entirety of what follows: Yes, and no. Not at full price, and not in its current state.
Time to get down to brass tacks.
_____________________
For those of you who are unaware, Atomic Heart is a "Shock-Like" inspired by the likes of System Shock, Bioshock, and Prey, set in an alternate timeline Soviet Union where they single-handedly won WW2 after a nazi Bioweapon killed half the human race, and the Soviet technology turned the tide in their favor. The technology, an experimental organic polymer, is basically a Magic Macguffin that can do anything and everything, including picking up music from the future via quantum entanglement, save human consciousness from death in a sort of liminal thought-state, and entirely nullify the need for human work thanks to advancing robotics to an unimaginable degree for the era of 1955. You play a sort of problem solver/Spec Ops Engineer type, Major Nechyev, AKA P-3 (Plutonium), who is called in to take care of a traitor to the state during the preliminary phases of the launch of the Soviet world-wide polymer-powered psychic internet, Kollektiv 2.0. Without major spoilers, something goes wildly wrong before the launch, and all of the many, MANY domestic robots operating in the research area of the game go on a wild killing spree, turning the site into a bloodbath and a battleground.
So far, so neat, right? Regardless of your opinion of Russia as a whole, it's a cool concept. Here's where things go south, though. I'm going to focus, first and foremost, on the cons of the game. This might turn some of you off, being negative-forward, but it helps keep things grounded. And there is a LOT of negative to address.
Our first negative point is that the game's difficulty can be, at times, unhinged, and at others be a complete joke. There are many points early on where, if you go to explore the open world offered to you, new enemies may be presented that far outstrip your capacity to fight them. An example is the Rotorbot, a sort of giant mechanical lawnmower/thresher combo. The game focuses heavily on melee combat, and as such offers you a dodge mechanic to avoid certain telegraphed critical attacks. The problem is, unless you get a single upgrade from the tech tree, you can only dodge once, and the non-telegraphed basic attacks of the Rotorbot are nightmarishly fast and devastating. Many fights end up feeling like a damage race between the enemies, who come in considerable numbers and can be respawned mid-fight by an unlimited number of support drones, and your limited, ever dwindling health supplies. Supplies which you generally have to craft from materials best saved for upgrades.
The second negative point is that the endless supply of respawning drones make every area a drudge to get through after a while. All but one or two models of robot respawn automatically via the drones. You can interrupt them, but they usually outnumber you, and if there are numerous other enemies, you can easily lose track. This isn't too much of a problem, unless particularly annoying robots are repaired while dealing with the stragglers, such as the Rotorbot. You can deactivate the respawn system for a maximum of 20 minutes to an area, but in doing so you choose to disable the game's only fast travel feature. On top of that, robots you've taken out and looted do NOT continue to drop loot, so if you end up needing to use firearms or healing items, it becomes a game of attrition and diminishing returns quickly.
Third on our highlight reel is how buggy the game is. The game is beautiful; the graphics are spectacular in my book, the enemies are gorgeously well designed, and the entire game has a nice polish to it graphically. But that doesn't make up for various graphical and gameplay bugs. From entering an undamaged car and magically bursting into flames that never go out, glitching sideways through a car and becoming trapped forever as it spins into a tree and explodes, one nasty boss enemy replicating itself mid-fight, almost every collectible-based achievement being broken because either the items didn't spawn or the NPCs you need to speak to can't be interacted with, item boxes being uninteractable, cutscene dialogue clipping and triggering multiple times, every television and screen that's meant to be displaying video in the game simply doesn't load... It's clear a lot of love went into development, but ended at the Q&A phase.
Then we have to deal with the grind. There is a neverending grind, and it is brutal, to get enough resources to craft ammo (if needed), health supplies (DESPERATELY needed), and new weaponry (Crucial to your survival). Enemies do not respawn their loot when reanimated, item chests do not respawn, and there is actually RNG on what drops from rare, one-off bosses and foes that may mean you can never finish several achievements due to needing their components to make all of the weapons. I 100% the game up to the point where the achievements were mostly broken (this is the Gamepass version on Xbox, which has been updating, thankfully), and then realized I was at the endgame and had never gotten a single one of the last-tier crafting material needed to build the Railgun, which is needed for not one, but two different achievements. The system is broken, and needs to be rebalanced, point blank.
We also have the weapon and polymer power variety. The weapons include plenty of classic shooter staples, like shotguns, AK-model assault rifles, pistols, railguns, a rocket launcher, and even some energy weapons. I mention these weapons as plural, because you can customize each weapons in several ways that make them operate wildly differently from the other development trees. The issue with this is that, regardless of your own desire to experiment, there are objectively superior upgrades that negate the need or desire to explore other options. The same goes for this game's version of Tonics/Plasmids, the polymer powers. Char-LES is your A.I. companion in a combat-ready glove, and can be upgraded with special polymer power suites. You can get telekinesis, cryogenic blasts, a pure polymer spray that amps up the power of whatever you use, a base shock ability that is hotkeyed to your face buttons on console so you can use three powers in rotation, and others. The problem here is that, once you've found the ones that work for you, it is again pointless to ever bother upgrading or using the other trees. I maxed out Shok, the electrical attack, the cryogenic attack, and the polymer stream. These abilites together make every enemy vulnerable, stuns them, and when maxed out can do incredible damage in a short period of time. I never had an excuse to use any other ability, so they ended up feeling tacked on. Other people's milage may vary, but seeing as you CANNOT change power sets without going to a save point vending machine, you can't switch on the fly as needed.
Minor nitpick here is that we're still using a save room system in 2023 for an open world game. The autosave is finnicky and sparse, and there are many cases where you can get backed into a save room by enemies being permanently respawned. On top of that, there is an incredibly buggy vending machine mechanic with a WILDLY, INAPPROPRIATELY HORNY A.I. that makes every interacting as disgusting as it is confusing, but because of the many major bugs, more than 90% of the vending machines use a generic female voice in place of their weirdly out of place robot vendor rapist. I don't know if THAT was intentional, but frankly I'd rather never hear those scripts again.
Next, we have the plot and dialogue, as well as voice acting. While the plot has a lot of potential and does go to interesting places, it's also wildly predictable and falls very flat. The game has two endings, both of which are negative, and one of which is a complete dead end that stops the endgame momentum instantly. The biggest crime of the plot is trying to live up to the inspirations behind the game, and failing to use their world and premise to the fullest. There are very egregious continuity issues, including a major character's last name being completely different between cut scenes, dialogue for events that HAVEN'T HAPPENED YET loading in optional side areas you can access as soon as you reach the open world, and a strange lack of content in the in-game lore book/bestiary. There are numerous enemies, robot classifications, etc. that do not appear in the lore section, and even several significant ones that have no artwork associated with them. The infamous Twin robots from the advertising and campaign don't even appear in the lore index, nor does the model of robot they're derived from, which appear in other parts of the game.
The dialogue is low B-class at best, and absolutely godawful at worst. Cringe-inducing to a fault. There are explanations given for a couple of oddities in the main character's speech given late-game, but I feel like they were excuses made for an obnoxious verbal tic that never goes away. He constantly exclaims "Crispy Critters!" as his catchphrase, and at no point is is charming, clever or enjoyable. On top of that, people constantly use dialogue that is entirely out of place and out of time in the setting, such as "Step off my grill!", and it's...Very strange, to say the least. Every character in the game save for one, your A.I. assistant Char-LES, is entirely unlikable. Everyone is either a duplicitous piece of shit, an idiot, a violent lunatic, or in some cases all of the above. Several characters come off as utterly sleazy and irredeemable, which may be the point, as the game paints the entirety of Soviet society as little more than a paint job covering up the correction and cruelty against humanity within.
The voice acting of every significant character save for Char-LES feels like high school drama club level work, with wildly overblown inflection, and very frequent instances of conversations that sound and feel like two entirely different threads of thought are colliding. The main character often responds to commentary from Char-LES and others with outright antagonism that makes no sense, only to turn around and play the wise-cracking buddy in the same breath. It was clear the game was not written by, or for, an English speaking audience to begin with. I will say that the main character's voice grew on me, as did Char-LES as the game progressed, but that doesn't mean they were any good. If anything, it's endearingly cheesy and bad at times, like Resident Evil.
A final gripe that I have, and this may just be me, is that despite the Russian setting, the game doesn't... FEEL Russian. A mixture of the dialogue choices, voice acting, and general behavior of many of the characters does not fit the Russian setting in the Soviet era. There is one single instance where P-3 uses a common Russian slang term (Blyat), in the entire game. Otherwise, he sounds like an American pretending to be a Russian. The lack of any kind of Russian accent in the game is incredibly off-putting. Everyone has either an American, German, or weirdly U.K. adjacent accent. There are people with genuinely Scots and Irish accents, despite every single character in the game but ONE being Russian.
Now, I know that's a LOT of negatives to list, but here's the thing: I genuinely still enjoyed the game, even through the frustration. If you made it this far, I'm going to go ahead and tell you why you SHOULD play the game. You can take it with a grain of salt if you like, but there's a lot to enjoy in spite of the bad parts.
First of all, the game is absolutely gorgeous. When things work, they WORK. The lighting is spectacular, the mood is very well set in almost every area you visit, the color scheme is on point, and the pyrotechnics are glorious. There are genuine moments of beauty that are undeniable, and I would put it very high on my list of best looking Open World games of this generation.
The soundtrack is spectacular, as well. Mick Gordon's contributions can't be ignored, and even the tracks he didn't have a heavy hand in are amazing. I will say that certain pieces don't mesh as well into the action scenes they're part of as they could, but that doesn't devalue them as awesome works in their own right. I'm going to let a few of my favorites stand on their own two feet and let you decide:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FThMOpu_9mk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKVXaMeazAQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atTfrAEJPTQ
The combat, as I mentioned before, is incredibly frenetic and hectic at times, but once you get the flow down and know what you're doing, it's every bit as chunky, visceral and fun as I could ever want. It reminds me in places of Doom Eternal, specifically in situations where you're rapidly swapping between weapons and powers to deal with different significant threats in one fight. The melee combat is absent of a block button, but this is made up for by every melee weapon having different speeds, strengths, and via upgrades, different ultimate attacks. Switching from freezing a Rotorbot in place with a mixture of polymer jet/cryo stream, to gunning down rushing Lab Tech bots with an AK, only to finish the frozen Rotorbot with a Fat Man missile, is incredibly satisfying. Mastering the dodge mechanics and various firearm play with the utility of the polymer powers feels a lot like Bioshock at its best stride.
The overall sound design beyond the voice acting is a work of art. Every impact, every gunshot, every explosion, sounds and feels genuinely great. The staccato rattle of the AK, the vicious growl of a charging energy weapon, the absolutely satisfying roar of the shotgun when you've got it upgraded and going fully automatic, can all be felt bone-deep. The satisfying thud of using a blunt melee weapon, and how it changes depending on the material your enemy is bade of, really hits the spot. I'm a sucker for good sound design, and their foley work did its job, and then some. Add to that nice environmental ambiance, and the game's soundscape can really be mesmerizing at times.
There are also tons of little animations here and there that stand out and show the love that the game had in development. One of my personal favorite (easily missed) animation differences is the fact that if you go to reload the shotgun after multiple shots, P-3 loads them multiple shells at a time, one after the other in his palm, to save time and be more efficient. You might not even notice something that small, but it's a touch of realism that adds to the sense that the guy you're playing knows what he's doing. Alternate healing animations, parkour rolling to avoid fall damage, enemies staggering realistically when they take leg damage, humanoid foes crumpling in on themselves when they take a shotgun blast at the midline, it's all very cool stuff.
As I said before, the game doesn't "feel" Russian with the dialogue and voice acting, but the game LOOKS spectacularly Russian. It's an amazing microcosm of Weird Fiction alternate 1950s tech, alongside Soviet imagery. The art department should be lauded on their talent, and the character design goes a long way to support that. There is only one character I dislike the visual design of, and its because I think her overall design doesn't mesh well with what they were going for. Of special note, I'd like to mention the lively movements of Char-LES' fiber optic tendrils when he's speaking to you or interacting with the environment, the beauty of The Twins, who get the spotlight any time they're on camera, and even P-3's rugged appearance. Of special note is that, due to have synthetic retinal implants after a wartime injury, you can see the artificial material when the game gives close-ups of his eyes. It's a small touch, but very interesting.
The Open World aspect suffers from the same flaws and flubs of every open world game: It's too big, with not enough to do. However, that doesn't mean it's bad. The map is large, but not overly huge like some recent titles, and is split into easily navigable, identifiable zones focused around special puzzle dungeons, or Testing Grounds. These Testing Grounds are generally a mixture of two puzzle rooms based on your polymer powers, parkour, and jumping skills, and one horde/challenge arena, with several of them including boss encounters. These dungeons are also home to most of the game's weapon upgrades, as you need special components unlocked before you can work on the most powerful mods. This, coupled with being a massive repository of crafting materials, means they're well worth visiting to help with the grind. Bonus points go to the adorable "Loot Goblin" robots you get your prizes from for each phase of a Testing Ground, Comrade Lootyagin:
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The rest of the open world is full of worldbuilding and lore, from NPCs to communicate with, to computers full of messages and audio files, to polymerized farm animals going through their respective existential crises over suddenly being self aware, AND dead, with their brains still broadcasting through surgical implants. While there's not a lot in the way of side content, the world never really feels "empty".
Last, but not least in my book, is the potential for the future. They've already released some cheap cosmetic DLC (cheaper on Gamepass), along with a digital making of/art book which I intend to grab. The studio has shown a very forward dedication to continuing to support the game, including constant patching since release, communicating with the community, and plans for four story-focused DLC down the road. No word on a New Game+, as far as I know, which could help with the achievements I couldn't finish, but time will tell. As it stands, the studio actually DOES seem to care about their product; they just failed at Q&A.
So here we are at the end of this INCREDIBLY LONG rant. What's my final verdict, overall, on the game?
I'd give it, as it is, a 7/10. It's very fun when it works, even with all of its flaws. If they could bang out the bugs, polish up the rough patches, and knock it out of the park with their DLC plans for the future, I'd put it at a solid 8.5/10.
But is it worth the money? In its current state, no. Wait for it to drop in price to the $30-35 range on sale, or play it on Microsoft Gamepass while you can. No telling when it'll leave, but I think it's well worth the time, if you can look past the parts that don't work (or don't work well) and just lose yourself in the carnage. And leave politics at the door, as I said at the start. People saying it's Pro-Russian propaganda have not played the game to any degree, and if you give it a chance it becomes pretty evident it's just a game made to be a fun action romp with a somewhat dumb narrative payoff.
