Atomic Heart Review

Every time a game with such a level of density, detail, and passion behind its development launches and reaches our hands, our hearts beat tachycardia with excitement.

In an age where many of us have been waiting for sequels to franchises like The Elder Scrolls for years… Legendary games that stood out far above their contemporaries, due to those total immersion experiences for dozens and dozens of hours in an extremely well-carved universe.

One new candidate, coming in full force for the job at a time that makes his provenance a matter of controversy, is Atomic Heart.

Being the first Mundfish game; an ambitious developer based in “Cyprus (Cyprus)” and led by Russians… The level of attention to detail, creativity, and ambition behind this new AAA release is going to be on everyone’s lips for a while.

Bringing the aspects everyone loves about Steampunk themed Action RPGs into a super fresh, creative, well polished and streamlined delivery…

Atomic Heart plays as a first person action player in a fictional alternate future in which the Soviet Union won the second world war and evolved to be the first utopia with super technological development.

Led by an apparent “communist party”; we see ourselves in an ecosystem where human beings interact with artificial intelligences, sentient machines and androids as part of their daily lives.

Everything takes a 180° turn at the moment that an apparent betrayal within the scientific strata behind such developments and “comforts” makes the machines see all human beings as threats.

The hostility escalates in a radical and unstoppable way. And even those humans, who in a very “cyberpunk” cut have been endowed with “polymers” as cybernetic enhancements in their bodies, have seen themselves as victims of a large-scale attack by machines ranging from simple government employees to work machines of colossal proportions.

It is our duty, as a major in the Soviet Army sponsored by the head behind all technological advancement, to get to the bottom of the situation in search of a solution and many answers.

A gameplay that combines all the magical aspects of the action and survival genres.

We arrive at the action as a character that is a simple human being free of cybernetic enhancements.

In principle, the only weapon at our disposal is military training, and anything along the way that can be considered a self-defense weapon.

Our adventure is joined by “Char-Les”, a polymer glove with its own intelligence and personality that provides us with a range of highly technological tools that will definitely prove their usefulness as the knot of the game escalates.

Atomic Heart, with its 3 difficulty levels for all types of fans, throws us into less than favorable circumstances in which our decisions and economy of resources will draw the line between life and death.

The game invites the player to be methodical and economical with the resources that are invested. Repeatedly we find messages in the loading screens that say “do not waste bullets in battles that you can win with a knife”. This sums up the turn mentality.

Similarly, Mundfish has decided to reward those with compulsive obsessions of collecting supplies across huge precincts and maps super open to exploration for extra rewards that really come in handy.

In similarity to other installments that have really left inspiration for the future, such as the case of “Prey”; Atomic Heart offers both weapon construction and refinement progressions, as well as improvements to our character that include both elemental powers and polishing physical and movement skills.

A weapon build that offers diversity to spare… Various melee weapons with makeshift weaponry visuals in the tones of “Dying Light”, as well as firearms for ammunition and energy weapons.

In this way, chances of survival are offered both for the most skilled in first-person shooter games, and for those who prefer a less precision-demanding experience.

Optimized graphics for PS4, Xbox One, and PC in a way that makes the word “Ray Tracing” sound overhyped

In the words of the Mundfish developers, they promised to “open up the development engine with a can opener to achieve ridiculous levels of efficiency in optimization, while delivering the most visually pleasing experience they could have.”

Do you want the honest truth? It sounds unbelievable, but they did it.

Atomic Heart offers a level of attention to graphic detail that other games would sell you in all the extra fancy ways there are.

An optimization of similar graphics to be able to be executed by consoles of past generations, although they have already shown us that it is not impossible, means that recent mid-range and high-end systems can run the game without the slightest problem in the maximum detail options.

Accompanied by the music of the one and only Mick Gordon…

Definitely one of the reasons why the game received such attention from fans since its development stages, was the fact that the very legend of video game music was present in the flesh.

Coming from ultra-successful games like Killer Instinct, Doom, Wolfenstein, and Prey; Gordon is widely awarded and held in the highest esteem by gamers and musicians alike in the genre.

Years ago, gameplay demos already set to music had been shown that the composer himself shared on his social networks.

In it, we hear combinations of rave, synthwave, and certain symphonic arrangements that, as expected, react directly to what is being witnessed visually and mechanically within the game.

Mick Gordon has revealed on several occasions how he makes it possible, becoming part of not only songwriting and production, but audio programming and delivering his carefully arranged works in “Wwise”, one of the most widely used audio integration programs within by Unreal Engine.

It goes without saying that the level of dimension, articulation, impact and emotion of the compositions of Atomic Heart are more than accurate to the theme and the type of game at hand.

Room for improvements? Sure.

In its copy for press and reviews stage, which was provided to us by Focus Entertainment; Atomic Heart shows slight errors in recognition and in-game interactions that are relatively easy to fix.

Practically everything has shown a satisfactory solution with a reload of the game.

One or another NPC that is supposed to interact with us and doesn’t, or some object being wrongly scanned by Char-Les… Nothing special that can’t be fixed with a hotfix or a “day one” patch.

And definitely nothing that reduces the artistic quality of the game per se.

Definitely…

The times that humanity has witnessed a relatively green developer that manages to achieve similar results in nothing more and nothing less than its first game, is few to none.

What Mundfish has achieved through Atomic Heart confirms stratospheric levels of discipline, passion, preparation, teamwork and talent.

A game that seems to compile all the different flavors of magic that have been offered by previous installments of the genre, learning at the same time from the mistakes made, and achieving a result worthy of being classified as a “magnum opus”.

This review was made possible by a copy provided by Focus Entertainment.