We love how Atomic Heart drops us into a beautiful flying Soviet city. It looks and feels amazing. Some say that when the characters open their mouts the illusion cracks a bit. We didn’t mind the cringe dialogue. On the contrary, we welcomed it. It’s part of what makes this game stand out. Not everything has to be hyper-polished. Atomic isn’t a deep philosophical shooter. But it is a a gloriously weird, B-movie rollercoaster that has a lot of soul. You simply can’t help but admire that.
Telekinetic Looting: Using your AI glove to suck up crafting junk from a room in seconds. It’s very unique and efficient way to fill your pockets!
Elemental Combat: Mixing glove powers (ice, electricity) with heavy melee swings and guns.
Testing Grounds: Underground puzzle dungeons that give you weapon upgrades.
Alarm Evasion: Avoiding security cameras so drones don’t infinitely revive the enemies you just killed.
Sucking the Living Hell out of the Loot
The second thing that impressed us in Atomic Heart was the vacuum glove. The looting is dangerously addictive. Just by holding down a button the AI glove telekinetically rips open cabinets, desks, and defeated mutants. It is aggressively satisfying and as much as we tried, it never got old, not even after the full game and the four DLCs (more on the DLCs in our second and third specialized article!)
We loved using all that junk for combat, especially when it came to mixing elemental powers like ice and electricity with heavy melee swings and guns. One thing that surprised and frustrated us at the same time was the discovery of the infinite repair drones. In the open world, if you smash a robot on the surface, a swarm of tiny drones buzzes out to fix them. Try as you might, you simply can’t clear an area. Fighting outside is more often than not a waste of ammo.
At first, this was maddening. But we quickly got used to the fact that the open world isn’t meant for traditional shooting. So we started looking at it as a high-stakes obstacle course. You’re just trying to evade the cameras and survive the sprint to the next “Testing Ground.” And we have to also mention the underground bunkers. They’re filled with clever puzzles and excellent weapon upgrades. This makes the frantic panic in the open world to be totally worth it.
PC vs PS5
Three years ago, Atomic Heart launched a bit rough technically, Mundfish patched it relentlessly. They fixed the claustrophobic camera, bumped up the text size, and added a 120Hz console mode.
If you have a solid PC, the game runs like butter. A long time ago we played the game on PC and we remember being fully blown away with the graphics, doubly so when we turned on ray tracing.
Recently, we got the opportunity to check the game on our PS5 Pro and the game simply sings. The Pro uses raw horsepower to grab that bouncy 120Hz mode by the collar and lock it in tight. Playing on the big screen is incredibly sharp and smooth. The extra muscle just completely irons out the kinks.
Hey, did you know that:
Big respect to composer Mick Gordon, who donated his entire paycheck to the Red Cross’s Ukraine Crisis Appeal before launch.
On a messier note, the devs had to quickly patch out a vintage Soviet cartoon (“Nu, Pogodi!”) playing on the in-game TVs because it contained racist caricatures.
And if you love old-school tension, you’ll get a kick out of the save system—there’s no manual save in the menu
The Post-Mortem
Atomic Heart is a brave experiment, a breathtaking testament that was cherished by the devs and loved by the fans. Absolutely give it a spin. And, if you liked what you read here, wait till you hear what we have to say about the DLCs. Our next specialized article comes out in two days!
ID Card
- Developer: Mundfish
- Publisher: Focus Entertainment
- Engine: Unreal Engine 4
- Platforms: PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S
- Release Date: February 21, 2023
- Genre: First-Person Shooter / Action RPG
Dev & Play Media 
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