There is so much potential here. The setting, the general style, the level design, it's all so damn good. Then, you play the game, and it all goes to shit.
Atomic Heart is a super frustrating experience from top to bottom, for many reasons. The game starts off so damn good and interesting, transporting you into this super gorgeous, super interesting world, showing things off at first like Bioshock games would do in the past where you're just kinda touring the setting and soaking all the coolness in before things go haywire and things need to be shot.
There are a lot of similarities to me between this game and Bioshock, at least in what this game is attempting to do. Atomic Heart is just a discount version of this in most aspects.
You have weapons to shoot, melee weapons, and weird superpowers at your inventory disposal. You can upgrade both the weapons and the powerups, mixing and matching various equipped items and abilities.
None of the shooting mechanics and abilities feel all that particularly good to use. In order to unlock more weapons you'll have to stumble across blueprints which unlock these weapons in the store. You will then need to get enough random gear in order to build these weapons.
On top of making you work to get these weapons, you also have a limited inventory, so you have limited space to hold these weapons. The inventory system is in the same setup as a Resident Evil 4 style, where you have a certain space limit and certain items take up more space depending on their size so you'll have to balance which weapons to use vs items you'll want to carry. Ammo takes up space on top of it all, just like in RE4 so you're constantly having to balance all of these things.
The similarities actually don't stop there between Atomic Heart and RE4 (yes, I know I just got done comparing it to Bioshock) because in Atomic Heart, you will need to be ultra conservative with ammo because you will go through it constantly.
Melee weapons are your best friend in this game. They don't break or anything so they are very necessary to use in this game. Unfortunately, this drags out a ton of fights since melee weapons do take more time (least this feels the case).
The biggest problem with the guns in the game really isn't the lack of ammo, it's the fact that every enemy in this game is a bullet sponge. These are some of the worst bullet sponge enemies I've seen in a game in quite sometime, it's bad.
Every single gun takes so much ammo to kill something. Boss battles in particular are egregious since every one of them has a health bar so you can see how little your guns do damage wise.
It stretches this game out so much because every battle takes so much time.
On top of that, the game features an open world style setup eventually. But because combat is so bad and takes so long and everything takes so much ammo to kill, trying to explore for secrets is basically a nonstarter. Which means you're missing out on potential blueprints and weapon upgrades.
The last boss of the game literally took every single bullet I had in my inventory, even after I had tried to focus a good amount on my melee attacks and an energy gun, and I still had to finish it off with more melee at the end. It's brutal and not fun since the mechanics aren't fun using.
There are other issues with this game too that I could go into, collecting random items is a pain since they are hiding in every closed shelf, drawer, desk, etc and you have to search them all manually. These bits and pieces are what you use to upgrade weapons too so you need to do it to make things a little easier. There's also the dialogue being cringey, the story not being easy to follow but bonkers from the bits and pieces I could follow, the stealth elements (there's stealth!) being weeeeeak and annoying and so on and so forth.
If this game was just a by the book shooter, with ammo aplenty for you to mow down enemies with, with this setting, the character design, the music, the various levels, this game could've been spectacularly fun. Instead, it's just a massive disappointment.
Atomic Heart is a super frustrating experience from top to bottom, for many reasons. The game starts off so damn good and interesting, transporting you into this super gorgeous, super interesting world, showing things off at first like Bioshock games would do in the past where you're just kinda touring the setting and soaking all the coolness in before things go haywire and things need to be shot.
There are a lot of similarities to me between this game and Bioshock, at least in what this game is attempting to do. Atomic Heart is just a discount version of this in most aspects.
You have weapons to shoot, melee weapons, and weird superpowers at your inventory disposal. You can upgrade both the weapons and the powerups, mixing and matching various equipped items and abilities.
None of the shooting mechanics and abilities feel all that particularly good to use. In order to unlock more weapons you'll have to stumble across blueprints which unlock these weapons in the store. You will then need to get enough random gear in order to build these weapons.
On top of making you work to get these weapons, you also have a limited inventory, so you have limited space to hold these weapons. The inventory system is in the same setup as a Resident Evil 4 style, where you have a certain space limit and certain items take up more space depending on their size so you'll have to balance which weapons to use vs items you'll want to carry. Ammo takes up space on top of it all, just like in RE4 so you're constantly having to balance all of these things.
The similarities actually don't stop there between Atomic Heart and RE4 (yes, I know I just got done comparing it to Bioshock) because in Atomic Heart, you will need to be ultra conservative with ammo because you will go through it constantly.
Melee weapons are your best friend in this game. They don't break or anything so they are very necessary to use in this game. Unfortunately, this drags out a ton of fights since melee weapons do take more time (least this feels the case).
The biggest problem with the guns in the game really isn't the lack of ammo, it's the fact that every enemy in this game is a bullet sponge. These are some of the worst bullet sponge enemies I've seen in a game in quite sometime, it's bad.
Every single gun takes so much ammo to kill something. Boss battles in particular are egregious since every one of them has a health bar so you can see how little your guns do damage wise.
It stretches this game out so much because every battle takes so much time.
On top of that, the game features an open world style setup eventually. But because combat is so bad and takes so long and everything takes so much ammo to kill, trying to explore for secrets is basically a nonstarter. Which means you're missing out on potential blueprints and weapon upgrades.
The last boss of the game literally took every single bullet I had in my inventory, even after I had tried to focus a good amount on my melee attacks and an energy gun, and I still had to finish it off with more melee at the end. It's brutal and not fun since the mechanics aren't fun using.
There are other issues with this game too that I could go into, collecting random items is a pain since they are hiding in every closed shelf, drawer, desk, etc and you have to search them all manually. These bits and pieces are what you use to upgrade weapons too so you need to do it to make things a little easier. There's also the dialogue being cringey, the story not being easy to follow but bonkers from the bits and pieces I could follow, the stealth elements (there's stealth!) being weeeeeak and annoying and so on and so forth.
If this game was just a by the book shooter, with ammo aplenty for you to mow down enemies with, with this setting, the character design, the music, the various levels, this game could've been spectacularly fun. Instead, it's just a massive disappointment.