This was the most conflicting game I've played in at least a decade. I couldn't even figure out how to score it. Based on gameplay alone, I'd have ranked it much lower.. but the way the story ebbs and flows, the way Mick Gordon's soundtrack hits, the way the highs reach SO high.. it's bizarre! On the one hand this feels like true event gaming, the kind of project that should be on the tips of everyone's tongues these days. And yet on the other, it's a frustrating, jank disaster.

Where to begin? At the beginning? Sure. The game's world building is easily one of its strongest elements. It borrows liberally (perhaps too liberally) from the Bioshock franchise. In fact there's an homage within the first 3 minutes. So it wears it on its sleeve, at least, and from that foundation it totally spins off into its own thing. The way the timeline is expressed to the player, as well as our protagonist's intentionally vague role within, is crafty as hell. The first two hours trade off explorative gameplay, huge cinematics, an endlessly intriguing soundtrack.. you feel like you're slowly but surely being sucked into the pits of hell, and if you're anything like me.. you like it!

Then you wake up in Jurassic Park, except robots. And here's where it all spins out of control. It SHOULD rock. It really should. The fantasy that Mundfish has set out to convey here is that you're in a very dangerous place. Despite your capabilities, you should NOT be here, and survival is an absurd concept. And damn, man, if only actually playing it felt this way.

The game can't get out of its own way. Ironically, it's poor AI that disassembles so much of what is being aimed at here. Perhaps down the line it'll be all patched up, and it'll be a much better game, and it'll be the talk of the town! But if you're asking me, it feels fundamentally broken.

The devs have gone to great lengths to provide us with an open world well and truly worth exploring. We're meant to gaze at it in wonder, desperate to solve the mystery as to what's around the next bend. They even go as far as to give us car mechanics, so we can hop into these little beaters and get where we're going faster. And there are a plethora of optional dungeons, rife with cleverly designed puzzles, placed clear as day. The goal is to collect blueprints for weapon upgrades that will make the game more FUN!

But goddammit, it's NOT FUN. The way the enemies endlessly respawn in this open world makes it feel like an overtly hostile place, and not in a fun way. It seems the only reasonable tactic is to make a beeline for the next quest marker, and to hell with all of that optional garbage! The game begs to be stopped and looked at for a minute, breathed in and considered thoroughly, and yet if you so much as take a piss break, you're dead, Comrade!

So I don't know what to make of it. I couldn't figure it out. I rolled credits on this stupid game and I still don't know how I was supposed to play it. The explanations as to how the open world functions are quite limited as well. I spent a while having to google answers to basic questions because I had no idea what the hell the game even wanted me to do for the first little while.

So anyways I beat the whole thing having only completed 2 of the 11 or 12 optional dungeons, and as much as I think that's a shame, I felt like I had no other choice. I HATED being out in the open world. I felt constantly antagonized and I never had any clue where the danger was even coming from.

But let's go back to the story for a second. Atomic Heart has some of the most insane story beats in any game you're likely to see this generation. There were sequences that had my jaw on the floor, and my head spinning. It's nuts. When those big moments hit? They HIT. And Mick Gordon ensures that they HIIIIIIIT. The potency and craftsmanship of this story just makes it all the more disappointing that the game itself is so uneven and unwieldy.

But even the story isn't bulletproof. When it's being delivered to us via cinematics, it's wild. How much did these cinematics cost, I wonder? Some of them are total bats8#t and I loved them. But the majority of the story is told during gameplay, via fast-paced dialogue. And this is.. most unfortunate. You've doubtless already heard many complaints regarding the protagonist and his .. er.. douchiness. These complaints are well founded. Though I must say! The douchiness DOES fit the guy. If you give it some time, you'll come to understand this grouch, and that his anger is born of an intriguing concoction of backstory elements. I actually kinda liked it.. but jesus the delivery, man..

I'm not even talking about the Voice Actor. It has more to do with the pacing of it all. It never stops. And the overlap is enough to make you want to put a drill through your own skull. No matter where you are, there is a f&*king cavalcade of dialogue cocked and loaded and ready to let rip. You and your glove are going to say a lot to one another. A LOT. And the NPCs in the world are going to compete for the prize.

It's so annoying. And the fact that it's annoying is annoying! Because the story is really cool! And the writing is honestly really good! There are so many insane ideas packed in here, such a unique promise. It's totally unprecedented. But the way it's all getting machine gunned into your brain, typically two or three layers at a time, is maddening. You'll have an audio log going, and then some asshole will start shouting mainline dialogue at you from down the hall, and then you and your glove will start having a sidebar, and then you'll hit up a vending machine and it'll start trying to smoke you off. And all of this is just railing your ass all at once. it SUCKS. And honestly? I don't know how I'd fix it. The pacing of such things has got to be one of the most incredibly difficult aspects of game development. And unfortunately, Mundfish just doesn't have this down yet.

So.. yes. I don't really know how to rank this. It'd be such a travesty to rank it low, but it'd be a complete lie to rank it high. When the bosses are flying circles around you, and the smoke and particle effects are popping off, and Mick Gordon is slappin bangers straight into your drums, and you know that a HUGE mystery is about to unfurl around the next corner.. you're going to feel like you're playing the best game that's been released in a long time. At least, the best single-player FPS. That's for damn sure. But when you're trying to drive down a road, and you hit an invisible barrier, and the windshields blow out and the car lights on fire, so you hop out only to get jumpkicked by a robot that's apparently been instantly repaired even though you just expended all of your ammo only moments ago taking it down, and alarm bells are going off and lasers are ripping through the air around you, and now there's a miniboss in the picture, and it's the 7th time you've seen this miniboss, and it wraps you up in the same stupid QTE sequence you've seen time and time again, and your quest marker keeps changing position so you're not actually sure where to go, and the map's sure as hell not going to lend a hand, and then oh shi# one of the robots just kicked you up against a wall and now you're frozen.. and you're dead... and oh god damn it you've just been loaded into a file from 30 minutes ago.. shiiiiiiiiiii-

Yeah that all happened. At least 3 times.

Reviewed on Mar 04, 2023


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