I finished Atomic Heart

 

A while ago I posted a little something about a game called 'Atomic Heart' about which I was none too pleased. I called the game all sorts of unpleasant things, from clumsy to amateurish and theorised that I might not even make it to the end. But then I decided to google how many quests there were and noticed that, since the game's quests can be as short as clearing out a single destination, I was already half way through the game. And at the point... I mean I just wanted to see why there was that low contingent of weirdoes out there who damn-near insisted that this was the game to blow your socks off? I heard people call it 'incredible' and whilst my typical reaction is to implore these people to try out some better games to see what actual systematic mastery looks like (as opposed to 'dart at a board' design philosophy) maybe there was something I didn't see straight away.

And after pushing through the game to the final credits I have to reflect back on that one review comparing this game to modern day DOOM and remark "Wow- that's still nonsense!" But seriously, the biggest revision I would make upon my initial impressions would be on the gameplay- because whilst the limited tools of the beginning matched with the dull melee and the out-of-place ammo scavenging scupper those early hours- a lot of these pressure points start to alleviate by the mid to late game. Especially when you start loading up on enough ammo to make the ammo scavenging design essentially pointless, once again raising the query of why it was ever implemented in the first place if it doesn't fit the design of the game and forces the player to engage with shoddy melee for several hours before they let loose?

When you start getting enough tools to equip a decent arsenal that you upgrade to be specifically useful, then you start getting to the point where spotting an enemy doesn't immediately draw the biggest sigh you can possibly muster- because you actually have some options and can play around with your prey. The open world still stuffs itself silly with endlessly respawning trite in place of genuine level design- but we've already assessed that the open world is a lost cause- less said about it the better. In particular I feel it's worth praising the cartridge system which allows the assignment of limited-use elemental buffers on all your traditional weapons making the actual raw shooting feel a lot more dynamic and interesting. It's really quite clever- however it does highlight another quirk of modern damage-type based shooters I've come to despise recently.

I'm talking about the 'damage buff' element types. In this game it would 'Polymer' which comes up in gameplay as a substance squirted onto enemies in order to heighten the amount of damage they take from elemental effects- just like how the purple goop in Borderlands 2 works. But just as with Borderlands 2- the existence of this substance ends up limiting gameplay opportunities for the player unless they actively choose to be less effective in a game with pointlessly artificially restrained resources. Once you've got it, every fight starts with a Polymer jet stream over your enemies before anything else, bringing an otherwise unnecessary aura of 'sameness' to every encounter with undermines the otherwise decently varied enemy design. It's a conceptual problem however, and I think I already know enough about Atomic Heart to figure out that conceptual considerations were not this team's forte.

Many seem to believe that the abject pathetic-aspect of character dialogue alleviates as the game goes on, and to some degree I think they're right. The incessant nattering of Char-les, utterly inappropriate to the tone and undermining environmental storytelling doesn't go away, but the protagonist becomes less obnoxiously dickish to everyone. He still is a dick, just less of one in every sentence. Upgrading the dialogue from unbearable to ignorable. It still never becomes good and highlights another giant problem- Atomic Heart doesn't know how to tell a story.

Literally the entire crux of the narrative's plot, the major character motivations and where the player's thoughts should be, are dictated out-loud through seemingly random conversations that Char-les brings up out of the blue. These conversations are drawn out and placed, once again, as though by an amateur- to such a point where big three minute arguments trigger during a 15 second stroll from one location to an obvious boss arena- meaning that a player who wants to actually follow this narrative is forced to stand listlessly on the edge of the arena for three minutes whilst their watch natters away seemingly forever. Perhaps there would be more natural opportunities to spark meaningful exchanges like these if the open world wasn't slapped together by a madman in a rush- but here we are. And even if that were the case- we're still talking about a narrative literally read off the script for us- talk about wasting the medium.

On the rare occasions that we actually do get cutscenes I think it becomes pretty obvious that Atomic Heart had no cinematographers on staff. Which is not in itself a great crime for an indie studio, but it just highlights the absolute bizarre discrepancy between the quality of all the art assets in the game and the near-experimental bumbling of practically every other department!  Characters bobble awkwardly on shots held too long, with strange too-zoomed-in angles that hold too long and intention is devoid from any of it. If these scenes were meant to illicit emotion, the only emotion would be bewilderment. And maybe that is the intent- but that certainly wouldn't fit with the schizophrenic tone. The only actually well shot scenes are those involving the Twins, because you know these developers aren't going to miss a well placed shot admiring their eye-poppingly curvy ballerina robots- no matter how utterly weird and unexplainable their actions are. Not that I'm angry about that, per se- I would have preferred seeing those twins in more scenes in fact- they seemed to focus the staff somewhat...

Atomic Heart seems to be the product of under-testing, were I to guess. A title that came together in the late stages of a very experimental development period, wherein the team were trying to figure out what it was they even wanted with the game. After which I suspect they lacked the resources to test out the entire game (which might explain the bugginess the game still boasts even after all this time) or just lacked the concrete vision to know what sort of experience they wanted their game to effuse- which leads to an experience I will charitably call "lobsided" and less so charitable plaster "an unfocused and frustrating mess". I liked Atomic Heart in the end, despite itself. But I would not recommend it to anyone when Bioshock does everything it wants to do neater, more cleverly and with an unforgettable narrative that changed gaming as a whole. My score doesn't change.

Atomic Hearted

 Forget 2K, this is where the action's at!

This is not my first, nor my second time taking to Blog about the fascinating looking world of Atomic Heart, the soviet-themed alternate-history Bioshock-like which looks almost too good to be true. In fact, I like to attest that I was talking about this game long before it was cool, and everytime we see more of it I'm stuck between the duelling perceptions that this looks actually unbelievable and it doesn't even look like it's a game at all. As in, I'm almost feeling like this is just viral marketing for some sort of animated movie that's slipped so far out of hand and that now the indie filmmakers are having to scrabble and make a game to meet with demand. The animations are just too smooth, the designs too perfect, the textures too detailed; how does a studio come out of nowhere and make a game look so crisp? But then I must remind myself that I'm being just that little bit disrespectful to deny one's talent simply because I cannot understand it myself, thus I feel like I've been pushed past my excitement threshold for months too long waiting on this game. (Maybe a bit of that is the Cyberpunk effect, if it looks too good to be true then it probably is.)

This E3's weird Bethesda x Mircosoft event had the time to spare for Atomic Hearts latest Eurobeat trailer, and I have to say I feel a bit better with that sort of security behind it. And I say 'Security' because honestly, I've been on a fence about whether or not I believe this game is real. I mean sure, I've been singing it's praises for so long and even legendary Doom composer Mick Gordon is involved in the project, but some misgivings are hard to shake. Yet if Microsoft is confident enough to shove that game into their 'this is why you should buy a Series X' showreel, then that's a pretty solid endorsement, is it not? Then again, Sony did put their marketing weight behind vanilla No Mans Sky a few years back and ended up having to essentially throw Hello Games under the bus after launch.  And both of them did wantonly flaunt Cyberpunk before that disaster. But he's hoping past mistakes inform present decisions, eh?

As for the trailer itself, once more I'm astounded by the level of photorealistic surrealism that we're being treated to by these creatively blossoming developers. From the very opening shot of the trailer we see a shot that looks like it's from some sort of kids cartoon, a lazy faced robot on wheels with a toy-box face, being twisted in something disturbing as the face opens up to attack with apple bombs. There's this real sense of the playful and accessible becoming monstrous that really invokes Bioshock, but with an aesthetic that's a little closer to Fallout in some regards. In that same way that Vault Tec's friendly looking Vault Boy is a mascot behind a company that specialises in genetic rewiring, unsolicited social experimentation and torture-by-another-name; so too do a lot of the robots we see in this game feel like they've been designed with that every-man corporate-friendly purpose behind the pen, only for the product itself to be demented and violent.

It's a very simple idea to shoot for, but oh so difficult to execute with the degree of verisimilitude that we get from these Atomic Heart previews. (Which is part of what makes this game so special in my eyes) Another great paradigm I've noticed, and this is present in all their footage, is this very apparent contrast between the rough and grimy and the sleek and sterile. Usually the tools of the player are this brutal looking tools of death that look like they've been stuck together out of the junkyard without a second to clean them off, whilst some of these robots look fresh off the production line and pristine in that brand new way. It conjures up this sense of the manual (featuring the imperfections, dirt and scratches of flawed human hands) versus the automatic. (the laser-point precision impossible for human hands) If nothing else, these trailer have been a triumph of creative vision to a frame.

But there's one aspect of the game which I'm feeling a little left out on, something which has avoided elaboration for the entirety of the marketing run, and that's the variety of the gameplay. It's all well and good forging this lovingly beautiful fictional world with intention and heart behind every single design page, but unless we can interact with that world in an interesting and attention grabbing way, you've lost half of the fight. Bioshock isn't so fondly remembered purely because of the art deco underwater tomb you trapeze around in, but for the robustness of the combat and how that complimented level design to feel empowering when you wanted it to. It's already apparent that there will be powers in Atomic Heart to supplement the standard gunplay, and some of the weapons look like they might be pretty wild all in of themselves, but I wonder if we've yet to see some trailer all about the powers to really hammer home the diversity that'll be available to us.

I think that is an eminently important, and easily overlooked, side to the first person shooter genre, because without that special little something extra you're missing the very point of what's required from a game. It's so easy to spend effort nailing how well the game is supposed to look only to falter on the gameplay, because an absolutely insane amount of detailing goes into perfecting things like balancing, pacing and general playability. Those who master this equation get to elevate their experience from being just a game that's good into something epic and unforgettable for the player. I think it's strange this has yet to be really highlighted by team over at Mundfish because I feel like this game has almost everything it needs to be that Bioshock successor that we've been waiting for, they just need that final push.

Aside from those misgiving I'm totally swept in the allure of this game, same as I was all that time ago when I first stumbled upon them. Seeing an indie game putting out a project with this degree of polish and garnering enough attention that Microsoft scored them for a trailer, sparks hope for all those grinding on the daily right now. And perhaps that because it's a sign of the way that the technology required for making these brilliant spectacle games are becoming more and more accessible to those with the talent to wield them. With the recent reveal of Unreal Engine 5 and the plethora of animation and development headaches that are being handled in-engine completely hands-free for that platform, we might just start seeing other hugely imaginative and realistic-looking games without the standard producer logos slapped on the box, harbinging foretellings of corporate corners and expectant investors. 

All we need at this, and it's getting pretty dire now, is a release date. Has Mundfish realised that they've forgotten to provide that so far? I only ask because we're just over halfway through the year now, and they've maintained a prospective date of 2021 for a while now. The last thing anybody wants is another Cyberpunk situation so if there's a delay in the works I don't think anyone is going to begrudge the team, it would just help to be informed about it so that folk like me can plan what they're squirrelling away funds for. I just can't wait to finally get my hands on the game Bioshock seems to have passed it's legacy to, and don't want to risk having a single second of it spoiled to me before the fact. Hail to this new age of great Russian Gaming, it would seem; who'd have thought 2021 would belong to them?

So Atomic Heart still looks amazing

Is anyone really surprised?

So you might remember a number of months back I came across this strange looking Russian game out of this indie studio called Mundfish that I just absolutely raved about. It was gorgeous, imaginative, contained so much promise and positively sang for me to pay attention. And it was called Atomic Heart. Since then I've actually noticed the game was more widely known about then I originally thought, and it's been creeping back into the gaming conversation gradually until the team went ahead and uploaded a whole new trailer to show off their graphical prowess. Seriously, I always love to hear about the goings ons in the Indie scene, and celebrate with their victories, but what I'm seeing out of Atomic Heart stretches beyond that. Heck, this game is currently looking better than actual other AAA titles out there, and that does slightly worry given the history of 'Too good to be true' projects lately, but we are where we are.

For those who never looked it up, Atomic Heart is an alternate history science fiction story which looks to bring the wonder of that first playthrough of Bioshock back to life. Basically, this is a game that jumps upon fringe science, beautifully surreal imagery and exploration in order to make it's bread, and from what we've seen it has been doing wonders with that diet. I mean, when Bioshock was announced to have a revival I remember worrying about what that game represented and if another title in that world could possibly live up to that example or if it was doomed to fall victim to 'been there, done that', but along comes Mundfish to remind us that there is always room in the genre for more, you just need to get creative. I cannot do the visual style of this game any justice, you have to look it up yourself, it's sublime.

Recently we received a graphically mouth-watering trailer for the raytracing in the game, and obviously it all makes the game look more tangible than you'd ever thought possible. But then again, that's really just an example of how this game will look for the lucky few with the sort of capital to run that sort of setting on the prohibitively expensive hardware. (Heck, maybe that sorta tech will be more accessible y release, who knows?) I will say that I was decently impressed with how all that super cutting-edge stuff is panning out, but it's really the substance of the game which has my heart caught, and that is demonstrated much better in the extended gameplay footage they released 5 months ago. And yes, I know we're talking about 2020 footage in 2021, but can I help it if there's so much going on that I sometimes let things slip me by? I mean, what's really the harm in looking back a ways, right?

So for that footage we got to get all up-close and personal with the retro-futurist art-deco facility where the reveal gameplay left things, and once more I have to gush, the place is just fantastic. Building a world is as much about what you don't say as it is about what you do, laying out a scene that tells it's story without several text boxes is the cornerstone of the artform. But what the Atomic Heart team have created goes beyond that, and makes me rethink the very way I look at environmental storytelling. (Of course, that's also just a symptom of me getting older and changing my views, but I'd like to call this visual treat a catalyst anyway.) More than just lay out the building blocks of a story and rely on the player to put them together, Atomic Heart's world is borne in this delectable sense of tangibility, where this larger-than-life world looks and feels like somewhere you could be, somewhere you could touch. The story is written in the bricks themselves, not needing anything so arbitrary and contrived as a corpse next to a smoking gun. It feels so much more natural and dynamic, and by extension; so much more real. But this bizarre space is just so fantastical that it could not exist, and so that conflict between that which feels real but could not be just sets my heart aflame.

Now of course, Mundfish are by no means the first to ever reach such a level of world design, I'd argue that Bioshock got there, Monster Hunter always felt that way to me, Obsidian games often achieve that through sheer writing brilliance most times and even Cyberpunk 2077 cannot be robbed of it's artistic excellence. But the difference between those games and this one is that Atomic Heart is, again I remind you, an Indie product! All those games are heavily funded games, backed with storied creators with experience behind them, whereas Mundfish is this comparatively new studio with but one other, now cancelled, VR game to their name. (And honestly, that game sort of just looks like a prototype for this one.) I'm always thinking about the potential of indie storytellers and game makers but, call me cynic, I never in my most generous estimations predicted a title that seems this fresh, interesting and just spectacular looking. By design alone we're looking at real mastery of their craft.

And I said that all without mentioning the enemy design; oh the enemy design! This trailer bought us all up close and personal with these organic plant creatures that float and have these flowing leaves, it's so strange and unlike what I've seen out of gaming before. In fact, the closet thing I've seen design-wise is probably some of the animals in the 2D space exploration game, Starbound. But that's just the tip of it. I also loved this very traditional android-enemy who seemed reminiscent of the Androids out of Alien Isolation through it's very blank and robotic expressions and the 'relentless pursuit' angle of how they are animated. But of course the highlight was the tendril shadow miniboss, The Plyush, which honestly looks like one of the Phantoms out of Prey. I'm naming all of these influences here, but Atomic Heart, wherever in knowledge of the same monsters as me or not, takes every single one of them and breathes individuality into, they make the creatures their own. And cool monster design is so important in a game like this, nailing that is evidence that these people know exactly what they're making and how to pull it off.

But perhaps the biggest surprise in the footage for me was the soundtrack. Because these guys managed to book the one-and-only Mick Gordon as a composer, how freakin' cool is that? Mr Gordon, by the by, is the man responsible for Wolfenstien, DOOM and Prey; the man's a legend. I'm talking about the creative mind behind BFG Division track from 2016's DOOM. You know, the track that literally screams to you like the demonic cries from hell itself; he did that. Knowing that talent is aboard, and lending that irreplaceable charisma to the job, just excites me even more. There's another angle of this game covered by sheer excellence, how can you not get a least a little excited for Atomic Heart knowing that?

Now, of course, comes the cold water; the game looks too good. Yes, I know; who am I to say that a game which looks unendingly great can't be exactly what it looks like, but I'm just being cautious, I'm not boarding the hype train for this one. Even as I look on their official Youtube I can see comments of folk imploring the team to take their time and ensure it's ready, pretty much mirroring my sentiments for what I can only presume is the exact same reason. In my heart I want to support the underdog as much as humanely possible, but I'll retain my distance. Atomic Heart looks like it could be the new Bioshock, and that sort of potential is terrifying. (The fact that I'm not the only saying that, I'd imagine, weighs greatly on the staff over at Mundfish) So I'm going to wait on this one, but I'll absolutely have the candle in the window. Perhaps so that next time I actually see the footage on time instead of half a year later. (Stupid, stupid...)

Atomic Heart

Pretty flowers need the sun, this applies to everyone.

Hey, it's cool-game discovery time! In my time to endlessly procrastinate from that second Resident Evil blog that I'm now 2 months late from, I've happened upon a couple of upcoming games that I previously knew nothing about. I cannot say whether or not this is due to my subconscious desperately trying to distract me from the things I need to do, (Even when that thing is just 'play a specific game') or an increase in the amount of marketing that these titles are doing; either way they're in my radar now so I might as well talk about them. With that in mind, I decided to start with the one game that immediately caught my attention when people began comparing it to one franchise that I'm hopeless in love in; Bioshock. But that's not the game's name, unfortunately. Today I'm talking about 'Atomic Heart'.

I can't really explain either how this title popped up in my sight all of a sudden nor how it remained out of it for so long; all I can say is that I see it now and I'm liking it. Straight away from the May 8th 2018 trailer that you can find right here, you can see that this ain't your typical FPS game. Developed by a rather new Russian Studio called Mundfish, 'Atomic Heart' wants to achieve the dual goal of sending it's players back to a bygone age whilst sideways to an alternate space-age future. (And suddenly the 'Bioshock' comparisons make sense. Although, I must say that the tonality seems more in par with 'Fallout' or even 'The Outer Worlds') According to Wikipedia, this title will whisk us specifically to the Soviet Union sometime between the 1930's and 60's in a spectacular spacey-tech world where technologies like Robots, Holograms and >shudder< The internet are already around! Therefore, I'm assuming this is some alternate universe where the World Wars didn't happen so that the trajectory of technological evolution could be maintained. And yet somehow the Russian oligarchy was still overthrown and the Soviet Union was established... maybe I'm not supposed to think too hard about this...

Player's are thrown in the shoes of 'a mentally unstable KGB agent called P-3', and from the visuals in that trailer I recommended alone we can see that Mundfish intends to use that particular plot point to drive their creativity wild. I think that's the most pertinent word I have to take away regarding this title: Creativity. Everything looks so far beyond this world that I'm fascinated by all of it and just want to experience it all in glorious game-form. It reminds me of that same giddy excitement I feel whenever I dive into the more crazy-looking Japanese RPGs out there like 'Monster Hunter: World' and 'Xenoblade Chronicles 2'; the visuals are so far beyond anything you'd imagine from your wildest dreams and for me there is no more attractive a trait in you're marketing. (Besides having an instantly lovable lounge OST. Please come to PC, Persona 5, I'm begging you!)

Before I move on from the look, there is one more aspect of the visuals regarding this title that I want to discus and if you watched that trailer I'm sure that you know what I mean. Beyond the content of the visuals, the fidelity of what I've seen is absolutely unbelievable. And I'm not being figurative with my use of that word; it's unbelievable, I do not believe it. I don't see how a fresh studio that came out of nowhere could put together a title with crispier looking foliage than the most recent Uncharted outing, more credible fur than the next-gen tease title 'Godfall' and better motion blur than, well I guess there's not really a grading-scale when it comes to motion-blur, but this title's blur is pretty damn good. If I take the marketing for face value and believe that this is representative of the final game, which I currently don't, then I think it's safe to say that this has the potential to be one of the prettiest games of the year. (Provided that the next-gen launches really are impeded by the Coronavirus like people are saying they will be. And that this game even comes out this year as the release date is currently TBD)

Given my lack of coverage on this title there is currently alot of content for me to shift through, such as a 10 minute gameplay walkthrough also on the Youtube channel. It was a little nostalgic, immediately, to go through one of those 'old-school' FPS walkthroughs like the one's we used to get every E3. You know, the one's in which the demo player moves in a way that no real person would or does ridiculously contrived things in order to force of the narrative of the demo along. (Why did you waste your ridiculously limited ammo on enemies who were clearly only passing by? Oh, it's so you could get cornered later without an easy exit strategy!) That being said, it does fill me up with the old fuzzy member-berries, so I can't complain too much. Plus, it allows us to see this stunning environment of weirdness that I absolutely adore for squeezing the question "Why?" out of me so much. Why do those adorable little robots have saw-blade mohicans? Why are there bubbles of undisturbed water just sitting on dry land? And why, in this technological superior reality, does the player's equipment look more scavenged then your average Metro 2033 weapon?

If there's one immediate weakness that I've noticed with this title, and it was even somewhat apparent in that highly-curated trailer, it is the slightly janky animations. Some of the more elaborate finisher moves looked jittery and everytime the player picks up an item off the ground it looks like a third arm has grown out of their shoulder, (although given how weird this title is, that might be intentional) but I'm willing to let that slide for the pure quality of everything else that I've seen. Melee combat also looks to be a bit weak, borrowing that 'chopstick' attack pattern that the Elder Scrolls games often get mocked for, but this looks to be a game of cool, science-y, guns so I wouldn't worry about that too much. Honestly, every draw back is tiny when you come back to the fact that this is an indie game that looks better than your typical triple A offering.

From a design aspect I will say that I'm rather decently sold on the retro-futuristic styling, which is saying a lot considering that the, shall we say, 'bold' design choices of 'The Outer Worlds' almost repulsed me to that entire subgenre. (Fallout 76 hasn't helped none either.) I will express that much of my hope for this title rests on the games that I'm assuring are this one's inspirations, such as Bioshock and Wolfenstien, because I am currently struggling to see that all-too-necessary escalation of gameplay. Bioshock had it's powers and Wolfenstien had it's various heavy guns, but what I'm seeing out of Atomic Heart, at least in martial terms, is currently leaving a lot to be desired. (Of course, that might very well be intentional as the team are trying to save their coolest secrets for the release, but I'd like a taste of what I could look forward to now.) If everything that this game has shown off so far isn't impressive enough, according to the website there is also going to be PVP content, which just blows my mind. How has an Indie studio managed to put all of this together?

Atomic Hearts is one of those indie games that, on a personal level, speaks to me and reminds me that cool ideas can come from anyone; even a little-known studio based all the way in Russia. I think it's an absolute crime that their current Youtube trailer has less than a million views and challenge anyone who has ever even had a passing interest in titles like 'The Outer Worlds', 'Wolfenstien', 'Bioshock' or even 'Deus Ex' to give the trailer a look. I can't say for certain that I know how the full title will look (Rumours have sprung up that the game has received a severe downgrade, however those rumours were over on Resetera so I'd smother that stuff in salt) but I'm on board enough to give it a shot and put this title on my Wishlist, take a look at this game for yourself and see if you can tell why.