Atomic Heart

After being founded in 2017, Mundfish is making a strong first impression with its debut game, Atomic Heart. This single-player first-person shooter ...

Although I found the robotic enemies to be creepy and formidable foes, I wish there was a bit more variety in enemy type. Outside of controversial themes and a lack of enemy variety, it’s hard to point out any glaring issues with Atomic Heart. This review is based on a PS5 copy of Atomic Heart provided by the publisher. There is also detailed dismemberment, and I’m not ashamed to admit that I got a laugh out of hacking the limbs off of enemies after clearing a room. I was continuously impressed by the various puzzles that Mundfish threw at me as I attempted to open doors and disarm security systems. In addition to melee and ranged weapons, Major P-3 is equipped with a Polymer glove that lets him harness electricity and telekinesis powers. Shooting feels impactful, and there are a variety of weapons to be discovered and crafted, each with its own unique feel. The tunes give a cinematic feel to battles, and make the quiet moments eerier. You have to constantly be moving and dodging in order to avoid the aggressive robotic enemies, and there are quick-time events that will trigger when your character is grappled or on the brink of death. Atomic Heart puts players in the shoes of Major P-3, a Soviet intelligence agent tasked with getting to the bottom of what caused the USSR’s robot companions to lash out and wage war against their human creators. There’s a wide range of music featured, and it only improves the experience whenever it kicks in. Atomic Heart reminded me a lot of the Bioshock franchise with its alternate historical setting.

Atomic Heart is a first-person action-adventure shooter developed by Mundfish. The shooting, puzzles, and political thriller narrative bring back good ...

Most of the puzzles are locks that require timing to a beat or rearranging dots to unlock, but the real challenge is clearing the area thoroughly to buy yourself enough time to open the door. Protagonist P-3 constantly berates the circumstances he’s in for being lame, annoying, and unimaginative, like repeatedly being sent on fetch quests to retrieve a number of items, his AI companion never shutting up, and things being too conveniently inconvenient. In present-day 1955, the USSR attempts to launch a new device that will allow humans to control robots with their mind, but the plan is sabotaged, causing all robots to turn on the humans. That being said, Atomic Heart often feels like it’s flexing for the sake of flexing, causing the gameplay or story to falter at times, but it manages a positive impression in the end. The boss fights are a spectacle to behold, but even those are easily dealt with by getting in close and chopping away at their legs. The shooting, puzzles, and political thriller narrative bring back good memories of 7th generation FPS big-hitters like BioShock and Call of Duty: Black Ops while using the 9th generation tech to push the gameplay and cinematics to another level.

Atomic Heart is an alt-history Soviet shooter that veers between superb gunplay and tedious busywork, with surprisingly little to say about its setting.

P-3 himself remains a loyal Soviet to the end, his faith in certain comrades broken but never his belief in the glory of the motherland. Not having the freedom to speak your mind on a present-day conflict is one thing, but who’s going to bring retribution for needling a regime that ended decades ago? Barely a minute passes without a sweary rant or sarky quip, often in the form of attempted banter with the glove, and even the lines that don’t undermine the rest of the game’s tone fail to be endearing or funny. But I’m not convinced that partial funding from a company with one dodgy employee is a smoking gun, and frankly, asking the developers to speak out when doing so can carry a [prison sentence](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-07-08/russia-sends-official-to-prison-for-7-years-for-anti-war-comment?leadSource=uverify%20wall) feels like blaming someone for living under a dictatorship. There’s heaps of exposition dialogue between P-3 and the glove AI as well, so much so that the levels aren’t always long enough to accommodate them. Ultimately, your only options in this empty world will be to proceed to the next waypoint or to get in a scrap with some patrolling bots, the latter being something you can do plenty of during actual, fully-designed combat encounters if you stick to the former. I ended up as a highly mobile skirmisher, using extra dodge charges to zip in and out of buckshot range and deploying the glove’s Mass Telekinesis power to drag foes aloft for breathing room. While the cryo freeze effect looks nice, it’s ultimately an inferior crowd control tool to Mass Telekinesis, and not one but two of the others are only good for boosting the elemental damage of Shok and certain upgraded weapons. Like I say, it’s ambitious, and a lot of the time it all works quite well. It’s the debut game of just one, Mundfish, and as a first attempt it’s impressively ambitious. [Half-Life 2](https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/games/half-life-2) here as well, in the way that Atomic Heart gives each chapter a certain flavour before dropping it and moving on to the next. [BioShock](https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/games/bioshock) series influences, irritable special agent P-3 (that’s you) and his snarking AI-powered glove (that’s your hand) are deposited into one of the massive science complexes that made this USSR even more of powerhouse than it was in reality.

Developer Mundfish's first-person shooter about a KGB agent in Soviet Russia features fun combat against robots and monsters on Xbox Game Pass — but to what ...

While there is a Detective Mode to highlight useful objects, using it forces P3 to move at a snail’s pace, and the items lose their glow the moment you exit the mode. It can all feel a bit simple: a brutal retro shooter with inventory management and crafting and a macho lead character. For a game where melee is encouraged, it’s far too difficult to clock incoming projectiles or flanking enemies. Melee weapons and guns must be built at crafting stations, after scavenging the environment for bits and bobs. And the crumbling Soviet setting, while glorified in the context of the story, seems to have been built spectacularly for an equally spectacular collapse. Divining what the game intends to say (or doesn’t) about society or culture is particularly challenging, considering its creation. But as I barrel into the core of Atomic Heart, I wonder whether this game is what it appears to be — or if it’s something much more interesting. Indeed, Mundfish’s relationship to the Russian state remains [murky](https://www.eurogamer.net/questions-remain-over-atomic-heart-developers-russian-origins). But as I journey deeper, it helps my curiosity that the characters themselves are likable enough. P3’s main job is overseeing security for various facilities run by Sechenov and the government. The game begins with spectacle, peacocking its world, its aesthetics, its technology. Like those utopias, Atomic Heart’s Soviet nation is failing, under leaders plagued by the Icarus complex in which grand ideas come to naught.

Today marks the embargo date for Atomic Heart, the bizarre new sci-fi game from Mundfish, which has attracted some manner of controversy given its ...

With an incomprehensible storyline, weightless combat, and frustrating first-person platforming, Atomic Heart is left to stand in the shadow of the video games that so clearly inspired it.” [Twinfinite (4/10)](https://twinfinite.net/2023/02/atomic-heart-review-missing-more-than-a-beat/): “Despite what is a promising combat formula as well as the supporting systems behind it when it comes to skills, crafting, and upgrades, there are also several equally frustrating aspects of it that hold the game back. [GamesRadar (5/10)](https://www.gamesradar.com/atomic-heart-review/): “Atomic Heart has a lot of big ideas, but it doesn't do a good enough job with the basics. And my friend Skillup gives it a big old “Do Not Recommend.” This isn’t just my favorite game of this year, it might be one of my favorites of the decade.” In the broader context of the video game landscape where GOTY contenders hit above 90, studios get bonuses at 85+ and anything under a 60 is an utter disaster, I would declare these scores “fine.” Today marks the embargo date for Atomic Heart, the bizarre new sci-fi game from Mundfish, which has attracted some manner of controversy given its connections to Russia.

Atomic Heart will not include its highly promo'd ray tracing features in the PC version at launch. RT effects will instead come in a later patch.

I’ve asked Mundfish if they have a separate date in mind for the ray tracing update, and have contacted Nvidia for a statement as well. More positively, it already looks great without ray tracing, and it does at least have fully functioning DLSS support, including for the new [DLSS 3](https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/dlss-3-how-it-works-how-it-performs-and-when-you-should-use-it). From an [Nvidia tech demo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5e-GVEqL9A) back to in 2019 to an [RTX-branded trailer](https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/atomic-hearts-latest-trailer-shows-off-its-ray-tracing-chops) released just last month, this souped-up lighting and reflection tech has been a key piston in propelling the Soviet sci-fi FPS’ hype train. I guess it’s better than them being cancelled outright but still, how strange that a game with an Nvidia-approved ray tracing demo four years ago won’t have even a toned-down version of those features ready for when the world can actually play it. [Atomic Heart](https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/games/atomic-heart)’s long development cycle has provided ample opportunities to show off the power of [ray tracing](https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/confirmed-ray-tracing-and-dlss-games). I noticed the lack of ray tracing options in the review build we received last week, and got in touch with the game's press relations team to check if I was missing something, or if they were due to be added via update.

You'd be forgiven for getting stumped right at the start of this first-person shooter, out now for PlayStation, Xbox, and Windows PC. How to use the scanner in ...

For instance, during the “Made in the USSR” mission, you have to find the “voice, the symbol, and the sprout of the Motherland.” Activating the scanner will highlight the three items — a radio, a hammer, and a plant — you need to progress. If you hold the scanner over a specific enemy, you’ll be able to see a list of their resistances and weaknesses, plus a rundown of the loot they’ll drop when defeated. Whatever struggles you’re having while learning how to use the scanner, know that it’s not a bug (probably).

Atomic Heart reviews are extremely mixed, with some praising the game for its reality-bending elements, and others calling it disappointing.

With such a mixed response, it does appear Atomic Heart will be an acquired taste. ‘A simple playthrough of Atomic Heart will take players around 25 hours to beat, which is a solid playtime generally. ‘There are floating Soviet laboratories in the sky, home to a networked artificial intelligence which could signal the evolution of human consciousness; a veteran USSR operative who can’t recall his past, and an army of rampaging robots designating the populace of Facility 3826 as enemy combatants after a software malfunction … It also noted Atomic Heart does little to endear itself to players, and that its storyline fails to do justice to a ‘cool premise’: Others have called the action laughably bad, with the game’s narrative and characters being major sticking points. Some reviewers have praised the game for its eye-catching visuals, unique puzzles, and sleek combat.

Atomic Heart is an alternate-history shooter cut from the same cloth as BioShock and MachineGames' Wolfenstein series. It's a kind of retrofuturistic romp back ...

Atomic Heart is smart to keep this process fast by allowing us to extend out a hand and suck up reams of resources like an industrial shop vac, but it still becomes a little tedious having to ransack the same sets of desks and cabinets arranged slightly differently in a hundred-or-so different rooms. The foul-mouthed and amnestic P-3 is admittedly a bit of a relic of games gone by – and his default English-language voiceover doesn’t exactly do him a lot of favours. There is a way to fry all enemies within a zone for a while if you’re patient, and the robot hordes do become a little less intimidating as P-3 and his arsenal grow stronger throughout the story, but that’s a process that takes some time. It’s a shame that some better context wasn’t baked around these occasional fetch quests because Atomic Heart’s underground chambers feel like a ripe opportunity and are largely great otherwise: eerie, deadly, and mostly devoid of life – unless you count the mutant freaks with skulls shattered into fanged, floral arrangements or the dead bodies that communicate via the confused ramblings of their fading brain implants. At any rate, there is a Russian-language/English subtitle option for purists, but I would’ve simply preferred an English script that was more tempered for the setting and era. There are some especially tiny touches in Atomic Heart that smack of a great deal of consideration, like the way there are different reload animations for unspent magazines compared to empty ones – the latter of which are flicked away while the former are grasped by the same hand sliding a fresh one in. Okay, that’s a bit reductive – rather, Charles is basically an intelligent system embedded in P-3 who is capable of granting him seemingly supernatural abilities, manifested by a set of small, squid-like tentacles that extend from a glove on P-3’s left hand. Its range of robots is particularly strong, from its sleek and sinister moustachioed terminators that charge at us without ever averting their gaze to its pot-bellied parking meters with mouth tubes that make them look like they’re sucking at the drawstring on an invisible jacket. Atomic Heart’s outstanding aesthetic also extends to its large range of partially ruined labs, facilities, and transportation hubs – each filled with long, snaking globules of the liquid polymer that powers the advancements of this fantastical 1950s. For its part, however, the background does largely fade away as Atomic Heart peels back the layers of its false utopia. There’s a lot to be said about unapologetically single-player games like Atomic Heart: its entire focus is on creating an intricate world for us to explore and discover for ourselves. These are far from the only shooters Atomic Heart is unafraid to crib from, either.

Atomic Heart is an upcoming first-person shooter video game developed by Mundfish, a Russian game development studio. We got an early look - here is the ...

The enemy variety is limited, and after a while, the combat encounters can start to feel a bit too familiar. The game features a blend of retro-futuristic design and Soviet-era aesthetics, creating a truly unique and captivating world. The game also features a captivating story, with several twists and turns to keep players engaged. One of the strengths of Atomic Heart's enemy design is that each type of enemy requires a slightly different strategy to defeat. The game features RPG elements, allowing the player to level up and upgrade their abilities. The player can use a variety of weapons, including guns, melee weapons, and even their fists.

You'll spend a lot of time collecting resources throughout your adventure to upgrade weapons, craft much-needed healing items, and even invest in skill trees ...

Power Amplifier can be found in the Shok skill tree. Morning Exercise can be found in the Character skill tree. This will come in handy most against higher-health enemies, but it’s worth having in general, as you should be using Shok as often as you can anyways. Resistor Malfunction can also be found in the Shok skill tree. In this guide, we’ll tell you the best skills to buy first to make things a bit easier on you in the opening hours. You’ll spend a lot of time collecting resources throughout your adventure to upgrade weapons, craft much-needed healing items, and even invest in skill trees that will grant you a variety of new abilities and enhance the ones you already have.

Atomic Heart's superb visual design extends to its large range of partially ruined labs, facilities, and transportation hubs, each filled with long, ...

Atomic Heart’s superb visual design also extends to its large range of partially ruined labs, facilities, and transportation hubs, each filled with long, snaking globules of the liquid polymer that powers the advancements of this fantastical 1950s. The game is not wholly derivative despite its recognisable building blocks, with developer Mundfish assembling its vision in a confident and compelling way. However, the game is not without its flaws. In essence, it's a 24-hour, plugged-in version of the Internet. A few years later, just before Kollectiv 2.0 is made public, the game starts. Atomic Heart, the latest single-player video game, has garnered attention for its intricate world and striking visual design.

A prominent Nvidia RTX showpiece, the long-awaited Atomic Heart, launches on PC without any ray tracing graphics options whatsoever.

[reviews of Atomic Heart](https://gamerant.com/atomic-heart-review/) haven't been all that positive. [Atomic Heart supports DLSS at launch](https://gamerant.com/atomic-heart-denuvo-drm-dlss/), however. [Atomic Heart showed off 4K RTX gameplay](https://gamerant.com/atomic-heart-4k-rtx-gameplay/), hyping its graphics as one of its most exciting features. The lack of ray tracing is sure to disappoint some players, but the feature's prominence in pre-release materials comes as a bit of a guarantee that it should eventually be made available in-game. While the game is bound to find an audience with its Bioshock-like combat and plenty of content — according to the early reviews — some of the features that PC players might've been eagerly anticipating won't be available on day one. While the game has had a long and troubled production, having initially been announced back in 2018, its remarkable graphics have always been one of its most notable features, and developer Mundfish even collaborated with Nvidia to produce in-engine RTX showpieces years ago.

Watch the tense launch trailer for action-RPG, Atomic Heart. Get another look at the game's story, combat, and robots, and meet some of the characters ...

Send those pesky robots to the Soviet scrapyard with this launch-day deal for PC.

You'll need more than just a quick trigger-finger to survive, as you'll have to scavenge for resources, upgrade your skills, and use your environment to your advantage if you want to take the machines offline. You'll have access to combat abilities granted by your experimental power glove and a cutting-edge arsenal, to help even the odds. Set in alternate history Russia, the Soviet empire has risen to power thanks to a loyal army of robots that see to the nation's every need. The pricey premium edition comes with the Atomic Pass, a digital art book, and a pair of weapon skins. Or that's how it used to be, until a robot uprising put the Russian populace at the top of the endangered species list. The Atomic Pass is the biggie here, as it retails for $40 separately.

Atomic Heart isn't nearly as accommodating as most first-person shooter. Beyond just the best starter skills and weapons, this advice should help you start ...

Also, you’ll worry less about the fact that you can only save at save stations. By holding down L1/LB, you can freeze enemies in place for a short time with a steady stream of ice. But you’re restricted in how many consumable supplies — med packs, ammo, that sort of thing — you can cart around. There is no penalty for resetting, either: Sometimes you might have to solve a multipart puzzle, but in backing out, the game will acknowledge that you’ve solved the first part and start you at the second. It’s not always easy to gauge whether or not you can make a jump, but there’s one simple tell that works 100% of the time: If your hand is held outward (as seen in the screenshot below), you can make it. If you’re stumped on one specific puzzle, you can back out, then immediately jump back in to get a randomized variety of the same puzzle.

Atomic Heart's dazzling world design, extraordinary production values, and fast-paced fights make for a solid campaign, but the derivative plot and often ...

On the one hand, Atomic Heart is a good game on its own merits. Sadly, the best writing is hidden in the various terminals throughout the game, which contain most of the worldbuilding and connect other characters to one another. His interactions with the sexually frustrated crafting machine are especially painful, and the rest of the cast isn’t much better. Battles are both dangerous and satisfying, and the diversity of opponents keeps combat engaging. Instead of stealth, hacking, and environmental traps, Atomic Heart demands faster and more reactive shooting to curb the attackers’ superior numbers. The player assumes the role of Agent P-3, an operative under the command of Soviet genius Dr.

Atomic Heart offers a variety of skills and upgrades, though some quickly prove to be more valuable than others.

Combined with Sponge Effect, this skill allows you to soak a hit, destroy the attacker, and use your Energy weapons to focus on other nearby foes. Given the power of Energy weapons in this game, you can easily justify running a shield for this skill alone. Melee/Energy is a viable combo for most of Atomic Heart, so this skill soon proves to be worth its weight in Neuropolymers. As the only “defensive” ability in Atomic Heart, you may be tempted to pass over Polymeric Shield in favor of other options. This incredible skill allows you to lift “heavyweight” enemies with your Mass Telekinesis ability. One of the best AoE abilities in the game, Mass Telekinesis allows you to handle multiple enemies at once with relative ease. I’m not sure why that isn’t just part of the base ability’s functionality, but you will want this skill as soon as possible. Atomic Heart allows you to assign two abilities to your “Ability Slots,” and Frostbite is by far the most useful of those slotted, optional abilities. This skill allows you to acquire additional resources from defeated, frozen enemies, which means you’ll want to unlock it as soon as possible. So while you can eventually gain access to many of the skills in Atomic Heart, the better approach is to constantly change your skills around based on what the situation calls for. It doesn’t hurt that a properly upgraded Shok ability also happens to be one of the most useful overall abilities in the game. You didn’t come here to hear that, though, so let’s look at some of the best ways to upgrade your character in Atomic Heart and the kind of character build you’re ultimately aiming for.

Mundfish's 'Atomic Heart' launched without ray tracing, even though Nvidia has bragged about its RTX options since 2018.

Even on an RTX 3060, performance with DLSS Quality mode and the Atomic preset averaged over 100 fps at 1440p Atomic — though not in the opening sequence, where it was in the 50–80 fps range. We did a quick test of the game running on and Even 1440p remained playable, with the indoor areas in the early part of the game staying well above 60 fps — 4K dropped to about 40 fps, though. "Atomic Heart is a fantastic looking game and we are very pleased with what Mundfish was able to accomplish," Nvidia's director of global PR, Bryan Del Rizzo, told Tom's Hardware. 9, Mundfish founder and Atomic Heart director Robert Bagratuni said the game, which takes place in a alternate universe Soviet utopia, that "consoles will not support RT for now, but we strive to give our players the best and most optimized visual experience possible." Mundfish's Atomic Heart is releasing today, but without a feature that the developer and Nvidia have been pushing for years: ray tracing.