I’m not really a gamer and I don’t have a gaming computer per se, but I’m curious as to whether I should buy it or not. (Ukraine govt. is trying to ban it, which means it’s probably based, but the reviews involving a literal robot refrigerator trying to SA you mildly concern me)
I just started. It’s beautiful. Can’t comment on the narrative yet.
Aaaand it’s gonna be a pass for me. The puzzles are uninspired, there’s somehow a huge lack of clarity in what you’re supposed to be doing even though the game has been so linear, the combat sucks ass. There’s ‘climbing’ sections that are challenging to neither your reflex skills or your puzzle skills, they’re just really, really fucking slow. There are set piece moments that cheap shot kill you for not correctly guessing whether the level designer wanted you to charge forwards or back away.
The upgrade fridge thing is annoying. It’s not an exaggeration that it’s rapey. The first time you encounter the upgrade system is a huge info dump of skills and weapons upgrades for you to go through and the game is screeching - literally screeching - annoying edgelord lols at you while you’re trying to process it (or you can wait for it to stop… how much time you got for gaming these days?).
It feels like it’s written by the kind of teens who think they’re breaking taboos nobody’s ever broken before when they doodle dicks in their school books. The rest of the dialogue isn’t much better. The English voice actors sound like they have no idea of the context of what they’re talking about, and while it does sound better in Russian the subtitles don’t seem to offer any accessibility options and expect you to read them at 240wpm while in combat.
The straw on the camel’s back for me though is that the facility I’ve been in for nearly an hour has an obnoxiously loud background droning noise that… I think it’s supposed to make the ambience feel oppressive? It’s just exhausting and annoying.
I haven’t been so disinterested in seeing what happens next in a game for years.
edit: second thoughts. Maybe I’ll finish it when I have more patience for it. But I don’t recommend it.
From what I can tell, the prosperity of the utopia presented isn’t produced through socialist workers’ control of the means of production, but is instead simply the product of the genius of one “great man”, the scientist Sechenov. In this sense, the setting of Atomic Heart is actually that of a technocratic political economy where political power is wrested from politicians and falls into the hands of technical experts through their control of increasingly advanced technology. From a propaganda perspective, it is a simple canard; it dresses this technocratic political setting in Soviet aesthetics in order to conflate the two with each other. The audience subsequently relate them to each other and are consequently misled.
Have you played through the intro? It does actually present as a DOTP where robotics has genuinely been implemented in the best interests of the working class. The scientists are pretty down to earth, despite their achievements.
No idea what the plot twist will reveal though.
Its not really based, one of the main things of the game is that the soviet people are being turned into mindless drones through a massive neural network and only the politburo will be able to think freely. Also the refrigerator thing is probs nothing to Be worried about, the worst of it is how awkward it is to listen to a voice actor say pervy shit to the main character. Besides that the soviet aesthetics are beautiful, and it’s fun overall; would reccomend
To be fair to Atomic Heart, the concerns of people turning into mindless drones because of a Neural Network is presented as a hyper-paranoid unreasonable fear.
Haven’t really checked out their background, but I reckon it’s certainly better than Metro. The author of the books which the Metro games are based off of is a Navalny supporter and pro-Ukraine.
Glukhovsky books are heavily promoted in Poland which made me not want to ever read it (also most of people promoting them are 4th rate scribblers that fucked up the polish fantasy scene so hard that even after 40 years of trying is still crap)
Ironic, seeing how Sparta battalion from DNR use Metro imagery for their insignia
And to think I was gonna try out the Metro games… Guess I’ll pick this game instead.
Or you can hoist the black flag and sail the seven seas! Perfect way to not support people like that.
I could’ve done that, but it still won’t change that the Metro games are based off of Pro-Ukrainian nonsense.
The scenery is beautiful, and a big budget game in a luxury space communist setting is unique. I didn’t like the mechanics of System Shock or any of its copycats, so I don’t know how long I’ll be interested in the gameplay, but the ~15 min intro is incredible and definitely worth experiencing whether you “play” it or watch a play-through.
Game journalists have some issues with the game which I enjoy in a shitliberalssay sort of way. Here’s IGN, who doesn’t seem to know who won the cold war:
the lens through which you may view all this Soviet symbolism is a little different today in 2023 than it was upon its announcement and first reveal back in 2018. https://www.ign.com/articles/atomic-heart-review
Or destructoid:
Mundfish has crafted a Soviet Union that, outside of the floating cities and advanced robotics, feels like something Stalin and Lenin could have achieved if they weren’t so busy murdering their own people. https://www.destructoid.com/reviews/atomic-heart-review-destructoid/
I see complaints about the writing being juvenile or self-aware etc. but I cringe at the dialogue in every big budget game. And yeah there’s a horny upgrade robot, I wish it would drop the double entendres and respectfully ask you to fuck it.
I’m playing on “Easy”, which is a ding to my pride, but it was recommended by more experienced gamers so I’m going with it. https://www.polygon.com/guides/23606367/atomic-heart-difficulty-level-easy-medium-hard-peaceful-atom
I wish it would drop the double entendres and respectfully ask you to fuck it
I literally snorted laughing, holy shit.
I won’t ever play that since it’s a genre i hate, so my thought is that a lot of people are completely starving for a modern good looking game that don’t outright bash USSR and is not full of liberalism (even though it apparently is considering what i heard).
I won’t ever play that since it’s a genre i hate,
You don’t like FPS games?
Yes. I did liked literally three of them ever. Note it’s not about first person, Elder Scrolls is one of my favourite series ever, but about action. I hate action games with burning passion, mostly because the morons slapping “RPG” label on half of them and i have to slog though all that shit in order to find a rpg game to play, and mostly there isn’t any.
Perfect summary of the game industry. RPG does not mean interchangeable weapons.
Hmm, I think you might like CRPGs then. But then again, what’s your definition of RPG?
Something like Baldur’s Gate, Fallout, Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Elder Scrolls, Witcher, most jrpgs. I don’t consider rpg things which put very heavy emphasis on action, like Dark Souls-likes, Assassin Creed or hack&slash games like Diablo, etc. Problem is that nowadays most of what get labeled “RPG” is just like this.
For some years now, pretty good indicator has been the presence of “story” mode, which means difficulty level so low that game authors must be pretty sure that easy combat would not diminish their game.
Opposite is the souls-like which don’t even have difficulty settings because there is only combat there. Every time such game is released there is yet another round of online war about difficulty level, with the minmaxer horde and various other elitist trash gAmErS inevitably triumph over “noobs” and “casuals” when the game authors refuse to implement lower difficulty levels. Morons as they are, they don’t know the reason for it is not the devs sharing their disdain for other people, but simply calculation - while logic would dictate lowering the difficulty to appeal to a broader audience and thus selling more copies, but the entire life of such game is making players constantly repeat portions of game after numerous failures and without it there would be like 5 hours of play.
Elden Ring apparently get that somewhat right, though it’s still obvious it’s not rpg but action adventure/slasher.
I’m playing the game currently and so far, I fucking love it.
Get a Steam Deck.
It basically makes gaming PCs obsolete and it’s more affordable than one.
(I’m not joking, my “gaming laptop” that was apparently so “state of the art” pales in comparison to the Steam Deck in how it runs games, especially at high graphical settings.)
I don’t know anything about “Steam Deck” but i do know that so-called “gaming laptops” are almost always underwhelming. You could have a PC that was built five years ago with mid tier hardware that is still better than a top of the line “gaming laptop” today.
Right?!
I have a PC built five years ago with mid tier hardware, are gaming laptops really that bad? Like can they handle Victoria 3 in 1935
Steam Deck doesn’t make gaming PCs obsolete
As long as it can pirate stuff my PC will never be obsolete 😎
Actually Steam Deck is very cool for piracy. I pirate a ton of shit on it from emulated to Windows games. Switch for example is locked down garbage. Steam Deck basically runs a modified Arch Linux install.
I knew someone who had one, the thing is absolutely perfect for emulation. Probably the best budget option if you want to have a handy system to run every single Nintendo title comfortably.
Except for Switch emulation Android phones have already been powerful enough to do that for a while. I just use my Poco F2 Pro with a the Gamesir X2 telescopic Bluetooth controller. The Switch emulators for android just aren’t mature even though chips like the 8 gen 2 should theoretically be able to do full speed emulation.
Sure, phones can do a pretty good job, although since a steam deck is a Linux PC, you also have the added bonus of way more options and tweakability. Not to mention it also runs most PC games and can emulate all but the current generation of consoles on top of that.
I picked one up, and absolutely love it. As a bonus, it’s a decent Linux desktop if you plug in a monitor and a keyboard. Kudos to Valve on not locking it down.
Locking it down?
They could’ve just made it into a console where you can just play games on it, but instead they left it as an open Linux PC you can use any way you like.
Yeah, that’s awesome, tbh.
Link plz :3
To what?
Atomic heart
Thanks
