- Publisher: Mundfish , Focus Entertainment
- Release Date: Feb 21, 2023
- Also On: PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X
- Critic score
- Publication
- By date
- Unscored
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Feb 20, 2023Leaving all neighboring political scandals aside, Mundfish has achieved a universe with the perfect combination of passion, discipline and talent; which enables a simply magical level of attention to detail and freshness. What Atomic Heart brings to the table is no less than a masterpiece of art.
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Mar 13, 2023Atomic Heart was made with love, talent and a great deal of cynic humor poured into the game.
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Feb 20, 2023Atomic Heart keeps on going and throws everything at the wall, from large set-pieces to quiet moments of exploration, packed encounters or tough single enemies, stealth areas that you can bull on through if sneaking isn’t your thing, and plenty of little puzzles to add more variety to a game that already had plenty. Whatever lies at the heart of Facility 3826, whatever the project ends up meaning, Atomic Heart is an incredible adventure into the retro-future history of a Russia that never existed.
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Feb 20, 2023Like Bioshock and Wolfenstein, Atomic Heart takes us to an alternative world of the past, set in a world with a communist theme, where a robot rebellion is currently underway. While not every gameplay feature is perfect, the game combines storytelling, action, crafting, and puzzle elements very well and constantly offers something new.
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Feb 22, 2023Atomic Heart presents an imaginative utopian world where there are beautiful visions of an alternate timeline, countless terrifying mechanical bodies and experimental creatures, as well as engravings and writings on the spirit and cultural symbols of the Soviet people.
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Game World Navigator MagazineMay 4, 2023Great level design, dangerous enemies, good gunplay and intriguing story come together to deliver an unforgettable game. [page 38]
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LEVEL (Czech Republic)Jan 23, 2024The first hours are spent in laboratory corridors, but eventually the game opens up wide and actually mirrors another game with the numbers 451 in its DNA, which is the closest to it - the modern Prey. It's also the one that best shows what the game does masterfully, and where it stumbles on its ambitions. [Issue#326]
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Feb 28, 2023Atomic Heart offers a solid and enjoyable experience with a unique setting and a great soundtrack. Although it has some issues with linearity and lack of brilliance, it has enough tricks up its sleeve to be a memorable experience of this year.
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Feb 27, 2023After the linear and immersive nature of the missions, the transition to the open world is a welcome relief. While Atomic Heart takes us to a completely different dystopian USSR, it also made me smile by getting a lot of things right as a game. Sure, it's not a perfect game and it's a bit of a medley, but at the end of the day, it manages to entertain the player.
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Feb 20, 2023With enormously fun, varied gameplay, great art style, interesting story and great sound, Atomic Heart manages to outperform its many small blunders.
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Feb 20, 2023Atomic Heart can really be frustrating but its futurist soviet union and the art behind are worth the journey.
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Feb 20, 2023With its theme based on a dystopian USSR at the cutting edge of world science, Atomic Heart offers us a rather exciting action-RPG title. Its universe and atmosphere are particularly successful, with a lively world and omnipresent humor, without ever really taking itself seriously. Efficient, the software is however quite classic in its FPS proposal, with far too many resources to pick up. But its gameplay, incorporating puzzles, and its spectacular graphics, combined with its universe and its delectable soundtrack, manage to keep us hooked throughout its not inconsiderable life span.
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Feb 20, 2023As a first major project from a largely new studio, Atomic Heart is astounding. It is a visual spectacle with great gameplay and an overarching story that is worth seeing to the end. But as a title that is aiming to take on the other major blockbuster games of the recent past, it’s not quite there.
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Feb 20, 2023A story-led shooter that’s heaving with ideas and boasts a distinct sci-fi setting in its doomed USSR. There are cringeworthy moments and occasional design missteps, but the way your abilities and the enemy ecosystem combine is a constant thrill.
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Feb 20, 2023Atomic Heart is, most surprisingly, exactly what I expected. Its biggest strengths are the ones that treat the eyes, but great writing and exploration are welcome in an otherwise overstretched experience.
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Feb 20, 2023A solid sci-fi shooter with glossy visuals but a subpar storyline and a lack of gameplay sophistication.
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Feb 27, 2023Atomic Heart is a game that is by no means the masterpiece we probably hoped for, but it's a worthwhile title that will provide guaranteed entertainment for the 16-17 hours or so it lasts and leaves a serious legacy for an even higher quality sequel.
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Feb 22, 2023Atomic Heart aims high and, even if it doesn't quite pull it off, is a decent shooter in an exceptionally realised setting.
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Feb 21, 2023On the one hand, Atomic Heart is a good game on its own merits. The fun and frantic gunplay, outstanding visual design, and intricate level of detail in its world amount to an experience worth your time. On the other hand, it could have been so much more. The story and characters simply don’t do justice to the game’s thought-provoking premise, and some better writing would have done wonders. Despite that, Atomic Heart is still an exciting and memorable first outing from Mundfish.
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Feb 21, 2023Atomic Heart is a good game that buries itself in the shadow of great games. There's a lot of creativity, flair and intriguing design, but the game seems to lack confidence. This leaves the plot feeling a little halfhearted and some gameplay features feeling like they were there to check a box rather than actually add anything to the game. When Atomic Heart is on, it is on, but it spends too much time in the doldrums to keep it from truly reaching excellence.
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Feb 20, 2023Remember that thought I advised you to keep to the end? Here you are. Atomic Heart suffers from that taste of "already seen" which ends up distorting its workmanship a bit, an important element that could affect anyone's experience, precisely due to the inability to create empathy with characters who, in the end, lived almost like extras. A set of clichés which, however, does not penalize the success of the work in its entirety. The show staged by Mundfish has all the credentials to establish good starting points, which could make more sense after the launch. We'll see: the potential of the setting is more than actually exploited.
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Mar 10, 2023Atomic Heart is a solid debut for a brand-new developer. Mundfish succeeded in following the example of BioShock to deliver an engaging first-person shooter that is fun to play (minus a few quirks), runs extremely well, and looks great. That said, the story is a letdown and should have been fleshed out more, just like the side content.
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Feb 21, 2023Atomic Heart's fascinating settings and story, even combat systems are enough to attract worldwide gamers. However, be careful since the empty, lifeless open world is packed with bugs that hinder proceeding. Even the unfriendly UX is taking part in fading the charm of its strengths, the actual gameplay.
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Feb 20, 2023An ambitious and mostly fun shooter that delivers a satisfying BioShock-inspired story, but Atomic Heart falls short of greatness due to evident feature creep, frustrating platforming segments, and silly oversights in terms of its accessibility.
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Feb 20, 2023Atomic Heart is in all respects a debut game. It proposes brilliant ideas, but several limitations and flaws mortify the game globally. Recommended for lovers of dystopian science fiction, who will still have to make several compromises to enjoy the experience.
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Feb 20, 2023Atomic Heart is a shooter with some fantastic ideas, excellent presentation, and a fair bit of variety. Although it doesn't excel at any one thing and flatters to deceive at times, it still has enough to offer a compelling adventure.
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Feb 26, 2023Atomic Heart is a love letter to BioShock, but the setting is unique enough and the world crazy enough to stand on its own two feet. Great action, world building and storytelling are unfortunately interspersed with mechanics that take the flow out of the game or are completely unnecessary. Not to mention some nasty, edgy comments and the oversexed robots. Developer Mundfish could have limited the size better, because behind the multitude of disappointing elements lies a fantastic game.
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Feb 21, 2023Atomic Heart is a game with many lights, but also some shadows. It feels like the developers bit more than they could chew, but the foundations are solid and there is a lot of potential for future entries.
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Mar 19, 2023For a first try from a studio without any previous games, Atomic Heart is certainly an achievement albeit rough around (some) edges. Its aesthetic and mixture of well crafted action, puzzles and exploration is dragged down a bit by an abysmal open-world design (which thankfully doesn’t last long) and a rather predictable story. Nevertheless, the overall experience created the feeling that Mundfish is a studio that we should keep our eyes on in the future.
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Feb 21, 2023Frankly stunningly beautiful, Atomic Heart opens with stunning architecture and a catchy pitch before unfolding a story that struggles a little to convince and lets out dozens of dialogues that can make you wince. Remains a rather decent gameplay divided between classic and robust combat, hyper clever puzzles and barely decent platforming.
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Feb 20, 2023A Bioshock-clone with a confusing, often unsatisfying story and many elements that seem unfinished. Beautiful visuals and good combat are captivating enough for one playthrough, though.
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Feb 20, 2023There really is a lot to love about this game. The graphics are about as "next-gen" as you can get, the world is marvellous, the audio and soundtrack is top quality, and the narrative is thoroughly interesting and engaging. If it wasn't for its clunky and overcomplicated nature, Atomic Heart would probably be one of the year's best games.
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Feb 20, 2023Atomic Heart embraces lunacy, overblown sexuality, and violence at every turn, and feels simultaneously polished and yet painfully unrefined.
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Mar 13, 2023If you can poke past the horribly-paced and presented story, tedious and sometimes painful character dialogue, and bad design ideas for the open-world aspect, I can sincerely say that there is some legitimate Shock-like qualities in the better parts of the gameplay and in the awe-striking art style, to say nothing of the incredible music. If you enjoyed any of Bioshock‘s selections, or Arkane’s 2016 Prey, consider giving this communist dystopia a chance to show how close it got to nailing that Shock-like formula, even if you wind up coming out hating the phrase “Crispy Critters” as much as I did.
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Mar 1, 2023Atomic Heart’s captivating Soviet robo-topia crumbles under the weight of a poorly delivered story, clunky action, unnecessary open-world traversal, and a glut of technical issues.
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Feb 20, 2023Atomic Heart is a solid yet over-indulgent first entry from a developer that maybe had more ideas than it could manage at once. The individual atoms and particles have wonderful potential, but their quantum connection to each other feels wholly missing thanks to their competing directions. I have hope a sequel could deliver on the fantastic premise and stellar world-building, but just like nuclear fusion, it’s an optimistic dream rather than an exciting current reality.
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Feb 20, 2023The biggest disappointment - outside of the narrative, uneven combat, and characters - comes from the expectation and promise found in the art direction, combat, and Soviet-era Russian sci-fi style. There’s a school of thought that when it comes to a review, you should discuss the content of a game versus what it doesn’t have. The logic is sound, if all criticism comes from a place of unmet expectation, that would be unfair. But when something looks this good, you can’t help but wonder what’s missing. At least in those rare moments when the game shuts up long enough for you to think.
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Feb 25, 2023Mundfish bit off more than it could chew, leading to a lot of half-baked ideas that should have been scrapped and reigned in. It makes the game's greatest moments ultimately bittersweet, as deep down there is potential for something excellent.
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Mar 5, 2023I don’t think this game is art, and I don’t think it’s revolutionary, I think it’s a huge cultural step backwards – no matter how pretty it may look – that is based on mediocre gameplay mechanics.
| This publication does not provide a score for their reviews. | |
| This publication has not posted a final review score yet. | |
| These unscored reviews do not factor into the Metascore calculation. | |
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Feb 20, 2023After a half-dozen hours with Atomic Heart, I’m eager to see where it takes me. I’m currently exploring the college town around a mag-lev train station, looking for a dead comrade with a ticket on them. The game’s promotional screenshots suggest far more varied environments than the underground tunnels I’ve been through and a wider mix of malfunctioning worker bots...Atomic Heart is loaded with little loving details, and its combat is notably more fluid and involved than the somewhat plain shooting typically associated with its sub-genre. I suspect the answer to what went wrong with the grand robo-workers’ utopia is going to involve some well-worn sci-fi tropes, but I’m fine with it. It’s a fun, ambitious shooter with a distinct style and worth the occasional kick in the head. [Impressions]
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Mar 6, 2023The problem lies in its mediocre story and downright bad writing. I already grew weary of its big-mouthed protagonist just a few hours into Atomic Heart. [Review in Progress]
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Feb 20, 2023Atomic Heart’s lack of satirical bite might just be one of the most consistent things about it. For every miserable onslaught of respawning bots, there’s an intoxicatingly tense run-and-gun battle. For every work of artistry in the sound design and environments, there’s a scene of utterly sub-par scripting. It’s glorious and tedious, polished and patchwork all the same time, and while there’s an anarchic part of my brain that wants more ambitious-yet-wonky games like it, stronger is my hope that Mundfish’s second game has a tighter grasp on its own strengths and weaknesses.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 1,695 out of 2387
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Mixed: 185 out of 2387
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Negative: 507 out of 2387
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Feb 22, 2023
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Feb 23, 2023
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Feb 23, 2023