Atomic Heart

An amazing and extremely uneven experience. The base game is competent. DLC1 is more of the same, although I did not like the boss encounter either time it appeared. DLC2 is "what if we made a sonic game instead?" I actually had to consult the internet because the tutorial about sliding doesn't actually contain any explanation of how you steer. It's based on where you look. If you snap the mouse around fast enough, you can change direction if you want to get all the collectables. But the 3rd and 4th DLC? fan-tastic. The writing got so much better once there were some more characters to work with. The worldbuilding and philosophy of post-life and post-humanity... loved it. The game is also really weirdly horny in places. Emphasis on weird. But it gets less awkward as it goes. I'm a bit ace, so YMMV. Definitely a recommend. And I'm looking forward to the sequel. I suspect I will again be waiting for all the DLC to come out. This game is not a complete experience without all the DLCs. In a very real way, this game simply was not finished until three years after release. There's a reason episodic release games kinda aren't a thing.

The combat in this game is like trying to fight 100 dwarfs on meth, this sh*t is so bad

The controls feel clunky and unresponsive. The sexual harassment robot is too much!

This game tries to be so many different things at once that it just sucks. If you're looking to refund the game, be quick. The opening section could easily take 2 hours before you even begin combat and main gameplay. There's so many puzzles or sections that just feel like they are there to artificially lengthen the game. There's multiple 10-15 minute unskippable sections in the middle-to-late game where you wait for an NPC to slowly walk down a hall. The protagonist and all the characters are extremely unlikeable and repetitive. Filled with repetitive swearing, overly praise to the environment, excessive lore dumping that I can't stomach to listen to it all. The protag keeps saying "Crispy Critters" every 5 seconds because his brain is sliced up. He never grows even though the game would like you to pretend that he changes. Combat is clunky. Melee is slow and resources can be limited by quantity or cooldowns which force you back to using melee. The enemies will stun lock and swarm you to the point that you just die without getting a chance to react. It has shallow open-ended sections and skill/weapon upgrades that feels exhausting to even progress. Climbing sections feels half…

I got really sucked into this game which I didn't expect. The kind of sucked in that makes me want to immediately replay it after for all the collectables. Unique and stunning style. Fun if not simple combat that feels impactful. Weapon customization and fun power abilities. Really weird yet thought out story and lore that I was totally digging. DLC that (mostly) slaps. That said, it's definitely got some rough edges that you'd expect from a non AAA game. Repeating models. Sometimes janky movement and production quality. Some mechanics that don't really work like in the open world areas. If you can look past this kinda stuff which really isn't that intrusive, then you'll have a great time. The gold edition comes with all the DLC and is absolutely worth $20 on sale.

Stuttering mess. Even my rig can't handle it. Stutter central. No heart in atomic heart. Contrived, corny, trying too hard. Makes zero sense. Slow paced. Terrible. Clunky. Boring. A chore to play.