Starting with the seeds of creativity planted by Artem, the founder of Mundfish, 15 years ago for a concept video created by an advertisement, after 15 years of precipitation and incubation, "Atomic Heart" brings us an indescribable visual feast with extremely high-quality gameplay and a unique Soviet aesthetic of atomic punk. Throughout the entire work, the mature game system and complete game framework all make people quickly indulge in this near-future utopia, although objectively the game is still lacking in details, but still does not hinder the experience beauty of the game, let's approach this unique Russian adventure together.
My "guide"
It is said that Artem took "Bioshock" as the catch-up target of "Atomic Heart" at the beginning of the project, and now many players also title "Atomic Heart" as the Russian version of BioShock, but in fact, there is a big factual gap between the two in both narrative and gameplay. Although both adopt the battle mode of special energy + shooting in design, compared to "Bioshock" with a more compact narrative structure, the gameplay of "Atomic Heart" is more diverse and loose, and the main line of the game supports a huge experience framework for the game through the composite gameplay of node-style narrative advancement + puzzle exploration + shooting stealth + garbage picking, allowing players to have enough energy to spend on it, although it is undeniable that "Bioshock" is classic, but in terms of personal experience, "Atomic Heart" This experience of more casual rhythm division and diversified content may be more suitable for today's game market and user groups, on the one hand, thanks to the production strategy of the production team itself, on the other hand, it is also inseparable from the production team's keen sense of market.
Although it is also a special ability + weapon combat method, it is obvious that the compact structure of pure narrative is difficult to adapt to the current gameplay
However, the white jade is slightly flawed, and the production team's beautiful concept of gameplay has some small errors under the uneven difficulty experience. That is the game's stealth system, although the production team has highlighted the importance of stealth gameplay with a lot of ink, but in the actual experience, the degree of stealth is far more than I thought. Under the general difficulty, players also need to look ahead, consider terrain, obstacles, monster layout, pick things and other elements, and because most of the scenes of monsters are staggered, the layout is reasonable, basically there will rarely be more than five or six monsters besieged, the player's diversified weapons and abilities can pull out enough space to "show" a period of operation, so Kai Wushuang can make the player experience more smooth. Perhaps the layout distribution and AI level of monsters on difficult difficulty may make the battle different, but for the general and below difficulty chosen by most players, stealth is not a necessary option at all, and even this option is not available in the eyes of players.
Most of the time, as long as the weapon is in hand and the drug is enough, recklessness is the first choice
Having said that, although the stealth system is a bit of a chicken rib, the design of the entire combat talent is indeed the most interesting and experiential part of the game. Unlike most of the various skills that slowly open up with the plot, this game shows the huge combat talent tree in front of the player from the first moment of "close contact" with the oven succubus Nora. Players can learn all the basic abilities in the first place, but how to conceive what kind of development route the protagonist needs to take next, and how to balance the skill relationship between life saving, functionality and attack requires players to plan more.
After all, a more important point in this work is that the early stage will not take the initiative to refresh the enemy, even after the save point is saved, most of the enemies will not refresh, resulting in the early stage of the game basically does not have too many opportunities to "brush materials", indirectly leading to the upgrade of skills of the "polymer" will also be relatively rare, in my personal example, in the early stage of pointing out electromagnetic, frost and other functional basic skills, basically put the rest of the skill points into strengthening their own body, after all, for a slightly dizzy 3D elderly, mistakes are often a thing, And the high resistance and thick blood volume are enough to face various adverse scenarios.
The essence of the turtle flow play method is to defend first
The other half of the combat element besides skills is weapons. Different from the directly open skill tree, the acquisition of weapons still needs to be gradual in this work, but don't worry, compared to the slow pace of many games to unlock a weapon one or two chapters apart, the speed of acquiring weapons in this game will not be particularly delayed, in the first and middle periods players can collect and obtain most of the weapons design drawings and upgrade modules, although it is unlocked by opening boxes, but most of the boxes are in a more conspicuous or necessary position, it is difficult to make mistakes, And even if you miss it, you can return to find it through the map marker, which is still more humane at this point.
Although the game opened the weapon permission as soon as possible, it does not mean that players can make it at will, the core of the problem is that players need to unlock by collecting materials even after obtaining drawings, in the early stage of the game, less weapon materials are completely insufficient to support the unlocking and upgrading of all weapons and equipment, players need to carefully choose weapons to unlock and cultivate, which is very important, which leads to another feature of the game---- the collection of garbage.
A wide range of weapon options will help you deal with all kinds of enemies
Each weapon has several modules, each with a different upgrade path
If the traditional game of material acquisition, box rummaging and cabinet still stay in the manual work of the small peasant era, in "Atomic Heart", the technology of picking up garbage can be said to have achieved a qualitative leap, from the handicraft workshop to the level of automated assembly line, players only need to press F to achieve automatic one-key collection, so that the experience of picking up garbage becomes refreshing and silky, which is undoubtedly the progress of science and technology, such a design breaks the technical barriers of traditional one-on-one garbage picking, allowing the protagonist to embark on the information highway of collecting rags ..... When then these are pure blows, but the game does make picking up garbage more decompressing, watching the scene of pressing F paper flying around has a refreshing feeling of vacuum cleaner absorbing everything.
Although the cabinets are everywhere, the items collected are quite fragmentary
However, one thing that is not very convenient is that due to the height of the character model, some cabinets close to the player, the bottom of the box will occasionally miss due to the perspective problem, and after collecting most of the materials, there will still be one or two fish that slipped through the net, which is somewhat helpless, and there will be errors in some scenes that are still highlighted even after the props are completely collected, which is also a little scratchy, especially for those obsessive-compulsive players; There is also the large-scale material collection ability of this work has also triggered my thinking about the necessity of picking up garbage, due to the rich preparation of the arsenal in the game, as many as a dozen weapons and countless derivative modules, the required upgrade materials are also vast, and the game has to design the same sweaty cabinets, chests, tables to place materials on this basis, so in my opinion, the game's optimization of "picking up garbage" is also the only way under the design, Otherwise, sooner or later, the player's motivation for the game will be exhausted by the operation of turning over the cabinet.
Even if the box is empty, it is still highlighted
Coincidentally, in addition to picking up garbage, another bit of fun in the gaming experience is the game's scanning system. As the first work of developer Mundfish, you can still understand the immaturity of the game in terms of design, if in most similar masterpieces experience, the scanning system (or Hawkeye system) will still maintain a certain highlight of the item after closing, so that players can still locate the item even if the scan is turned off. In this work, the production team obviously lacks this kind of thinking, and loses the positioning of items after turning off the scan, coupled with the large space of most of the game's scenes, resulting in players needing to switch scans from time to time to locate them, which reduces the coherence of the game experience.
The advantage is that it can clearly mark the way to respond to enemies and the drop of items
It is still very refreshing to feel good in battle, after all, there are rich means of dealing with the enemy. Among them, weapons are mainly divided into energy weapons, melee weapons and long-range weapons, of which long-range weapons are strictly limited to the amount of ammunition, so they can save and save, mainly to deal with some enemies that need to pull and long-range threats; Energy weapons are powerful and ranged and do not consume ammunition, what is needed is the player's energy slot (isn't it MP), although there is a talent for players to release energy with blood demon, but most of the time they still need to use melee weapon attacks to restore energy; Therefore, the remaining melee weapons are the main helper for players when exploring, simple and practical, and environmentally friendly. The game's combat system based on three types of weapons and the skills it carries can be said to be just right, allowing players to try various methods to deal with enemies, although the weaknesses of monsters limit the range of weapons, even then the player's results are not the only solution, it is thanks to such a variety of combat combinations that the fun of the game is highlighted.
Even in battle, the dancers' movements are elegantly designed
Want to try a fried meat bun?
In addition to combat, various puzzles based on the theme of "door locks" are also interesting to experiment, ranging from power locks that rely on player reflexes and hand speed to intelligence locks that rely on brain power to change. Since the production team is limited to the puzzle surface, it is also a dojo in a snail shell, but the ubiquitous door locks are somewhat tiring in the later stages of the game, after all, the production team is only upgrading the difficulty of these puzzles, not adding new puzzles.
The corresponding color patch ranges from the first two colors to the later five colors
Later in the game, this intuitive is less annoying
Of course, in addition to the gameplay, the shaping of characters is also an important part of the game, it is clear that the game is half successful in character shaping, whether it is the twin dancers who have appeared in the trailer, or Professor Sechenov who "has a dream" has extremely distinct personality traits, especially the most representative, the fire of some out of the circle of the "refrigerator" Nora's design can be said to be a good cut into the player's pain point, compared to the gender identity political correctness that is now popular in European and American games, such a simple and direct "touchdown" A good ball can bring players a more comfortable experience, which is no wonder that players have given the highest courtesy to their "wife". The production team focuses on highlighting the clumsiness of the cartoon puppet of the robot and the horror and ferocity after losing control, which is not bad in terms of actual experience, the contrast is indeed obvious, and because the scene environment is not deliberately created to create a horror atmosphere, it does not feel scary.
Everyone must have been brushed by her
The "meeting gift" brought to me by future technology
As for the unsuccessful half, it is thanks to the mediocre protagonist. Although not as self-centered as the heroine Frey in "Cursed Land", the male protagonist who is a school official is far more decent than the street thief, but Colonel Sergei Nechaev, who contains both "mother" and "grass" in his words, obviously does not have many endearing characteristics, words are a window to express people's cultivation and quality, if the preconceived set such "shackles" for a character, then in order to highlight the character's maverick characteristics, it obviously needs more charm to be accepted by the audience and players. Obviously, Colonel Nechayev still lacks a trace of precipitation, far from the "bad" charm of Lao Cui in GTA5, but more similar to a reckless and vulgar fool, although it is explained to a certain extent later in the story, but once the concept is formed, such a character is difficult for players to like.
To be honest, the image of the protagonist and his language logic are quite consistent
Regardless of Ginah's mother-in-law's character design, this appearance is quite interesting, full of contrast
Of course, in addition to the subtle gameplay, exquisite artistry is also a major factor in its success, in fact, even today, we still see a unique work that implements Soviet aesthetics so transparently. It organically combines the art style of the old Soviet Union and the "atompunk" style that emerged during the Brezhnev period due to the Cold War situation, and the various buildings are full of the popular "space beauty" of that era, highlighting the taste of constructivism and futurism everywhere, and it is such a unique art style that makes the world of this work unique.
Renderings of the Palace of Soviets, originally scheduled to be built in the 30s of the last century, were later stranded due to various factors
The game is a good restoration of the imagination of the Soviet Palace
If you have been lucky enough to visit the underground stations of St. Petersburg, you should be able to see the unique brushstrokes of the old Soviet art style, the enamel relief on the vault of the subway hall of the Opera House, the large mosaic mural of the new village station, and the bronze statue of the workers of the revolutionary workers' station. Although the gameplay of this work released within this year is difficult to win, it is difficult to catch up with it in terms of artistry.
Intricate gilded mosaic murals, repeated bronze chandeliers, goose yellow domes exuding divinity
So much for the good and bad, in the final analysis, "Atomic Heart" is still a fairly mature and excellent work. Although it is inevitable that there is a little less polishing in the details as a fledgling work, its existence undoubtedly confirms that the small factory does not lack the ability to make 3A masterpieces, in the final analysis, it is still due to whether the production team has devoted itself to the game and whether it has enough understanding and positioning for the game. Just like Hogwarts: Legacy, as a canned game you can hardly say what features it has in terms of gameplay, but its stable can design and quite restored book setting are enough to put an end to the magical dreams that fans have had for many years, and the same is true for this game, whether you are an FPS enthusiast, a connoisseur of Soviet aesthetics, or a visionary of a futuristic utopia, Atomic Heart is a technological fairy tale worth immersing yourself in.
Fairytale tones, hellish scenes
The Slavic legend of the Baba Yaga hut