A promising bit of alternate history sci-fi with a Russian twist, Atomic Heart has been one of my most anticipated releases for quite some time, as per the headline you can probably guess that the end result didn't come close to living up to that promise.

A snippet.

One of the more immediate issues with Atomic Heart as a game is the tonal dissonance between its setting, story, and pretty much everything else. The main protagonist is an angry and unlikable cartoon character that sees every obstacle or objective placed in front of them as an affront to their existence. This is amplified to near-unseen but definitely not unheard-of levels when the in-game chatter between Major P-3 and his AI-glove CHAR-les becomes tiring.

Setting aside the poor English dub where American accents betray the art direction or the dialogue, which is both aggressive and juvenile in its overt sexualisation of random elements, it’s relentless. So much so that you could be in a heated minutes-long combat encounter with various robots and mutated humanoids or in a creepy facility looking to solve an environmental puzzle - and throughout most of that time, a swear-filled or inane dialogue exchange is happening.

Our Full Atomic Heart Review