Atomic Heart - Russian BioShock-Like Soviet Diesselpunk Shooter feat. Hot Robot Twins

  • Want to keep track of this thread?
    Accounts can bookmark posts, watch threads for updates, and jump back to where you stopped reading.
    Create account
Was hyped for this for years since the first screenshots in 2018. Overall I've been enjoying it 12 hours in. I've just been fooling myself with the dialogue setting it to Russian and ignoring how shitty the writing feels. It feels like they tried to write the MC like Duke Nukem but it doesn't work considering the plot takes itself way too seriously. I'll probably beat as much of the game as I can stand and try to finish it atleast once then uninstall it.
 
I think part of what is making so many people hate the dialogue is the fact it has in essence been translated three times.

Devs are using western dialogue queues and mannerisms, but it is likely a lot of them are russian and had to read/hear a lot of it from the western games translated to russian. This is the 1st layer of errors introduced. Then they wrote the stuff for the game, which in turn was likely all made in Russian and subconsciously using russian mannerisms and turns of phrase. This is the second layer. And then they put that into english, which makes it layer 3 of the translation conversion.

I would think it might have resulted in less issues if they had given up on any sort of western style for the dialogue and writing at all an instead done all of it in regular, familiar russian and translated it just once to english.
 
General Emílio Médici said:
I think part of what is making so many people hate the dialogue is the fact it has in essence been translated three times.

Devs are using western dialogue queues and mannerisms, but it is likely a lot of them are russian and had to read/hear a lot of it from the western games translated to russian. This is the 1st layer of errors introduced. Then they wrote the stuff for the game, which in turn was likely all made in Russian and subconsciously using russian mannerisms and turns of phrase. This is the second layer. And then they put that into english, which makes it layer 3 of the translation conversion.

I would think it might have resulted in less issues if they had given up on any sort of western style for the dialogue and writing at all an instead done all of it in regular, familiar russian and translated it just once to english.
Click to expand...
The issue here is that a lot of Russian humor, mannerisms and way of speaking doesnt tranlsate that well into English. That was the same problem with Planet Alcatraz and Red Comrades 2
 
Articles and Nudes said:
All the big dicks crushing Armageddon might want to double check the options menu. My difficulty setting keeps changing back down to Local Malfunction when loading.
Click to expand...
Some trivia: the difficulty level "Local Malfunction" was called "Local Failure" before the first patch. lol.

Counterfeit Obol said:
Sure you're not using the leaked devbuild?
Click to expand...
I'm playing it on Xbox (Game Pass) and also had that issue. I checked after reading that post, and my difficulty had dropped to the easiest level.
 
So, you can kinda cheese the first boss enemy by crouching and many of his attacks will just miss.
After that experience, the game now tries to introduce me to its stealth section, and the same boss enemy is just down a hallway, clear sight in front of a camera, with zero chance of sneaking around him, so I figured, the most 'fun' way to deal with this situation is to cheese him from the vent with the axe.

Yeeeaahhhh, this looks like unpolished bullshit. I can't recommend this nonsense so far. Also, bulletsponge enemies. JFC, what is up with modern gaming?
 
Ughubughughughughughghlug said:
Shooting soldiers of an occupying army is not terrorism (regardless of if you have a tricorne or a towel on your head).
Click to expand...
"Yes it is! The rabble of the colonies need to KNOW THEIR PLACE" 🇬🇧

To be fair, if the Continentals lost, they would be referred to by the history books as a failed insurgency or whatever the 18th century equivalent was.

But millennials and Zoomers can't read, so there is doubt that there actually would be history books.
 
I just finished it so here's what I think.

It basically rules. When I compared it to Bioshock that wasn't intended disparagingly, and the game even does a huge Bioshock joke at a certain point. While Bioshock was disappointing as fuck and it pisses me off that immersive sim pretenders have cloned that fucking evolutionary dead end ever since, this takes the template and really refines the shit out of that gameplay and makes me want to not categorically hate the trend anymore.

It doesn't do anything original, it just fixes a lot of mistakes and half-thought-out ideas. Like the weapon upgrades system: in most games that work similarly you tend to upgrade your favourite weapon, then forget about its tree forever as you move onto the next.
Thanks to the mat refund/inventory grid/good blueprint ordering in this one though, you're free to mulch guns to find something that currently works better, or even toss a gun you aren't using temporarily just to get a particular upgrade earlier on something else. And because of this I found myself revisiting weapons and even completely swapping the specialisations for each of my favourites, still tweaking things 90% of the way through.

Stealth both has an actual point versus blasting everything for once, and gives you new ways to approach it since higher alarm levels require you to be fighting back. I know some people aren't digging the overworld but I found the contrast between hectic fucking chaos and sudden peaceful walk in the park when you overload the grid to be a pretty cool feeling.
And in general the combat is great; you can't turn your brain off (hard mode highly recommended, it basically just makes the AI more aggressive from what I can tell, ignore the dumb "apocalypse" label) and caring about elemental/physical weaknesses isn't mandatory, but don't feel tacked on either. These games always give you too many overpowered superpowers too so it's refreshing to have enemies that are actually worth it for a change. You're still pretty strong once you have a few filled out trees, but that'll probably happen fairly late and up until then pretty much every upgrade feels significant.

The soviet futurism aesthetic is obviously a beautiful fit. And I said this earlier but I appreciate the competent, optimistic worldbuilding compared to the "fuck these dumb retards" thing Bioshock drills into you. The story does something similar, teasing some low-hanging fruit then expanding it into a mystery and source of tension for the entire game whereas you know Bioshock: Russia would have immediately blown that whole wad in the intro.

Yeah the English voice acting/direction can't handle the writing so you gotta pass everything through a "this probably sounds better in Russian" filter, and the first level is kinda dogshit.
I didn't really start liking it until the Sneed Vault, which still isn't anything too special but has the cool moment of realising what looks like a linear modern FPS map full of pointless clutter is actually a fairly oldschool vertical level full of shortcuts and shit worth exploring. Once things really get rolling I had a lot of fun.

Solid 8.5 metal areolae out of 10, up from what I thought was like a 6 in the first hour or three. Now the genre is perfected so let's stop making goddamn Bioshocks okay and roll back to SS2.
 
About 8 hours in, there’s a lot of things I like so far. The room looting mechanic is amazing, more games need that. I also like that there are different styles to the ‘lockpicking’ games, it’s a little thing but the variation is welcome.

Neat little game, glad it’s on Gamepass
 
I played and beat it 2 days ago, I've been looking foward to it since I saw one of the trailers last year and I thought it was pretty good, lots of charm and attention to detail, loved the designs of the robots particularly the belyash and dewdrop. Music was great as well although they had a fiew odd choices like at one point in the middle of the game I heard stock christmas music in the lobby where you meet that tereshkova. There are also some weird animation loops on some of the NPC's, other than that I only enconterd one actaul bug through the 14 hours I played it and it was just a minor one, clipped through a wall a bit when a enemy knocked me back, was able to walk right back through it though so no big deal. Gameplay is cool and fun as well, really love the big energy weapon you get later in the game and the glove abilities are alright. Over all fun game and I'm excided for whats to come, store says there will be 4 DLC and I'm pretty sure there will be a sequel.

Also yes, don't play with the English voice acting, it's legit some of the worst I have ever heard in any video game, just play with Russian voice acting as it was meant to be played
 
Last edited:
kainvnod said:
Also, bulletsponge enemies.
Click to expand...
To be fair, bulletsponge enemies aren't inherently a bad thing, provided they look/feel like they deserve to be bullet sponges compared to the player and their weapons.
Dark Souls and all its clones? They do this terribly because you might look like a badass, but any shambling zombie enemy can assrape you to death in a few hits, while you'd better spam that attack button for 2 minutes straight just to kill one of them. God help you if there's more than one.
STALKER? Makes sense, you're dealing with either normal humans wearing body armor, or mutated abominations that are almost purpose-made killing machines. So some enemies (like Exosuit-wearing humans or Burers and Pseudogiants) being bullet sponges makes sense.
Halo? Yeah, Hunters and Sangheili Generals & Zealots / Jiralhanae Chieftans & Weapon Masters are going to be bullet sponges, they're the toughest aliens you'll face in the games, given they're basically the Covenant's version of you (battle hardened, decades-old troops with the best armor and weaponry available).
Involuntary Celebrity said:
Now the genre is perfected so let's stop making goddamn Bioshocks okay and roll back to SS2.
Click to expand...
I don't even know why people call Bioshock an "immersive sim". There's basically 1 of 2 ways to beat a Bioshock game, and that's being Goody Two Shoes (sparing the Little Sisters for a really big reward later) or being Stupid Evil (killing the Little Sisters for peanuts now). What makes it worse for me is that every Bioshock game feels like they've taken a jab at any sort of utopian, "We can make a better society!" thinking, and the conflicts are basically Plot Armored into existence. Nowhere is this worse than Bioshock Infinite, where the entire conflict between the Founders and Vox Populi is basically asspulled into existence so the writers can go "HURR DURR RAYCISM BAD WHITEY BAD RISE UP MA BRUTHAS N SISTUHS!". And the ending/Burial At Sea...need I say ANYTHING else?
Hal said:
Also yes, don't play with the English voice acting, it's legit some of the worst I have ever heard in any video game, just play with Russian voice acting as it was meant to be played
Click to expand...
Rule of thumb when playing any sort of Slavjank game - Just use the native language for the voice acting, it's almost always going to be 100x better than the English version, with one possible exception being the Metro games. The English VAs there actually did a good job (it doesn't hurt that a good portion of them are actually Slavs themselves).
 
The Foxtrot said:
Nowhere is this worse than Bioshock Infinite, where the entire conflict between the Founders and Vox Populi is basically asspulled into existence so the writers can go "HURR DURR RAYCISM BAD WHITEY BAD RISE UP MA BRUTHAS N SISTUHS!".
Click to expand...
That got me to. For such a white centric society, why would they even invites other races into it?
 
MrJokerRager said:
More videos on the robot twins.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=aaLJoWiMOzo
https://youtube.com/watch?v=GkPH6L3k1xc
https://youtube.com/watch?v=nNzI8zFld48
Click to expand...
I don't get the robot twins shit. You have pornhub and a billion other sites with actual naked human females, who cares? Sexy robots with no other point just seem like pandering to fifth-graders who can giggle about it during lunch break. Why would you as an adult want to see it in games unless you're some turbo coomer?
 
Lathe said:
That got me to. For such a white centric society, why would they even invites other races into it?
Click to expand...
Especially as slave laborers. Using a "subhuman race" as slave laborers would make sense if you're say, Nazi Germany because the end goal is extermination of the natives followed by colonization by Aryans. You're already going to make sure they are killed off anyway, why not kill them off by working them to death to fuel the colonization and/or war effort? That's actually kind of fucking smart.

But if your end goal is basically destroying the rest of the world for not aligning with your ideas, why would you basically use a "working class" almost entirely composed of samples of the very races and cultures you intend to destroy? Even more, why would you allow them the tiniest amount of freedom and allow them to live in a racially-segregated ghetto? Since Columbia was built from scratch and then launched, that means the Founders had to deliberately import racial minorities, but didn't formally enslave them despite completely vilifying Lincoln as part of their founding myth.
And why would allow your White Protestant Christian society to basically be composed of nothing but the rich and affluent? That isn't how you get a population capable of waging war on the rest of the world, that's how you get a bunch of pampered, spoiled brats that have no idea how their society actually functions and is maintained beyond "We have Negroes/Chinamen/Injuns/Micks for that!". You're practically begging for a slave revolt to happen at some point, and you'll cripple your own economy in the process because a slave-based economy makes for a very low standard of living for almost everyone and a complete brain drain. At that point, the only people with any skills would be the slaves!

If your end goal is to destroy everyone that isn't in Columbia, then you want a society of people that are borderline Spartan in their lifestyles. Columbia should look less like a really posh version of NYC in 1900, and more like North Korea, but with a bastardized mix of Protestant Christianity and a mythologized take on the Founding Fathers instead of Juche and worship of Kim Il-sung guiding everyone.
If you keep a slave underclass, it should solely be for "training" your citizens on how to occupy the rest of the world in the future and to desensitize them to carrying out atrocities. Any work the slaves do should be literal mule work to occupy their time in between beatings and executions and leave them too weak and tired to fight back. Instead of goofy cartoon characters to make the kiddies laugh and play, with the kiddies being handed toy rifles, they should be handed real rifles and made to do weapon drills with their targets being racist caricatures. Instead of a mock beach for leisure, it should be a mock beach for practicing sea invasions and swimming. Instead of a lottery to throw baseballs at a race-mixing couple, it should be a lottery to be on a communal firing squad.

Of course, if you look at this through the lens of "making a believable fictional universe", it won't make sense. If you look at it through the lens of "West coast hipster millennials making cheap, uneducated snipes using what they think is their clever caricature of America in the late 19th/early 20th centuries", then the game and its setting makes more sense.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom