Tag: atomic
Atomic Heart Apologizes for Racist Cartoon, No Comment on Ukraine Statement
Atomic Heart – 9 Things I Wish I Knew
Atomic Heart: system requirements, PC performance and the best settings to use
Atomic Heart continues to dominate both my professional time and my personal brainspace; it really is a fascinating game, for reasons good and terrible alike. Its most recent twist came in the complete lack of ray tracing at launch, despite various pre-release builds having been held up by Nvidia themselves as the technology’s exemplars. Crispy critters, indeed.
Atomic Heart is twice as fun on easy mode
Want this BioShock clone to feel like BioShock? Play on the “Peaceful Atom” difficulty
How to use the scanner in Atomic Heart
PSA: The scanner tutorial is confusing, not broken
Atomic Heart Review
Atomic Heart, ray tracing poster child, won’t support ray tracing for PC on launch
Atomic Heart’s long development cycle has provided ample opportunities to show off the power of ray tracing. From an Nvidia tech demo back to in 2019 to an RTX-branded trailer released just last month, this souped-up lighting and reflection tech has been a key piston in propelling the Soviet sci-fi FPS’ hype train. Some slightly awkward news, then: the PC version won’t support ray tracing at launch.
I noticed the lack of ray tracing options in the review build we received last week, and got in touch with the game’s press relations team to check if I was missing something, or if they were due to be added via update. The response confirmed that their absence was not an error, and that “the devs will be looking into implementing this post-launch.” Well then!
Atomic Heart starts with a bang — but can it land its Soviet story?
Echoes of Bioshock abound
Atomic Heart Review – Crispy Critters
Atomic Heart doesn’t hide its BioShock Infinite inspirations. The game begins in a city in the clouds, features reality-bending and elemental powers you can employ in your fight against advanced robots, sees you scrounging for resources in an idyllic city that’s falling apart, and stars an amnesiac protagonist grappling with the nuances of free will. By the time you reach the climax of the story and you’re asked to visit a lighthouse, you know what’s up. Where Atomic Heart most differs from its inspiration is in the lens through which it focuses its narrative, exploring concepts of free will via Soviet Russian collectivism instead of the U.S.’ individualism. However, its intriguing premise is let down by a deeply unlikable protagonist and a predictable storyline that doesn’t do anything interesting with its cool ideas.
In the alternate history of Atomic Heart, a scientist named Dmitry Sechenov kickstarts a robotics boom in Russia in the 1930s. By the 1950s, the working class has been abolished in the Soviet Union and completely replaced by robots controlled through a hive-mind network called Kollectiv 1.0. The game begins a few years after that, just prior to the public unveiling of Kollectiv 2.0, which will allow all humans to have equal access to the hive-mind to control robots remotely through a Thought device wired straight to their brain, as well as connect and share information with each other across great distances. Basically, it’s the Internet plugged into your brain and available 24/7.
With the benefit of 21st-century hindsight, we know the Internet will not end up being a 100% good idea even if the main character Major Sergei Nechaev, an agent who serves Sechenov, fully believes in the dream of a world where everyone equally has access to each other and the wealth of information that will surely be shared. Assigned to investigate a disturbance in Facility 3826, the Soviet Union’s foremost scientific research hub, Sergei is joined by Charles, a sentient glove that gifts the agent with a host of polymer-fed technopowers like telekinesis and cryokinesis, and provides a sounding board for Sergei’s oftentimes annoying and borderline abusive collection of quips and unfunny comebacks.