Atomic Heart - Half Life with Russian Robot Clowns

[Uzi]

3 hours ago, NecroMorrius said:

It's because they're emulating the Bioshock Infinite palette to a fault. It's uncannily similar.

Yeah shame they went too far in that direction and its doing their own designs and art a disservice

[Strafe]

Unless I have a bug there is no directional damage indicator, which is just great for a first person game.

[moosegrinder]

 

 

[Unofficial Who]

Yikes! I think Microsoft just landed themselves in some pretty hot water.

 

Edit. That launch date as well...coming up on the one-year anniversary of Russia's "special military operation" in Ukraine.

 

Coincidence but ouch.

 

Yikes! This post is some serious bullshit.

 

Short version, I’ve only crossed out the bits that were rubbish.

 

Long version:

-the tweet I was referring to has been discredited.

-Microsoft is not in deep shit. This is a multi-format release which I would have realised if I’d spent two seconds to verify.

-The game is from Cyprus and has nothing to do with the conflict in Ukraine.

 

Apologies for posting shit.

Edited February 23 by Unofficial Who

[JoeK]

Hmm. The opening section is absolutely a thing of wonder on my PC. 

 

But, I've uninstalled it and have no desire to play any further. Not just because of the voice-work (the russian voices are better to my ignorant ears, but the subtitles are so small I can't read them properly), but mainly because of all the increasingly dubious stuff going on in the game itself.

I feel I'm slightly better than that. Not by much admittedly, but a little bit.

 

I can't say I'm not disappointed though.

[rgraves]

21 minutes ago, Unofficial Who said:

Yikes! I think Microsoft just landed themselves in some pretty hot water.

 

Eh? It's on GP yes, but it's also on PS5 (and PS4?) - it's not a MS first- or second-party game. It's not even an exclusive.

[NecroMorrius]

I've only met them once at the beginning, but Google seems to indicate they're the good guys who help you take down the Soviet oppressor. All I could find on Youtube were gratuitous shots of their metal bums though.

[RubberJohnny]

Yeah a lot of those arguments are a real stretch, there's absolutely no basis to claiming it "supports trafficking women", but it's going to be one of those threads I guess.

 

The game is pretty good so far, runs great on my increasingly modest machine and has pretty stunning art direction with some impressive scale. As mentioned it's basically a new Bioshock, right down to the upgrades, powers and frequently having a hand onscreen. Lots of little janky things too, but pretty standard if you've played Stalker or other series on PC.

[Timmo]

I just can’t get over the shit-feeling controls. Takes me out of the game constantly. Annoying because I’m otherwise quite enjoying it. 

[Flub]

Has anyone seen the racist cartoon yet?

[Unofficial Who]

32 minutes ago, RubberJohnny said:

Yeah a lot of those arguments are a real stretch, there's absolutely no basis to claiming it "supports trafficking women", but it's going to be one of those threads I guess.

 

If As you've played the game I'll take what you've said above at face value and bail before I contribute to it being "one of those" threads.

 

Happy to have been proven wrong.

Edited February 21 by Unofficial Who

[NecroMorrius]

16 minutes ago, Timmo said:

I just can’t get over the shit-feeling controls. Takes me out of the game constantly. Annoying because I’m otherwise quite enjoying it. 

 

It's very very annoying, and you never really get used to it. Especially annoying on a keyboard where you can only push each button to full. Feels like controlling a drunk dude. Maybe that's what they're going for - would explain the dialogue.

[Paul3704]

Well... I'm quite enjoying it.

It looks really nice, and runs smooth on my series S. I'm quite impressed with the world building and architecture. Quite like the Russian theme.

The dialogue is shite, but you get used to it after a while. Quite like the variety of puzzles on the door locks. It very much feels like a Bioshock clone, but that's no bad thing in my book.

Controls are awkward, especially the climbing, but you get used to them. 

I'm about four hours in.

[JPL]

1 hour ago, NecroMorrius said:

 

It's very very annoying, and you never really get used to it. Especially annoying on a keyboard where you can only push each button to full. Feels like controlling a drunk dude. Maybe that's what they're going for - would explain the dialogue.

Oh, they’re going for the Arthur Morgan angle and all those glorious 10/10s that follow. Clever move.

[Ry]

Played for 15 mins and turned it off as gave me a sore head. 

 

Art direction is amazing but the performance (on series X)  is weird feels like it's hitching all the time. All you have to do is rotate on the spot to notice it but it seems constant. 

[sofasurfer]

Unless I missed it, and going by the size of the tutorial text I may well have, is there no torch? I bloody hate games that make you skulk around in dark corridors with no way of seeing any detail at all.

[Ry]

 

 

 

 

 

 

[NecroMorrius]

Wait until they hear about Bioshock Infinite!

[stir fry]

What's the context of the racist cartoon (and whatever racist imagery is in Bioshock Infinite for that matter, I've not played it)?

 

edit I found out for AH in any case, they have an entire series of a 'classic' Soviet cartoon with all the episodes that can be watched in-game (reminds me of the Darkness a bit, not the band)

 

https://www.resetera.com/threads/so-uh-theres-a-racist-cartoon-in-atomic-heart.689227/post-101603593

[NecroMorrius]

Bioshock Infinite, as far as I can argue, is NOT racist. But displays a lot of racist imagery and features racism as a central theme.

 

This game has a racist caricature onscreen for 0.5 seconds as part of a series of 22 Soviet cartoons they probably got from archive.org. According to Wikipedia it's the most popular cartoon of all time in the USSR/Russia. It ran from 1969 to 2017.

 

Incidentally I've barely played it, if it sounds like I'm defending it in any of the posts above.

[Ry]

The racist imagery in Bioshock Infinite was part of the world and story. It intentionally showed that Columbia was a horrible racist place and was part of the overall narrative. 

[dreamylittledream]

1 hour ago, stir fry said:

What's the context of the racist cartoon (and whatever racist imagery is in Bioshock Infinite for that matter, I've not played it)?

 

edit I found out for AH in any case, they have an entire series of a 'classic' Soviet cartoon with all the episodes that can be watched in-game (reminds me of the Darkness a bit, not the band)

 

https://www.resetera.com/threads/so-uh-theres-a-racist-cartoon-in-atomic-heart.689227/post-101603593

 

Gotta love all the people in that thread getting banned for 'meta commentary' but pointing out its slightly odd that all talk of Dog Kid University is completely banned but this gets a free pass despite the increasing number of problematic aspects.

 

Resetera really takes itself way too seriously....

 

Anyway I was really excited for this but increasingly less so with almost everything I read about it (particularly the bits that suggest regardless of anything else its not actually terribly good as a game).

[Clipper]

5 minutes ago, dreamylittledream said:

 

 

Resetera really takes itself way too seriously....

 

 

I think part of the reason they do is because they think they are an important part of the "industry" and their forum business/posts are quoted everywhere including other forums (and this one).

 

I never go there and am often bemused at people on here rushing to tell us this and that about their goings on. So I assumed it was big enough to get reported all over so was quite important.

 

If it isn't important then people would stop talking about it

 

[NecroMorrius]

I think this cartoon is a simple oversight where someone didn't adequately scrutinise around 220 minutes of archival cartoon footage used as background imagery in the game and missed a half-second image that doesn't sit well 45 years later (the episode is from 1978). Not that it makes much difference, but for accuracy the image is of a statue in a museum, not a depiction of an living person.

 

So it's not great, but this stuff happens. LittleBigPlanet was delayed because a song featured verses from the Quran for example.

 

Maybe it isn't though and more stuff will come out before long. Occams Razor would suggest it's a fuckup rather than the developer trying to push an unsavoury political agenda with a children's cartoon from 1978.

Anyway, I've enjoyed the first hour once the opening sequence is out of the way. It's far more polished than your average Eurojank game, but still very much in that category. The dialogue is bad but it isn't any worse than a load of other games in this category, an unlikeable brash guy delivering bad quips which hark back through Bulletstorm to Duke Nukem and ultimately Ash Williams.

 

The movement is fairly horrible but you get used to it. The default FOV and lack of accessibility options are absurd but easily fixed with flawless widescreen.

 

It doesn't seem to be in any way complimentary to the Soviet regime, no more than Bioshock Infinite is complimentary to that school of thought. You're quickly reading and listening to logs which depict people working within it and not having a great time with the secrecy and reputation guarding.

[stir fry]

I found all the racism, it's in this folder here

 

C:\XboxGames\Atomic Heart - Windows\Content\AtomicHeart\Content\Movies\NuPogodiNew

 

The only reason I found it was because I was looking for the videos for the way too long startup sequence, because my game has crashed twice this evening and I've had to watch that fucking mundfish thing 3 times now. 

 

edit 3 times! 😠 and during a really slow shite section with a very slow moving platform with a long ago checkpoint

 

 

 

[NecroMorrius]

Yer tis, 05:50

 

 

[Kayin Amoh]

Bit of an eye opener seeing the sexy robots and vending machines with no advance warning.

 

Game seems fine. The little float around the island before the first real fight was kinda beautiful, and while neither the combat or overall design seems incredible it's going to be a decent experience I think. I wouldn't buy it, but on Game Pass it's worth a look.

[NecroMorrius]

It's really throwing bits and pieces of every shooter at the wall to see what sticks. You can kind of tell it's their first game, they're in such a rush to cram in bits of Half Life, Portal, Bio/System Shock, Wolfenstein etc. Time for tea but enjoying it in a middling sort of way. The combat isn't bad but it isn't great. The puzzles are pretty fun.

[stir fry]

I think my main issue is it feels like an empty calories version of those games, cause it's worse than all of them and far less immersive. At a certain point there's better things to spend time on

 

Anyway, it only cost me a euro. I'll see what else GP has to offer for the month and move on I think.

[Opinionated Ham Scarecrow]

I downloaded the dodgy dev build on pc, and enjoyed the intro enough to see how much a month of gpu would be. £2.79 you say cdkeys? Ahh go on then.

 

Anyway, flash forward 6 odd hours and I really like this. I find it utterly compelling in an almost culture shock kind of way. Some of the dialogue and interactions are just so fucking surreal it's like it was scripted by a russian early 80s era Charlie'd up Mr king. I'm even enjoying the story and gameplay more than most here.

 

I'm not completely able to erase current world events from my time with it though, so whilst it's a pleasure, it's a filthy, dirty one riddled with guilt. I bet the Devs would love that.