Software:Atomic Heart (video game)

Atomic Heart
Cover art
Developer(s)	Mundfish
Publisher(s)	WW: Focus Entertainment CIS: VK Play
Director(s)	Robert Bagratuni
Producer(s)	Oleg Gorodishenin
Designer(s)	Maxim Kolesnikov
Artist(s)	Artem Galeev
Writer(s)	Robert Bagratuni Artem Galeev Harald Horf Alexander Dagan
Composer(s)	Andrey Bugrov Mick Gordon Geoffrey Day
Engine	Unreal Engine 4
Platform(s)	Microsoft Windows PlayStation 4 PlayStation 5 Xbox One Xbox Series X/S
Release	February 21, 2023
Genre(s)	First-person shooter
Mode(s)	Single-player

Atomic Heart is a first-person shooter developed by Mundfish and published by Focus Entertainment and 4Divinity. The game was released for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S on February 21, 2023. The game received generally positive reviews upon release.

Gameplay

A screenshot of the interface, with a makeshift weapon on screen

Atomic Heart is an first-person shooter video game with role-playing and stealth elements. The combat consists of shooting and slashing with improvised weapons. A wide variety of enemies are featured, which may be mechanical, biomechanical, biological, and some of which are airborne. A crafting system allows the player to piece weapons together from metal parts that can be detached from robots or taken from household appliances. Weapons can be upgraded via a mechanic called "casettes". Ammo in the game is scarce, and there is a stealth option. Quick-time events are featured in the game. The player wears a special glove, the Polymer Glove, which grants powers such as telekinesis, freezing, and electricity to defeat foes. Its powers can be combined with both melee and ranged weapons.

Ammunition can be upgraded with various elemental effects using "canisters". These canisters can be looted and crafted, and equipped by the player on both melee and ranged weapons. If the canister depletes, it is discarded from the player's inventory.

Plot

Setting

Atomic Heart takes place on the grounds of Facility 3826, the Soviet Union's foremost scientific research hub in an alternate history 1955. In 1936, scientist Dmitry Sechenov developed a liquidized programmable module called the Polymer, sparking massive technological breakthroughs in the fields of energy and robotics in the USSR and freeing much of the populace from manual labor. When World War II broke out, the Soviets quickly gained the upper hand, but just before Nazi Germany was defeated in 1942 they unleashed the Brown Plague virus, leaving millions dead and creating an international demand for Soviet robots to compensate for the resulting worker shortage. As part of the Soviet Union's post-war reconstruction programme, Dr. Sechenov created a wireless, networked artificial intelligence called "Kollektiv 1.0" that linked his robots together for greater efficiency.

Most recently, Sechenov developed the THOUGHT neuroconnector, a device that integrates Polymer into the human body and allows humans to remotely interface with robots. THOUGHT is to be released alongside Kollektiv 2.0, and Sechenov boasts that it will usher in a true post-labor era for the entire world. However, Kollektiv 2.0's official launch on 13 June 1955 goes awry, plunging Facility 3826 into chaos.

Synopsis

The main protagonist is Major Sergey Nechayev (codenamed Agent P-3), a WWII veteran with memory problems who befriended Dr. Sechenov after the latter saved his life. P-3 is invited to Facility 3826 ostensibly to assist in the rollout of Kollektiv 2.0, but when he arrives he finds that the Facility's robots have become hostile and massacred most of the human personnel. Sechenov explains that Viktor Petrov, Kollektiv 2.0's lead engineer, sabotaged the Kollektiv 1.0 node that manages Facility 3826, and P-3 is tasked with finding and apprehending Petrov. With his AI partner CHAR-les (nicknamed "Charles") attached to his glove, P-3 must confront homicidal robots and failed biomechanical experiments while dealing with his own, ever-deteriorating mental stability.

P-3 tracks down Petrov in one of the labs, and finds out that he is working with neurosurgeon Dr. Larisa Filatova. Petrov flees and is apparently killed by a robot, with P-3 only finding his headless corpse. Meanwhile, the Politburo grows suspicious about what is happening at Facility 3826, as Sechenov has been covering up the true scale of the disaster. One of the Politburo members, Molotov, decides to personally inspect the facility and threatens to shut down Sechenov's "Atomic Heart" project. Charles explains to P-3 that Sechenov and the Politburo are in a secret power struggle over who will ultimately control Kollektiv, and the Politburo will certainly use the incident as an excuse to get rid of Sechenov. Sechenov orders P-3 to intercept Molotov, but once P-3 makes contact with Molotov, he suddenly blacks out and wakes up to find Molotov and his entire delegation murdered, with Sechenov informing P-3, that Robots killed them while he was out. Molotov's body was disposed by the use of Neuro-Polymer, a red variant of Polymer that took the form of his body and absorbed it, leaving nothing but his skeleton and clothes.

Sechenov then detects somebody trying to transmit a signal to America, leading him to believe Petrov is still alive because Filatova helped revive him. He orders P-3 to continue his pursuit of Petrov. As P-3 pursues Petrov, Petrov begins ranting how Sechenov plans to kill millions of people and enslave the world with the activation of Kollektiv, which is why he is trying to sabotage the project. He reveals to P-3 that the rogue robots had a combat mode installed in them from the very beginning which he merely activated. Viktor then gives P-3 a pair of rings and commits suicide, and Sechenov has him collect Petrov's head. When Sechenov asks about the rings, P-3 lies about obtaining them, coming to the conclusion that Sechenov and the Politburo's "Atomic Heart" plan involves distributing combat robots disguised as civilian robots all over the world and stationing them to seize nuclear power plants in preparation for a massive Soviet takeover once Kollektiv launches. P-3 then takes Petrov's head to a lab where Sechenov's assistant Stockhausen has a machine that can extract Petrov's memories, but Filatova destroys the machine with a grenade and the blast knocks P-3 unconscious and blew a batch of Neuro-Polymer near Stockhausen, killing him.

When P-3 wakes up, he is contacted by Filatova who asks to meet her in her lab. There, she shows him the human test subjects for Kollektiv, revealing that Kollektiv is actually a means to rob people of their free will and mind control them. Shocked at the revelation, P-3 is convinced to work with Filatova to find out the truth from Sechenov and threw the rings into the ocean. Delving deeper into the lab, P-3 discovers that Charles isn't actually an AI, but the mind of Chariton Zakharov, Sechenov's friend and a fellow Polymer researcher who was presumably murdered by Sechenov. Using Zakharov's security clearance, they head into the lab's archives to find out more about P-3's past. There, P-3 learns that in order to fix a serious brain injury, Sechenov installed a Polymer implant in his brain that also served to erase his memories of his deceased wife Ekaterina (which Sechenov used her separated brain to create his robot bodyguards, Left and Right), as well as mind control P-3 when needed. Furious, P-3 decides to go confront Sechenov.

However, P-3 blacks out again and wakes up in the care of Granny Zina, his mother-in-law. She reveals that he had killed Filatova while he was blacked out, enraging P-3. At this point, P-3 can either choose to give up and leave Facility 3826, or continue with his plans to confront Sechenov.

• If P-3 refuses to fight, he destroys Charles and slips out of Facility 3826 and disappears, allowing Sechenov to continue with his plans to activate Kollektiv 2.0 allowing the Soviet Union of taking over the world. Charles is shown to still be alive as a small mass of living Polymer and he manages to escape as well.
• If P-3 decides to fight, he confronts Sechenov and destroys his two bodyguards Left and Right. He then mortally wounds Sechenov before Sechenov warns him that Charles has been manipulating him the entire time. Charles admits that he was the one who was causing P-3 to black out and is responsible for Molotov and Filatova's deaths, and his true plan was to eliminate Sechenov and take control of his Neuro-Polymer project so that he can wipe out humanity and replace it with a new race of Polymer lifeforms. Charles shuts down P-3, steals the Neuro-Polymer, kills Sechenov, and then disappears. Meanwhile, P-3 is trapped in the dreamworld of Limbo, where he has a vision of being reunited with his wife Ekaterina who took the form of Right.

Development and release

Atomic Heart is developed by Mundfish, which styles itself as an international studio headquartered in Cyprus and has offices in Moscow and St. Petersburg.

The team has previously developed the VR game Soviet Lunapark, but ceased development and delisted the game in late 2018 to focus on Atomic Heart. The studio uses Unreal Engine 4 and was advertised to support Nvidia RTX and DLSS technologies for the GeForce RTX graphics cards. However, RTX has not been implemented in the release version of the game. Mundfish stated that they will add the feature "post-launch", without giving any further details.

In February 2022 a story trailer showed that Atomic Heart will launch in "#######BER", suggesting the game's release some time in Q4 2022. However, later in November, it was announced that the game will be released on February 21, 2023, published by VK Play in the CIS, co-published by 4Divinity in Asia, and published by French-based company Focus Entertainment elsewhere.

Controversy

Mundfish has been accused of harvesting data of users based in Russia and providing it to Russia's security services. The developer has denied the allegations.

The game has become subject of controversy due in part of its anticipated release date, which nearly coincides with the first year anniversary of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine and Defender of the Fatherland Day. Critics had questioned the timing of the release of a game featuring Soviet and Russian military themes. Mundfish claimed that the company is neutral in world affairs and "do not comment on politics or religion" and the studio is "is undeniably a pro-peace organization against violence against people". Ukraine criticised the statement for its vagueness, saying "the developers of the game did not come out with a public statement condemning the Putin regime" and the Russian invasion of Ukraine."

Independent of this criticism, the game's music composer Mick Gordon released a statement condemning the war while also donating his fee from the project to the Red Cross Ukraine Crisis appeal.

Reception

Reception
Aggregate score Aggregator Score Metacritic (PC) 76/100 (PS5) 71/100 (XSXS) 73/100 Review scores Publication Score Destructoid 6/10 Game Informer 7.75/10 GameSpot 6/10 GamesRadar+ Hardcore Gamer 4.5/5 IGN 8/10 PC Gamer (US) 78/100 PCGamesN 8/10 Push Square Shacknews 9/10

Atomic Heart received "generally favorable" reviews for the PC version, while Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 versions received "mixed or average" reviews, according to review aggregator Metacritic.