Today I finished the passage of Atomic Heart, and I can not share my opinion about the game. I would like to warn you in advance - I understand that most of us liked the game, but we are different - and our opinions may differ significantly. I didn't like this game, I didn't like it much, and here's why.

I regard this game as a full-fledged AAA project, without regard to the fact that for the development team the game was the first full-fledged project of such a high level. This is because the game's advertising campaign has overshadowed that of hundreds of other games, even at such a high level; the ambitions and rants of the developers went wild; the level of hype on the Internet with which the game was expected is not comparable with many other AAA projects.

In this regard, my main complaint about the game is connected - how can a project of a high, highest class have 80% of the game time associated with tasks in the style of "collect 6 items of the same type within 6 hours"? I don't think it's normal.

I do not consider it normal to present the plot of the game in dialogues that are not tied to what is happening on the screen. Seriously - you are doing some kind of assignment (in which you need to collect the same type of items for an infinitely long time, or perform the same type of actions), and the main character gives out in a dialogue with his glove (as if on a walkie-talkie) just TONS of lore and TONS of information about the game world. You walk through the corridors, and they just pour information into your ears. This kind of storytelling and lore was acceptable maybe 15 years ago, but today? I don't know if I'm right, but it's not for me.

The game itself (gameplay) for a person who played all parts of Bioshock, System Shock will be INCREDIBLY secondary - I just felt like I was in a slightly different dimension of Bioshock Infinite at the beginning of the game, and this feeling only intensified over time.

The balance of enemies/weapon strength seemed just terrible to me in relation to the overall pace of the game - by shooting, "plasmids" and the manner of movement, you feel that there should be just a HURRICANE shooter around, but the enemies are SO thick, and SO impenetrable, that there is always some kind of cognitive dissonance, and in combination with the number of enemies on the screen - makes thoughtful gameplay with an individual approach to enemies simply impossible. It's horrible.

I do not dispute that the design, art design, style and atmosphere of this part of Atomic Heart are great. Seriously, the designers of this game deserve a place in paradise, but for me this does not cover its disadvantages, which are simply unacceptable for a AAA project - it was like it was made by several groups of people who did not contact each other and did their work with absolutely different levels of quality, and all these maximally stupid tasks in the style of "turn the valves" / "collect items" / "find something" of which the ENTIRE game is assembled were added at the very end, when the rest of the game was already ready.

And it's sad.