Welcome to the Atomic Heart review that doesn’t pull punches. If you’ve ever wondered what would happen if Bioshock had a Soviet cousin with a split personality, this is it. The game is gorgeous, the combat rips, and the storytelling feels like a fever dream dictated by your drunk uncle’s glove.
Developed by Mundfish and released in a politically charged haze, Atomic Heart launched with a mix of jaw-dropped excitement and heavy skepticism. The result? A title that’s part dystopian shooter, part walking contradiction. It desperately wants to be deep, yet insists on hitting you with punchlines every ten steps. And in 2025, it’s still got people arguing.
What Even Is Atomic Heart, and Why Is Everyone Yelling?
Set in an alternate-history USSR where the Soviet Union nailed AI and robotics by the 1950s, Atomic Heart opens with a breathtaking vision of utopia, one that crashes and burns within minutes. You play as Major Nechaev (aka P-3), a government enforcer with memory loss, emotional issues, and a voice actor who apparently skipped his morning coffee. Atomic Heart highlights the clash between style and replay value, making it a curious part of PC Gaming’s Timeless Loop.
The world-building is genuinely impressive. Floating cities. Robo-ballerinas. Sentient slime. It’s like if Half-Life, Control, and Black Mirror had a wild night and forgot to clean up. But underneath the chrome and red banners lies a plot that doesn’t know what to do with itself. One minute you’re uncovering hidden horrors of Soviet experimentation, the next your AI glove is cracking sex jokes at vending machines.
And then there’s the geopolitical elephant in the room: the developers’ ties to Russia and the game’s weirdly noncommittal stance on totalitarianism. That debate still rages on Reddit, where some accuse it of glorifying the regime, while others argue it’s just trying to be edgy sci-fi. Either way, the internet has opinions. Lots of them.
Combat Feels Great, Until It Doesn’t
Gunplay is Atomic Heart’s saving grace, when it works.
This is where Atomic Heart almost redeems itself. The shooting mechanics feel tight and deliberate. You’ve got standard ballistic weapons, upgradable melee tools, and glove-based powers that let you shock, freeze, or telekinetically launch enemies into walls. It’s a sandbox of pain that actually feels responsive.
There’s weight in every swing, tension in every reload. When you manage to freeze a charging robot mid-sprint, then shatter it with a spiked baton, it’s chef’s kiss satisfying. Enemy design is a twisted joy: from mustachioed humanoids to grotesque biomechanical blobs that look like they escaped a Cronenberg film. Even boss fights, when they land, are spectacles, especially the ballerina twins, who are as terrifying as they are mesmerizing.
But here’s the rub: the difficulty curve can be a rollercoaster. Some sections are pure chaos, while others slow to a crawl with fetch quests and maze-like puzzles. Enemy AI goes from aggressive genius to “I’m stuck in this corner forever.” And the checkpoint system? Unforgiving. You’ll curse it at least once.
Still, if all you want is mechanical mayhem in a weird world, this might scratch the itch, provided you’re cool with the occasional design faceplant.
Let’s Talk About That Glove (and Its Cringe Humor)
You’ll either laugh, cringe, or mute it entirely.
The glove. The glove. The glove. If you’ve played, you already have an opinion, and it’s probably strong. CHAR-les is your sarcastic AI companion, constantly chiming in with lore, mechanics, and the kind of dialogue that makes you question the writers’ group chat. Think Clippy meets Rick from Rick & Morty, but with fewer filters.
Some players find CHAR-les hilarious, an edgy foil in a bleak world. Others hate him with the fire of a thousand Soviet suns. Jokes about bodily fluids and oddly horny vending machines don’t exactly elevate the tone. Even Steam reviews mention muting dialogue entirely just to enjoy the game’s pacing without constant interruptions.
To be fair, CHAR-les isn’t useless. He handles upgrades, tutorials, and enemy bios. But the tonal clash is jarring. You’re creeping through a horror-infested lab, and suddenly he’s making a joke about robot breasts. It’s whiplash comedy that rarely lands.
And let’s not forget the voice performance. Stiff. Robotic. Repetitive. It’s like the glove itself was doing the recording.
When Gorgeous Graphics Can’t Save the Story
Visually, Atomic Heart punches above its weight class. It’s one of the best-looking games of its generation, no exaggeration. The lighting alone makes some AAA titles blush. Interiors are detailed down to the propaganda posters and flickering terminals. The game’s blend of sterile futurism and decaying Soviet grime is immersive as hell.
Unfortunately, the writing doesn’t match the production value. The story begins with intrigue, memory loss, ethical AI dilemmas, rogue science, and quickly falls into incoherent philosophy, exposition dumps, and nonsensical twists. Major P-3 himself is hard to root for. He’s angry, confused, and about as emotionally dynamic as a can opener.
Dialogue trees are clunky. Supporting characters are forgettable. And every time you think you understand where it’s going, the game pivots into another monologue about “collectivist thought experiments” or “the freedom of destruction.” It wants to be profound, it really does, but the result feels like bad fan fiction buried in a beautiful artbook.
There’s potential in the lore, and you get glimpses of a deeper universe. But someone needed to rein it in. Instead, the plot just keeps expanding until it bursts under its own ambition.
The Community Verdict: Hate-Watch or Hidden Gem?
A mix of ‘love it,’ ‘hate it,’ and ‘muted the glove.’
Player sentiment is… spicy. Browse the Reddit threads or Steam discussions and you’ll find everything from “Game of the Year” declarations to “What did I just play?” confusion. It’s divisive in the way cult hits often are, aggressively weird, deeply flawed, yet oddly compelling. For another bold mix of style and chaos, dive into our Hades II Review, a masterclass in rhythm and design.
Since launch, the devs have patched a ton of bugs. PC performance is now fairly stable, even on mid-range rigs. RTX-enabled lighting looks phenomenal, and DLSS support smooths out the rougher edges. But that hasn’t fixed the deeper narrative issues, or CHAR-les.
One Steam user put it best: “It’s a 9/10 shooter trapped in a 5/10 plot, narrated by a 3/10 AI.” Ouch. Accurate though.
Is Atomic Heart Worth Playing in 2025?
Yes, with caveats. If you’re after stunning visuals, responsive FPS mechanics, and a bizarre world that keeps you guessing (and cringing), then Atomic Heart delivers. Just don’t come expecting emotional depth or consistent tone.
It’s the kind of game you play, finish, uninstall, and then debate for hours with your friends. Was it good? Was it bad? Who knows, but it sure was something. And sometimes, that’s enough. If you enjoy beautiful chaos, see how disciplined learning offsets friction in our Dota 2 Learning Curve.
If you’re in the mood for more shooter chaos, check out our top FPS picks for 2025, some of them know how to shut up and shoot.
Also read: Best RPGs across every platform, for when you want deep stories without vending machines making moaning noises.
External sources: PC Gamer review | Steam Store page
This Post Has One Comment
What a good article, it was helpful and I bought the game and it was very good.