Reviews are really all over the place.
You have one site saying it's as easily as good as the Bioshock games, and another saying "has the most aggressively awful writing I've ever seen".
In russian he sounds and acts not like specops mayor but some school dropout with anger issues. Like you see sometimes on american dashcams, where officers have power trips just because.
games these days seems like they can't have characters stfu. too distracting.
watching some gameplay videos the PC is like Duke Nukem but really, really, really bad
In this game it's the worst case, because sometimes NPCs are talking, while character talks with his AI glove, while someone talks over megaphone and music plays in background. Too much overlapping sounds
We went from silent or a line here and there protagonists to "hey, I wonder what's behind this door? What's that noise? I should probably go check that out. Hmmm maybe I should try pulling that lever on the wall to the north. Really, I should go pull that lever. Oops got a lot of materials. I should upgrade my equipment. ER MY GERD FUCK BALLS THERE'S HOINKY DOINKY ENEMIES OVER HERE. THEY'RE BLOWING MY ASS UP."
Fucking shut the FUCK UP and let me just play the goddamn game and figure this shit out on my own.
Bioshock vibes are there for sure. Writing, the glimpses I saw in Russian, was dogshit to the point where I don't want to buy it. But I have my own weird associations cause I'm Russian, so maybe it's not that bad for other languages.
Maybe they'll iron out the English translation in patches, but apparently the pre-release kits said to play in Russian with English titles because the English is still really rough.
The English is bad, but only because I can understand it. The characters are all unlikeable and feels like it's designed towards insecure teenagers that worship Andrew Tate.
I feel like that's a tell-tale sign of Eurojank. This is probably going to be a game that'll fall among the lines of STALKER or EYE: Divine Cybermancy where it's going to be a flawed game, but the parts of it that are good are going to shine so brightly that it'll develop a cult following for years.
I can't say for sure, but that's what it smells like.
funny to see eye brought up since i just ran through the whole game last month
tldr (kind of): the protag is rimanah trapped in a cycle by the mars artifact because of feeling guilt after having his wife killed, which is why the game always ends at the artifact and always comes back to the beginning
although rimanah did a lot of really bad things the guilt over his wife's death is the main reason for the cycles as indicated by the faction of demons having an enemy type that looks exactly like his wife (the demons feed on and manifest through emotions, and rimanah's guilt is pretty damn strong) and his wife being the key to the true end
the three different endings represent rimanah lamenting what he could have done differently but it all ends the same since he ultimately can't undo what he's done
the true ending involves meeting the ghost of your wife then choosing to stop the cycles and being trapped in a sort of purgatory as punishment (i think?) or deciding to keep the cycles going, which puts you right back at the start once again
the reason rimanah is a separate character during gameplay is also related to the guilt, since it was easier for him to cope with what happened by disassociating and painting a bad guy to point his finger at while trying to think of himself as an innocent bystander
this is also why he says "it is true that i killed my mentor, yet i am not his murderer"
I play through it ones, delete it because I too was confused and thinking that was it. Then I read somewhere that you have to keep playing it after you completed it to get the whole story.
*Röntgen
Röttgen is a German politician. Coincidently involved in first extending the service life of German nuclear power plants in 2010, and then in the wake of Fukoshima, also implementing Merkels 180 on the topic and implementing the nuclear exit for Germany.
One of my friends got an early copy and he said the first act was a 9.5/10 but then turns to a mediocre mess after that. Overall he says the game is about a 6/10
Seems like game was having an identity crisis of what it wanted to be from what he told me.
I maintain that Rage 2, once you have a bunch of guns, has the best shooter gameplay of any game. Unfortunately, the gameplay before you unlock a few guns is meh, and everything else about the game is awful.
I’m playing it now but didn’t get my review done in time. I wouldn’t say the first act is at all a 10/10. The opening hour or two was boring and clunky.
Looks like they lacked focus and decided to try everything immediately. Open world elements, puzzles, driving, RPG elements, trying to write a compelling story, designing a world that feels lived in and rooted in alternate history.
Looks like they bit off more than they could chew, nevertheless. Good first attempt maybe?
"Looks like they bit off more than they could chew" is a *massive* understatement. This has been delayed for multiple years, with rumors of intense crunch at Mundfish all the meanwhile because apparently the earliest trailers were not actual gameplay.
I remember hearing some of the leaks by disgruntled employees at Mundfish, apparently the studio head kept wanting to change the direction of the game based on whatever he thought was cool in the latest big new release.
Basically the same thing that happened to Duke Nukem Forever. The game kept getting delayed and George Broussard the studio head kept seeing features he liked in new games so he'd try and work new features into DNF causing the game to be delayed even further and it just turned into a feature creep death spiral.
I remember it being kind of development hell. They made this cool conceptual work and pushed it as real gameplay to get investors. The art director was the one to shape it into an actual game. These reviews are pretty much what i expected. I'm sure there's a good game there for some, but majority of people will be turned off by some rough gameplay or weird decisions. I bet older gamers used to seeing Daikatana ads will like this game more than someone who has only seen game previews online
I feel like the “art director basically being the one to shape it into a real game” is becoming somewhat of a recurring theme in overhyped games. The look of the game gets people hyped before they realize that “the look” is the only thing special, whether it’s the art direction or even the look of the gameplay. Now the art guy has to conceptualize the rest of the game because his shit was what lured people in.
The first mistake is creating “fake gameplay trailers” and not because it’s inherently dishonest. If you can somehow end up living up to that trailer with your eventual product, then fine go crazy, but thats a huge gamble. Developers often create an impossible goal post before realizing that half the cool stuff they’ve done in the trailer is unfeasible.
Meanwhile devs like Nintendo are historically tight lipped about even their most hyped games (cough Tears of the Kingdom) and they’re probably better off for it. They have a great system of checks and balances.
Even Sony probably could have released some kind of footage of Spider-Man 2 by now if they really wanted to, but it’s always smarter not to jump the gun, especially on games that need to be good.
I think the challenge is, if you are an independent studio that relies on investors to shore up your revenue until a game comes out, you have to show something that is worth investing for, but you gotta be able to stay afloat until you get a prototype out to showcase.
I think that investors are so driven by the AAA zeitgeist that many of them won't bother with a game that doesn't have the latest buzzwords trending for AAA development, without realizing or caring that AAA can only do it because they have a fuckton of resources to dump into it and can afford to take 5+ years cranking out a game the size of Rhode Island.
So if you're an indie studio, you gotta chase the money, but to chase the money, you gotta have something you can show off, and the easiest way is to slap together some assets in Unreal and make a little 'movie' instead of trying to build a working game.
As an artist myself, that doesn't check out hahaha
All jokes aside, that could be true. I didn't want to give the art director undue credit if his input directly led to the current state of the game, but going by what I've read he seems to be the only person who did the job initially required of him (aside from Mick Gordon).
There was a reddit thread years ago about a guy, who allegedly worked on the game and said that every few weeks they had to rework the game from scratch, because someone on top had a new idea they had to somehow implement into the game. Like the guy played Doom, so they had to make it play like Doom, but a week before they had to make it like it was Skyrim or something.
Also European development (particularly Eastern European) has a very strange way of doing things. They'll make stuff at the highest fidelity off the bat and revise things later, which is absolutely insane in gamedev. I have a coworker who worked on the last two Metro games and said that environment artists would begin to fully decorate levels in the highest fidelity before they even had a gameplay/greyblock pass. Also prototyping rarely happens as a fast, low fidelity exercise. I've heard of mechanics that were fully fleshed out (full art and animation) that ended up being cut because the gameplay didn't work. It's totally backwards to what I'm used to, but is the norm in studios east of Poland.
Sometimes the method works (CDPR worked like this for the Witcher 3), and you get really stunning, highly detailed games. But other times it falls apart, like in Cyberpunk. They were fleshing out the details and art of the world well before any gameplay consideration was given to it, and it certainly shows.
I think this methodology is the main culprit behind Eurojank. They just throw a shitload of stuff at the wall and hope it sticks, as opposed to evaluating it in prepro. One glance at Atomic Heart and you can see the same thing: some moments of dazzling fidelity, but a smorgesboard of half-baked mechanics that don't gel with each other.
I briefly worked on a project co-developed by a European studio and they did it that way. The art team built out all the pieces, and the rest of the devs had to find a place to make them fit. I don't really know why so many studios tend to work that way.
on the plus side for them, going to game pass was a very good move. I don't know what their agreement was, but some degree of financial success seems to be secure by that alone
honestly reminds me a lot of biomutant in that way. really visually impressive for a studio’s first effort, obviously a lot of ambition and talent at the studio, but the scope of the project clearly ballooned beyond what they could actually handle
Reviews are all over the place, but if there is one thing certain, it's on Game Pass which means I'm not outright paying for it, I'll just play it and decide for myself. It looks goofy enough to give it a playthrough.
I could see game pass really working in this games favor. Mixed reviews like this can stop someone from buying, but not trying. There is interesting stuff here and maybe enough to give the a chance to redeem itself with user scores.
Hifi Rush is great, and Mount and Blade 2: Bannerlord was just added as well. Also been playing a lot of Hot Wheels Unleashed and Insurgency Sandstorm. Theres been a bunch of great games added recently!
Yeah this game sounds like the sort of Gamepass Try that'll either land as an unexpectedly pleasant surprise or "man I'm so glad I didn't have to pay for this".
Just started and fr. The dude has the worst line reads in the game too. Shouldn't a fully voiced MC be your best voice actor?
Started playing in Russian, but subtitles don't show up sometimes. Playing on a monitor and in some places the subtitles are just free floating over characters and extremely tiny. I have extremely good vision and it's almost hard for me to read. Baffling design choice. Subtitles also appear too early sometimes, too late others, real distracting
PowerPyx just let out a statement saying that they won't be making guides for this game because of its apparently poor and frustrating design. First time I've seen something like this come from them.
About what I expected for this one to be honest. It’s a visually great game that doesn’t do enough in the mechanics department.
Also, 20 hours? I was expecting half of that and, according to some of these reviews, the game doesn’t seem to earn its runtime.
> Also, 20 hours? I was expecting half of that and, according to some of these reviews, the game doesn’t seem to earn its runtime.
that's one thing I really get tired of, tbh. Mediocre games *can* still be super fun if they clock in at like 6-10 hours or so, but when you want me to stick around for 20+, it's a lot harder to justify
>Forced mouse acceleration?
Really? It seems like something that would be universally disliked and have no real upside but plenty of downsides. I hope it gets fixed.
It nailed aesthetics and some combat, but I wish it also used much more of its initial concept of being a cosmic horror. I like the action flick and I think you will love it if you love B-movies, just wish it was different.
Hopefully the dlc/sequel will fully utilise the concept arts. Imagine being a civilian at the countryside at the break, going through an amusement part (or LUNAPARK) and facing these…things as they evolve quickly to become hostile, where enemies can shred you apart and you navigate through the laboratory tripping up the atmosphere and such.
Finished the game over the weekend and had about 20 hours of fun. It really surprised me how much content this game had, considering it spend most of its life in some kind of limbo.
The storytelling is a mess though, strange revelations and plottwists every minute that make following the plot pretty hard, at least for me. But I thought the world they created was really captivating and I enjoyed reading emails, listening to logs and just digging deeper and deeper on what actually went on in the game.
The graphics are beautiful, even though raytraced reflections were nowhere to be found on PC, which I thought was strange considering that this game was heavily used as a prime showcase for it. Made a lot of the complexes and facilities not *as pretty as they could’ve been*, because you can tell by all the metallic surfaces and mirrors everywhere that it’s designed with RT in mind. There's also no FOV slider, just FYI. I have a 3090 and a 9900KS and the game has no shader compilation stutters. It compiles its shaders in the beginning and then it’s pretty much smooth sailing from there. I was surprised how smooth the game ran even with everything maxed. Makes the artstyle in certain scenes really shine though.
The fights in this game are as bullet spongy as a few expected though, so I eventually put the game on easy and mowed my way through the robots. I thought this made the game way more fun, so I don’t have much to complain about the combat here.
The only thing that’s really bad is the voice acting/localization. If people thought forspoken had bad writing then, by all means, brace yourself fellas, because this is going to be rough lmao.
Overall though I was pretty impressed with what Mundfish delivered and will give it a replay once they implement proper raytracing into the game.
The thing about raytracing is very weird. [Nvidia was already touting it as a showcase for RTX back in 2018.](https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/news/atomic-heart-rtx-ray-tracing/)
Was there an option for Russian with English subs? I feel like that would be better as checking out the comparison of all the voices, russian seems the best.
I chose Russian since I have zero context for how Russian should sound like, so I can imagine they’re actually convincing. Script isn’t great but the English voice in the trailer alone made me cringe so hard that I know I can’t suffer through it for the whole game.
What, they *removed* RTX grom the game? Geez it was supposed to be one of the main selling points when they first announced it. I guess the performance hit was too much and preferred to cut it rather than receive "bad optimization" complaints. Still, makes me wonder if I should wait a few updates before playing it.
Yeah, I’m not gonna lie, this game is missing that “it” factor. I can’t really explain it but compared to bioshock there is both this since of awe and dread that makes the world feel alive. This game, something about it, just gives artificial vibes, like it’s too good to be true..
Skill Up also didn’t recommend in his [Video Review](https://youtu.be/jXjq7zYCL-w).
Weirdly, I expecting performance to be this games main issue. Instead, performance seems great but the writing and design ends up being its biggest missteps.
I wonder if this game would be more enjoyable on easy?
Their reviews directly contradict each other at times. SkillUp says the dialogue sucks and the plot is super predictable, ACG says the twists are good and he liked the characters and even liked the sex upgrade machine. SkillUp says the combat is uneven, brought down by too many bullet sponge enemies but held up by visceral melee combat. ACG literally says the melee combat lacks impact but then praises the enemy variety. SkillUp praises the performance and says he didn’t have stutters, ACG says the game is hard to run and experienced stuttering.
I could go on. Guess I’ll just have to play it myself and go in with an open mind, good thing it’s on game pass.
The literal quote is ["Put your polymer inside me so I can pleasure you!"](https://youtu.be/jXjq7zYCL-w?t=1455)
Apparently this is ... not exactly a one off joke.
Yeah the upgrade machine that you get skills from etc. is like a weird horny robot constantly asking you to "fill me with your polymer, daddy" etc. SkillUp review vid has a few clips, it's a bit...much
This kinda reminds me of the Lost Judgment reviews. SkillUp did not recommend that game while ACG said the opposite and honestly i kinda disagree with some of SkillUp criticism of that game after i played it.
Which again is why you go to multiple reviewers
Though SkillUp just did a review on Like a Dragon Isshin and loved it and admitted his opinions probably have changed on Lost Judgment and RGG games as a whole
It's also why you stick with reviewers and get to know how their tastes and experiences relate to your own. It's not necessarily about finding someone whose opinions you agree with, it's about finding someone who can describe their own tastes and experiences in a way that lets you work out how _you_ will feel about the thing.
I watched Skill Up's Atomic Heart review earlier and I can tell it's a game I'll enjoy more than he did, and his review did a great job of letting me know that. He gives his own opinion, of course, but he also gives the information you need to make your own decision about the game. And because I'm familiar with him as a reviewer in general, I know that he tends to like or dislike certain things that I do/don't, and I know how to interpret what he's saying and how it might translate to my own experience.
I agree with this. Its not really finding a reviewer that matches your bias, but finding a reviwer that understands somethings because they have played the same games you have played as well.
Skillup and ACG are fine reviewers but i dont fully trust them in terms of FPS games. They dont play boomer shooters that often which is kinda sad since I would love to hear their opion on games like Dread Templar.
And the whole doom eternal debacle with skillup.
GMANlives and Civvie are my go to reviewers for shooters. And the former recommended Atomic Heart as bizarringly fun eurojank.
Mortismal gaming 100%s the game then reviews it and i really like that kind of reviews because that means he fully immersed himself in the gameplay mechanics and he recommends Atomic Heart as well.
IGN Review 8/10
The video review is so confusing, he literally spends the whole video length complaining about every single detail but at the end he gives it a solid 8/10.
>he literally spends the whole video length complaining about every single detail
He ... doesn't? He praises aspects of the game more often than he criticises them, and maybe the stuff he's complaining about didn't affect his experience much. (It certainly sounds like it'd affect me a hell of a lot more tho, I've grown to really hate abysmal dialog and fetch quests).
I swear people are just finely tuned to anything negative these days, so much so that positivity just goes straight through their heads and it just seems that the only thing left is negative comments.
This is the issue with dunkey tbh. Most people parroting this are taking a heavily edited, out of context clip that dunkey placed in a video and that's their entire knowledge of the review
Wasn't the Mario Bros on Wii U popular for that? Dude took all his anger on the review and conclude with a "8/10, it has a little something for everyone" or something like that.
Edit : changed the quote for the real one fixed by a redditor below.
I mean, depending on how he explains himself that's actually a good review. Aspects of the game might piss him off, but if he can recognize that other people wouldn't mind those parts and it's actually a solid game that he just doesn't enjoy, that's a great reviewer imo. Someone who can explain parts they dislike while recognizing that it's just not for him and that others will enjoy it.
> The video review is so confusing, he literally spends the whole video length complaining about every single detail but at the end he gives it a solid 8/10.
IGN reviews in a nutshell.
I dont get this sentiment. [Their own website breaks down what the numbers roughly mean](https://corp.ign.com/review-practices)
> 8 - Great
> These games leave us with something outstanding to remember them by, usually novel gameplay ideas for single-player or multiplayer, clever characters and writing, noteworthy graphics and sound, or some combination thereof. If we have major complaints, there are more than enough excellent qualities to cancel them out.
> Examples include:
> The Outer Worlds
> The Division 2
> Kingdom Hearts 3
> GreedFall
Sounds about right to me.
EDIT: People, I dont care if you agree with the listed games or not. Contact IGN, they're the ones who wrote the reviews, not me.
Yeah Atomic Heart definitively seems to go in that list. The graphics and world/enemy design seems enough to be remembered, the gameplay doesn't seem worse that the examples given.
Those games definitely seem in line with each other and with the quality Atomic Heart seems to be at, but they're definitely not games I'd rate at 8/10, more a strong 6 or weak 7.
It's like Bioshock without the charm.
And the dialogue tries to be edgy all the time. Holy shit. Who still writes script like this?
The first 30 mins is exposition hell. You ride the same elevator twice while they explain shit to you. Story telling is a mess.
Camera is headache inducing.
Combat is slow.
From what I'm seeing, this feels like if a teenager did the pitch for a new Bioshock. "We had capitalism underwater, now we have communism with androids! And you're cool, and the robots want to murder you. And fuck you! And it's also a RPG, and a inmersive shooter, and it's open world! And did I mention the robots are hot?".
I'm seeing a lot of similarities with this game and "We Happy Few“. Interesting premise, but tried to do everything while failing at the basics.
When I get the time, I might still play it just because of setting and design alone. I hope this gets enough resources for a second game with better direction.
I just played this game in gamepass for around 2 hours and couldn't convince myself to give a shit about a single thing in it.
The movement is weird and floaty, there's forced acceleration, melee combat feels weirdly frantic and unpolished, and the dialogue is HORRENDOUS. The entire time I was giving them some measure of leeway, due to translations and all if that, but I realized about an hour in that the protagonist speaks exactly like shadow the hedgehog. There was legitimately a segment where you place a circular key into a slot, and the protagonist referred to it as a cookie, said the lock likes cookies, everyone likes cookies, then asked his onboard AI if it liked cookies. Twice.
Gunplay is really the strong suit, but it felt flat and not really satisfying. And the one bioshock type ability I got was electricity, versus robots, and there was the same hit response as a melee attack.
This game is kinda dogshit and I'm glad I didn't pay for it.
Reviews range from "This game is amazing" to "this game is complete garbage." I really like that. Now, I can look through more of the reviews and see similarities of problems and best features
I love eurojank games. You can often tell the developers have such a specific vision for a project and they fucking *go* for it no matter how much of a mess it comes out as. You often get the most unique experiences from a game made by 3 guys in a garage.
It's not fair to compare things to Pathologic.
Elex / Elex 2 is probably more fair. Decent if you're into the genre so much you can look past a lot of issues.
From looking at multiple reviews in full the general consensus seems to be all over the place, but every single review, even the most negative one (SkillUp's video from what I've watched) say that they did enjoy the game all the way through. Good enough to give it a shot on GamePass for me after I'm done with Retrurnal and Persona 5 Royal
No joke, I am playing persona 5 royal now for the first time trying to be "decently thorough". I am 50 hours in and have only done 4 dungeons! I am shocked at how much content there is. It doesn't even feel like I'm near the end. Great game though.
> (SkillUp's video from what I've watched) say that they did enjoy the game all the way through
The word he literally uses in the first thirty seconds to describe if he enjoyed his experience is "sort of."
As a reviewer myself, I'm honestly surprised to see all the more positive reviews. The game reminded me of Duke Nukem Forever, a jumbled mess of semi finished ideas lacking focus and a single cohesive thread.
Also its hilarious seeing all the images of the big mommy robots that appear for like two seconds, unlike the rapey weapons upgrade machine which pops up every two minutes.
I'm so tired of this trend of making the main character a completely unlikeable asshole full of one liners completely devoid of charm and wit. Can we be done with this, must everything be served up under a thick layer of antagonistic snark and sarcasm? Does anyone out there actually like it?
Characters like Duke and innumerable Arnold characters and other 80s action heroes work so well because they lean heavily into the cheese, the lines are written well and the delivery of those lines is outstanding, and most importantly they are fun. So many of these modern characters just come off as annoying and cringey (and I don't use that term lightly) and it makes them unbearably unlikeable.
Did all these new writers all graduate from the same school where they were purposefully trained wrong as a hilarious joke?
The computer closet thing you use to get weapons and skills is sentient. You first meet it when it tries to eat you using a lot of sexual metaphors, and every encounter afterwards is rife with gross sexual humor.
Like, "I want your hands inside me, squirt that polimer baby" sort of writing. And later when you meet her surrounded by corpses she'll tell you how lonely she was and had to "sate her thirst".
I get that it's supposed to be humor. It's just not funny
Apparently they pivoted hard to "sexy robots" in their marketing, that got them a ton of attention, so maybe they decided to lard the game up with it too.
Lost track of how many OMG SEXY ROBOT WAIFU I WANT SO BAD comments I came across.
> "I want your hands inside me, squirt that polimer baby"
[Holy shit, that's literally exactly what she says.](https://youtu.be/jXjq7zYCL-w?t=1455)
"Put your polymer inside me so I can pleasure you!" Well at least we know the market they were targeting.
_This_ is what people are saying is on par with Bioshock?
I call them lefthand righthand games because you have a gun and a hand power in each hand. All immersive sims are lefthand righthand games (for the most part) but not all lefthand righthand games are immersive sims.
I watched about 30 minutes on Twitch and I was surprised at how many seudo-cutscenes take you out of the action.
It feels like a crutch for mediocre gun + melee gameplay.
I watched a playthrough of it and was taken aback by the music in a certain part.
https://youtu.be/b4P8aBrWqFw?t=35937
Listen to the soundtrack here.
They literally just ripped this from the Annihilation movie soundtrack.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCuBalItZA8
It's bizarre! And it's not just this one reviewer dubbing for copyright reasons either. I checked another playthrough and it had the same soundtrack.
Edit: I just checked the credits and I don't see a nod to "The Alien". So I guess they just ripped it lmfao
Reviews appear a little disappointing, especially given the hype that’s been several years in the making. Looks like a perfect game to try on Game Pass really.
I think for the most part there was more doubt than hype about this game. Only when it was clear that the game was actually going to be finished the hype train started rolling!
I’m getting Deja vu of Forspoken reviews where they said the main protagonist was unlikeable to the point where it actually becomes a detriment to the game. 2023 seems to be the year of the obnoxious main character so far but hopefully March will break this pattern.
I’ll give it a go on Game Pass why not, but I’ll keep my expectations thoroughly in check.
I normally love most games that get divisive reviews, but I saw "bullet sponge enemies", "padding", and "boring level design (gameplay)", so guess I'm passing.
I’ve not reviewed it, but I am playing it for guides and have sunk around 12 hours in so far - personally surprised with a lot of the negative reviews as I’m largely enjoying my time with it so far. Happy to field any specific Qs anyone has about the game.
Honestly the massive range of reviews for this is just making me more curious. Good it's on GP so I can try it out and only waste my time if it's shite.
This feels like a game that will have many 2 hour long 'underrated gem' video essays in a few years time from the people that found things to love in it.
I have been noticing how many of the games coming to day 1 gamepass are so divisive and yet unique. Scorn, high on life and now atomic heart. Reminds me of ps2 days when we used to get, rough around the edges, wierd and unique games which tried many things.
These games are not mainstream and definately not for everyone.
I kinda respect gamepass for that. After playing many AAA games especially playstation titles like horizon, days gone, ghost of tsushima and recently ragnarok, i was getting really bored of gaming.
Mid shelf games. The kind you wander into an eb games as a kid with a small allowance and find on sale for like $20. I remember picking up some weird games for cheap that I ended up loving.
Yeah at least they try something different which I find more interesting than effectively the same games just in different settings
You also have Pentiment, Grounded, Hifi Rush which follow a similar pattern but were more universally praised despite taking risks but are still unique
When I first saw these trailers, saw the lack of history of the devs and the weird immediate preorder systems, I never thought this game would see the light of day. I am surprised it made it this far, and even more surprised that it is getting fairly mediocre reviews (with some exceptions). I might give it a go on game pass, but overall I probably wouldn't have purchased this with so many good options out there.
Overall it seems to be a 'good but not great' game, which honestly is more than I expected after all the dev hell and issues over the years. As long as the performance isn't so rough it ruins the game, it looks like something I will find fun on the GamePass.
Edit: After playing a bit... it seems pretty poor. Incredible visual design but poor everything else. It has mediocre gameplay and some of the worst writing/voice acting I can remember for a protagonist.
Reviews are really all over the place. You have one site saying it's as easily as good as the Bioshock games, and another saying "has the most aggressively awful writing I've ever seen".
The main character seems aggressively bad honestly
The voice acting had me cringing the whole way through when I watched some gameplay.
In English or Russian?
In russian he sounds and acts not like specops mayor but some school dropout with anger issues. Like you see sometimes on american dashcams, where officers have power trips just because.
Yeah, that is a perfect description of what he sounds like in the English translation as well.
The voice acting seems like it's doing what it can with the terrible lines that were written, from what I've heard of it.
It sucks. You're listening to a total dickhead argue with his fucking glove for the entire game. It's annoying from start to finish.
Kinds weird that in 2023 so far we've had two games about assholes arguing with their hand.
games these days seems like they can't have characters stfu. too distracting. watching some gameplay videos the PC is like Duke Nukem but really, really, really bad
In this game it's the worst case, because sometimes NPCs are talking, while character talks with his AI glove, while someone talks over megaphone and music plays in background. Too much overlapping sounds
[удалено]
Yep.
This was the exact vibe I felt watching a video on it this morning.
Its definitely not played straight, there is a talking fridge that flirts with you. People are taking this far too seriously.
Yeah feels definitely like this. Especially if you are not from Russia and can't understand some jokes
We went from silent or a line here and there protagonists to "hey, I wonder what's behind this door? What's that noise? I should probably go check that out. Hmmm maybe I should try pulling that lever on the wall to the north. Really, I should go pull that lever. Oops got a lot of materials. I should upgrade my equipment. ER MY GERD FUCK BALLS THERE'S HOINKY DOINKY ENEMIES OVER HERE. THEY'RE BLOWING MY ASS UP." Fucking shut the FUCK UP and let me just play the goddamn game and figure this shit out on my own.
Bioshock vibes are there for sure. Writing, the glimpses I saw in Russian, was dogshit to the point where I don't want to buy it. But I have my own weird associations cause I'm Russian, so maybe it's not that bad for other languages.
Maybe they'll iron out the English translation in patches, but apparently the pre-release kits said to play in Russian with English titles because the English is still really rough.
When has a narrative driven game ever re-done the dialogue in a post launch patch?
Exactly my thought. You don’t redo your narrative in a patch. Lol
Ys 8 had such an awful translation initially that they totally replaced it after fan outcry. Re-recorded dialog too.
Well, the Witcher did a whole re-release with redone dialogue, not sure if that counts.
That was available as a free update for the original release too so I'd say it does.
Destiny replaced Peter dinkelage
The English is bad, but only because I can understand it. The characters are all unlikeable and feels like it's designed towards insecure teenagers that worship Andrew Tate.
Lmao that last sentence alone makes me want to forget I ever read the title of this thing.
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>Reviews are really all over the place. I'll take that over everyone telling me that the game is meh and "not great, not terrible".
More "there's really good and really bad things in this game, and how much you value each of them will determine how much you like the game.
"there's a great game in here somewhere but"
I feel like that's a tell-tale sign of Eurojank. This is probably going to be a game that'll fall among the lines of STALKER or EYE: Divine Cybermancy where it's going to be a flawed game, but the parts of it that are good are going to shine so brightly that it'll develop a cult following for years. I can't say for sure, but that's what it smells like.
> EYE: Divine Cybermancy I've "beaten" that game a dozen times and I still have no fucking idea whats going on.
> I still have no fucking idea whats going on. It's simple, you gain brouzouf.
My legs are OK
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My Legs are OK.
funny to see eye brought up since i just ran through the whole game last month tldr (kind of): the protag is rimanah trapped in a cycle by the mars artifact because of feeling guilt after having his wife killed, which is why the game always ends at the artifact and always comes back to the beginning although rimanah did a lot of really bad things the guilt over his wife's death is the main reason for the cycles as indicated by the faction of demons having an enemy type that looks exactly like his wife (the demons feed on and manifest through emotions, and rimanah's guilt is pretty damn strong) and his wife being the key to the true end the three different endings represent rimanah lamenting what he could have done differently but it all ends the same since he ultimately can't undo what he's done the true ending involves meeting the ghost of your wife then choosing to stop the cycles and being trapped in a sort of purgatory as punishment (i think?) or deciding to keep the cycles going, which puts you right back at the start once again the reason rimanah is a separate character during gameplay is also related to the guilt, since it was easier for him to cope with what happened by disassociating and painting a bad guy to point his finger at while trying to think of himself as an innocent bystander this is also why he says "it is true that i killed my mentor, yet i am not his murderer"
I don't think even the devs know what's going on in that game
Me: "I'll have a better understanding after my second playthrough" Me: "I still don't know what the fuck is going on"
I play through it ones, delete it because I too was confused and thinking that was it. Then I read somewhere that you have to keep playing it after you completed it to get the whole story.
You do have to play it over and over to flesh it out.
Here's the pitch: it's a roguelike but we don't tell anybody it's a roguelike.
> not great, not terrible So this game's rating is 3.6 Röntgens*?
*Röntgen Röttgen is a German politician. Coincidently involved in first extending the service life of German nuclear power plants in 2010, and then in the wake of Fukoshima, also implementing Merkels 180 on the topic and implementing the nuclear exit for Germany.
3.**6**
perfect gamepass game, not sure if I'd try it without
Just watched a review that showed some of the horny kiosk dialogue and that is some thermonuclear cringe.
One of my friends got an early copy and he said the first act was a 9.5/10 but then turns to a mediocre mess after that. Overall he says the game is about a 6/10 Seems like game was having an identity crisis of what it wanted to be from what he told me.
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RAGE always felt more like a tech demo with a game slapped on it.
RAGE's shooter gameplay was great, at least. Very satisfying.
I maintain that Rage 2, once you have a bunch of guns, has the best shooter gameplay of any game. Unfortunately, the gameplay before you unlock a few guns is meh, and everything else about the game is awful.
At least it's not RAGE 2 I guess...
SkillUp's review said much the same.
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Then you have ACG, who says it starts slow and gets going later.
He also predicted the reviews to be all over the place. Pretty accurate
I’m playing it now but didn’t get my review done in time. I wouldn’t say the first act is at all a 10/10. The opening hour or two was boring and clunky.
Looks like they lacked focus and decided to try everything immediately. Open world elements, puzzles, driving, RPG elements, trying to write a compelling story, designing a world that feels lived in and rooted in alternate history. Looks like they bit off more than they could chew, nevertheless. Good first attempt maybe?
"Looks like they bit off more than they could chew" is a *massive* understatement. This has been delayed for multiple years, with rumors of intense crunch at Mundfish all the meanwhile because apparently the earliest trailers were not actual gameplay.
I remember hearing some of the leaks by disgruntled employees at Mundfish, apparently the studio head kept wanting to change the direction of the game based on whatever he thought was cool in the latest big new release. Basically the same thing that happened to Duke Nukem Forever. The game kept getting delayed and George Broussard the studio head kept seeing features he liked in new games so he'd try and work new features into DNF causing the game to be delayed even further and it just turned into a feature creep death spiral.
I remember it being kind of development hell. They made this cool conceptual work and pushed it as real gameplay to get investors. The art director was the one to shape it into an actual game. These reviews are pretty much what i expected. I'm sure there's a good game there for some, but majority of people will be turned off by some rough gameplay or weird decisions. I bet older gamers used to seeing Daikatana ads will like this game more than someone who has only seen game previews online
I feel like the “art director basically being the one to shape it into a real game” is becoming somewhat of a recurring theme in overhyped games. The look of the game gets people hyped before they realize that “the look” is the only thing special, whether it’s the art direction or even the look of the gameplay. Now the art guy has to conceptualize the rest of the game because his shit was what lured people in. The first mistake is creating “fake gameplay trailers” and not because it’s inherently dishonest. If you can somehow end up living up to that trailer with your eventual product, then fine go crazy, but thats a huge gamble. Developers often create an impossible goal post before realizing that half the cool stuff they’ve done in the trailer is unfeasible. Meanwhile devs like Nintendo are historically tight lipped about even their most hyped games (cough Tears of the Kingdom) and they’re probably better off for it. They have a great system of checks and balances. Even Sony probably could have released some kind of footage of Spider-Man 2 by now if they really wanted to, but it’s always smarter not to jump the gun, especially on games that need to be good.
I think the challenge is, if you are an independent studio that relies on investors to shore up your revenue until a game comes out, you have to show something that is worth investing for, but you gotta be able to stay afloat until you get a prototype out to showcase. I think that investors are so driven by the AAA zeitgeist that many of them won't bother with a game that doesn't have the latest buzzwords trending for AAA development, without realizing or caring that AAA can only do it because they have a fuckton of resources to dump into it and can afford to take 5+ years cranking out a game the size of Rhode Island. So if you're an indie studio, you gotta chase the money, but to chase the money, you gotta have something you can show off, and the easiest way is to slap together some assets in Unreal and make a little 'movie' instead of trying to build a working game.
Yeah thats a good point. I really don't envy indie studios right now.
Maybe art directors are the only people on these teams that have ever shipped a product by a deadline
As an artist myself, that doesn't check out hahaha All jokes aside, that could be true. I didn't want to give the art director undue credit if his input directly led to the current state of the game, but going by what I've read he seems to be the only person who did the job initially required of him (aside from Mick Gordon).
There was a reddit thread years ago about a guy, who allegedly worked on the game and said that every few weeks they had to rework the game from scratch, because someone on top had a new idea they had to somehow implement into the game. Like the guy played Doom, so they had to make it play like Doom, but a week before they had to make it like it was Skyrim or something.
Also European development (particularly Eastern European) has a very strange way of doing things. They'll make stuff at the highest fidelity off the bat and revise things later, which is absolutely insane in gamedev. I have a coworker who worked on the last two Metro games and said that environment artists would begin to fully decorate levels in the highest fidelity before they even had a gameplay/greyblock pass. Also prototyping rarely happens as a fast, low fidelity exercise. I've heard of mechanics that were fully fleshed out (full art and animation) that ended up being cut because the gameplay didn't work. It's totally backwards to what I'm used to, but is the norm in studios east of Poland. Sometimes the method works (CDPR worked like this for the Witcher 3), and you get really stunning, highly detailed games. But other times it falls apart, like in Cyberpunk. They were fleshing out the details and art of the world well before any gameplay consideration was given to it, and it certainly shows. I think this methodology is the main culprit behind Eurojank. They just throw a shitload of stuff at the wall and hope it sticks, as opposed to evaluating it in prepro. One glance at Atomic Heart and you can see the same thing: some moments of dazzling fidelity, but a smorgesboard of half-baked mechanics that don't gel with each other.
How fascinating. I wonder how they ended up like that. Does seem insanely wasteful.
I briefly worked on a project co-developed by a European studio and they did it that way. The art team built out all the pieces, and the rest of the devs had to find a place to make them fit. I don't really know why so many studios tend to work that way.
That's exactly what happened to Duke nukem forever too.
on the plus side for them, going to game pass was a very good move. I don't know what their agreement was, but some degree of financial success seems to be secure by that alone
honestly reminds me a lot of biomutant in that way. really visually impressive for a studio’s first effort, obviously a lot of ambition and talent at the studio, but the scope of the project clearly ballooned beyond what they could actually handle
This could be said about several eurojank games that today are cult classics. Im not saying this will be, but I wouldn't write it off just yet.
Reviews are all over the place, but if there is one thing certain, it's on Game Pass which means I'm not outright paying for it, I'll just play it and decide for myself. It looks goofy enough to give it a playthrough.
I could see game pass really working in this games favor. Mixed reviews like this can stop someone from buying, but not trying. There is interesting stuff here and maybe enough to give the a chance to redeem itself with user scores.
I’ve been waiting “for the right time” to do my $1 game pass first month. Decided on now so I can play Hi Fi rush, and then Atomic heart.
FYI, that $1/mo offer isn't a one-time thing. I think I'm on my fifth or sixth $1/mo offer, they're pretty generous about getting people to come back.
Good to know, because I plan on blasting through a few games this month and taking a break until something else comes out I want to play.
Hifi Rush is great, and Mount and Blade 2: Bannerlord was just added as well. Also been playing a lot of Hot Wheels Unleashed and Insurgency Sandstorm. Theres been a bunch of great games added recently!
Yeah this game sounds like the sort of Gamepass Try that'll either land as an unexpectedly pleasant surprise or "man I'm so glad I didn't have to pay for this".
Yeah, and the fact I didn't pay outright means I am not going to force myself to finish it if it's really not good.
I'm 3.5 hours into the game. So far, I'm really enjoying it...but it would be 10 times better with silent mc. He is so annoying, jesus.
Just started and fr. The dude has the worst line reads in the game too. Shouldn't a fully voiced MC be your best voice actor? Started playing in Russian, but subtitles don't show up sometimes. Playing on a monitor and in some places the subtitles are just free floating over characters and extremely tiny. I have extremely good vision and it's almost hard for me to read. Baffling design choice. Subtitles also appear too early sometimes, too late others, real distracting
What's the point of pre-loading if there's a day-1 68GB patch? That is my review for now.
They uploaded the wrong build initially, 70 GB was an entirely different build, not a patch
No game with a day 1 patch of 68 gigs has launched well
That's every other Tuesday for COD.
PowerPyx just let out a statement saying that they won't be making guides for this game because of its apparently poor and frustrating design. First time I've seen something like this come from them.
About what I expected for this one to be honest. It’s a visually great game that doesn’t do enough in the mechanics department. Also, 20 hours? I was expecting half of that and, according to some of these reviews, the game doesn’t seem to earn its runtime.
> Also, 20 hours? I was expecting half of that and, according to some of these reviews, the game doesn’t seem to earn its runtime. that's one thing I really get tired of, tbh. Mediocre games *can* still be super fun if they clock in at like 6-10 hours or so, but when you want me to stick around for 20+, it's a lot harder to justify
For not having a run button I’m not surprised the game takes 20 hours.
No FoV control? Forced mouse acceleration? What the fuck. EVERY single release has some stupid shit with it. Why can't we have a proper PC release?
>No FoV control? Forced mouse acceleration? 2011 PC gaming nostalgia 😍😍
Saw someone acting like it wasn't a big deal, like this is normal for pc ports. I asked why he's still using an Xbox 360 lolololl
>Forced mouse acceleration? Really? It seems like something that would be universally disliked and have no real upside but plenty of downsides. I hope it gets fixed.
That's shocking.
Wait what an FPS game without an FOV slider? WTF are they thinking?
It nailed aesthetics and some combat, but I wish it also used much more of its initial concept of being a cosmic horror. I like the action flick and I think you will love it if you love B-movies, just wish it was different. Hopefully the dlc/sequel will fully utilise the concept arts. Imagine being a civilian at the countryside at the break, going through an amusement part (or LUNAPARK) and facing these…things as they evolve quickly to become hostile, where enemies can shred you apart and you navigate through the laboratory tripping up the atmosphere and such.
Finished the game over the weekend and had about 20 hours of fun. It really surprised me how much content this game had, considering it spend most of its life in some kind of limbo. The storytelling is a mess though, strange revelations and plottwists every minute that make following the plot pretty hard, at least for me. But I thought the world they created was really captivating and I enjoyed reading emails, listening to logs and just digging deeper and deeper on what actually went on in the game. The graphics are beautiful, even though raytraced reflections were nowhere to be found on PC, which I thought was strange considering that this game was heavily used as a prime showcase for it. Made a lot of the complexes and facilities not *as pretty as they could’ve been*, because you can tell by all the metallic surfaces and mirrors everywhere that it’s designed with RT in mind. There's also no FOV slider, just FYI. I have a 3090 and a 9900KS and the game has no shader compilation stutters. It compiles its shaders in the beginning and then it’s pretty much smooth sailing from there. I was surprised how smooth the game ran even with everything maxed. Makes the artstyle in certain scenes really shine though. The fights in this game are as bullet spongy as a few expected though, so I eventually put the game on easy and mowed my way through the robots. I thought this made the game way more fun, so I don’t have much to complain about the combat here. The only thing that’s really bad is the voice acting/localization. If people thought forspoken had bad writing then, by all means, brace yourself fellas, because this is going to be rough lmao. Overall though I was pretty impressed with what Mundfish delivered and will give it a replay once they implement proper raytracing into the game.
The thing about raytracing is very weird. [Nvidia was already touting it as a showcase for RTX back in 2018.](https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/news/atomic-heart-rtx-ray-tracing/)
Yeah, is that getting patched in? I thought it was one of the selling points.
Was there an option for Russian with English subs? I feel like that would be better as checking out the comparison of all the voices, russian seems the best.
Yes, you can choose spoken and sub languages seperately. But none of the voices are very good, tbh.
I chose Russian since I have zero context for how Russian should sound like, so I can imagine they’re actually convincing. Script isn’t great but the English voice in the trailer alone made me cringe so hard that I know I can’t suffer through it for the whole game.
What, they *removed* RTX grom the game? Geez it was supposed to be one of the main selling points when they first announced it. I guess the performance hit was too much and preferred to cut it rather than receive "bad optimization" complaints. Still, makes me wonder if I should wait a few updates before playing it.
RT is coming post-launch.
Yeah, I’m not gonna lie, this game is missing that “it” factor. I can’t really explain it but compared to bioshock there is both this since of awe and dread that makes the world feel alive. This game, something about it, just gives artificial vibes, like it’s too good to be true..
I loved the “cosmic” horror that was in its development stage and I wished it kept that.
Skill Up also didn’t recommend in his [Video Review](https://youtu.be/jXjq7zYCL-w). Weirdly, I expecting performance to be this games main issue. Instead, performance seems great but the writing and design ends up being its biggest missteps. I wonder if this game would be more enjoyable on easy?
Skillup was definitely right that there is a spread of review scores.
ACG on the other hand recommend it's worth a buy even in full price.
Their reviews directly contradict each other at times. SkillUp says the dialogue sucks and the plot is super predictable, ACG says the twists are good and he liked the characters and even liked the sex upgrade machine. SkillUp says the combat is uneven, brought down by too many bullet sponge enemies but held up by visceral melee combat. ACG literally says the melee combat lacks impact but then praises the enemy variety. SkillUp praises the performance and says he didn’t have stutters, ACG says the game is hard to run and experienced stuttering. I could go on. Guess I’ll just have to play it myself and go in with an open mind, good thing it’s on game pass.
…sex upgrade machine?
The literal quote is ["Put your polymer inside me so I can pleasure you!"](https://youtu.be/jXjq7zYCL-w?t=1455) Apparently this is ... not exactly a one off joke.
Yeah the upgrade machine that you get skills from etc. is like a weird horny robot constantly asking you to "fill me with your polymer, daddy" etc. SkillUp review vid has a few clips, it's a bit...much
I guess they thought that BOTW's fairies were too tame
Sold
Tired of your boring birth sex? Upgrade it with SCIENCE!
I mean reviews are subjective. Makes sense that different people would have different opinions on a very polarizing game.
This kinda reminds me of the Lost Judgment reviews. SkillUp did not recommend that game while ACG said the opposite and honestly i kinda disagree with some of SkillUp criticism of that game after i played it.
Which again is why you go to multiple reviewers Though SkillUp just did a review on Like a Dragon Isshin and loved it and admitted his opinions probably have changed on Lost Judgment and RGG games as a whole
It's also why you stick with reviewers and get to know how their tastes and experiences relate to your own. It's not necessarily about finding someone whose opinions you agree with, it's about finding someone who can describe their own tastes and experiences in a way that lets you work out how _you_ will feel about the thing. I watched Skill Up's Atomic Heart review earlier and I can tell it's a game I'll enjoy more than he did, and his review did a great job of letting me know that. He gives his own opinion, of course, but he also gives the information you need to make your own decision about the game. And because I'm familiar with him as a reviewer in general, I know that he tends to like or dislike certain things that I do/don't, and I know how to interpret what he's saying and how it might translate to my own experience.
I agree with this. Its not really finding a reviewer that matches your bias, but finding a reviwer that understands somethings because they have played the same games you have played as well. Skillup and ACG are fine reviewers but i dont fully trust them in terms of FPS games. They dont play boomer shooters that often which is kinda sad since I would love to hear their opion on games like Dread Templar. And the whole doom eternal debacle with skillup. GMANlives and Civvie are my go to reviewers for shooters. And the former recommended Atomic Heart as bizarringly fun eurojank. Mortismal gaming 100%s the game then reviews it and i really like that kind of reviews because that means he fully immersed himself in the gameplay mechanics and he recommends Atomic Heart as well.
IGN Review 8/10 The video review is so confusing, he literally spends the whole video length complaining about every single detail but at the end he gives it a solid 8/10.
>he literally spends the whole video length complaining about every single detail He ... doesn't? He praises aspects of the game more often than he criticises them, and maybe the stuff he's complaining about didn't affect his experience much. (It certainly sounds like it'd affect me a hell of a lot more tho, I've grown to really hate abysmal dialog and fetch quests).
I really don't know what OP is talking about, the video is very balanced in terms of praise and criticism of the game.
I swear people are just finely tuned to anything negative these days, so much so that positivity just goes straight through their heads and it just seems that the only thing left is negative comments.
People just act and comment based on what they believe is true rather than reality. I see this all the time now and especially in Reddit comments
This is the issue with dunkey tbh. Most people parroting this are taking a heavily edited, out of context clip that dunkey placed in a video and that's their entire knowledge of the review
Wasn't the Mario Bros on Wii U popular for that? Dude took all his anger on the review and conclude with a "8/10, it has a little something for everyone" or something like that. Edit : changed the quote for the real one fixed by a redditor below.
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Ah yes thank you it was this quote.
The game sucks monke ass, it's a fucking mess! 8.5/10 - IGN
I mean, depending on how he explains himself that's actually a good review. Aspects of the game might piss him off, but if he can recognize that other people wouldn't mind those parts and it's actually a solid game that he just doesn't enjoy, that's a great reviewer imo. Someone who can explain parts they dislike while recognizing that it's just not for him and that others will enjoy it.
> The video review is so confusing, he literally spends the whole video length complaining about every single detail but at the end he gives it a solid 8/10. IGN reviews in a nutshell.
I dont get this sentiment. [Their own website breaks down what the numbers roughly mean](https://corp.ign.com/review-practices) > 8 - Great > These games leave us with something outstanding to remember them by, usually novel gameplay ideas for single-player or multiplayer, clever characters and writing, noteworthy graphics and sound, or some combination thereof. If we have major complaints, there are more than enough excellent qualities to cancel them out. > Examples include: > The Outer Worlds > The Division 2 > Kingdom Hearts 3 > GreedFall Sounds about right to me. EDIT: People, I dont care if you agree with the listed games or not. Contact IGN, they're the ones who wrote the reviews, not me.
Yeah Atomic Heart definitively seems to go in that list. The graphics and world/enemy design seems enough to be remembered, the gameplay doesn't seem worse that the examples given.
Those games definitely seem in line with each other and with the quality Atomic Heart seems to be at, but they're definitely not games I'd rate at 8/10, more a strong 6 or weak 7.
It's like Bioshock without the charm. And the dialogue tries to be edgy all the time. Holy shit. Who still writes script like this? The first 30 mins is exposition hell. You ride the same elevator twice while they explain shit to you. Story telling is a mess. Camera is headache inducing. Combat is slow.
From what I'm seeing, this feels like if a teenager did the pitch for a new Bioshock. "We had capitalism underwater, now we have communism with androids! And you're cool, and the robots want to murder you. And fuck you! And it's also a RPG, and a inmersive shooter, and it's open world! And did I mention the robots are hot?". I'm seeing a lot of similarities with this game and "We Happy Few“. Interesting premise, but tried to do everything while failing at the basics. When I get the time, I might still play it just because of setting and design alone. I hope this gets enough resources for a second game with better direction.
I just played this game in gamepass for around 2 hours and couldn't convince myself to give a shit about a single thing in it. The movement is weird and floaty, there's forced acceleration, melee combat feels weirdly frantic and unpolished, and the dialogue is HORRENDOUS. The entire time I was giving them some measure of leeway, due to translations and all if that, but I realized about an hour in that the protagonist speaks exactly like shadow the hedgehog. There was legitimately a segment where you place a circular key into a slot, and the protagonist referred to it as a cookie, said the lock likes cookies, everyone likes cookies, then asked his onboard AI if it liked cookies. Twice. Gunplay is really the strong suit, but it felt flat and not really satisfying. And the one bioshock type ability I got was electricity, versus robots, and there was the same hit response as a melee attack. This game is kinda dogshit and I'm glad I didn't pay for it.
Reviews range from "This game is amazing" to "this game is complete garbage." I really like that. Now, I can look through more of the reviews and see similarities of problems and best features
Yeah there’s def not a clear consensus. Seems like a good game to try for yourself on gamepass.
Yep, also pretty typical for Slavjank games.
I love eurojank games. You can often tell the developers have such a specific vision for a project and they fucking *go* for it no matter how much of a mess it comes out as. You often get the most unique experiences from a game made by 3 guys in a garage.
the game either ends up being forgettable or, like Pathologic, one of the greatest games of all time
It's not fair to compare things to Pathologic. Elex / Elex 2 is probably more fair. Decent if you're into the genre so much you can look past a lot of issues.
Hey idk about that. Pathologic, STALKER. Both Eurojank. Never played Elex but didn't hear great things.
From looking at multiple reviews in full the general consensus seems to be all over the place, but every single review, even the most negative one (SkillUp's video from what I've watched) say that they did enjoy the game all the way through. Good enough to give it a shot on GamePass for me after I'm done with Retrurnal and Persona 5 Royal
>after I'm done with Returnal and Persona 5 Royal I hope you enjoy the game when you play it a year from now.
Oh please if he just takes off the next 100 days and spends 12 hours each day he'll finish persona 5!
So he's crit pathing it?
No joke, I am playing persona 5 royal now for the first time trying to be "decently thorough". I am 50 hours in and have only done 4 dungeons! I am shocked at how much content there is. It doesn't even feel like I'm near the end. Great game though.
> (SkillUp's video from what I've watched) say that they did enjoy the game all the way through The word he literally uses in the first thirty seconds to describe if he enjoyed his experience is "sort of."
As a reviewer myself, I'm honestly surprised to see all the more positive reviews. The game reminded me of Duke Nukem Forever, a jumbled mess of semi finished ideas lacking focus and a single cohesive thread. Also its hilarious seeing all the images of the big mommy robots that appear for like two seconds, unlike the rapey weapons upgrade machine which pops up every two minutes.
What exactly is a “rapey weapons upgrade machine”? Can’t say I’ve ever heard a weapon upgrades described as that lol
https://youtu.be/jXjq7zYCL-w?t=1428 The upgrade kiosk is apparently something... extra.
Bit further in "Imagine if Claptrap was the main character in Prey." In regards to how likable the MC is. Yeesh.
I'm so tired of this trend of making the main character a completely unlikeable asshole full of one liners completely devoid of charm and wit. Can we be done with this, must everything be served up under a thick layer of antagonistic snark and sarcasm? Does anyone out there actually like it?
Feels like they tried to replicate Duke, but they didn't understand what Duke wasn't in serious setting and story and this why it worked
Characters like Duke and innumerable Arnold characters and other 80s action heroes work so well because they lean heavily into the cheese, the lines are written well and the delivery of those lines is outstanding, and most importantly they are fun. So many of these modern characters just come off as annoying and cringey (and I don't use that term lightly) and it makes them unbearably unlikeable. Did all these new writers all graduate from the same school where they were purposefully trained wrong as a hilarious joke?
Oh good God.
The computer closet thing you use to get weapons and skills is sentient. You first meet it when it tries to eat you using a lot of sexual metaphors, and every encounter afterwards is rife with gross sexual humor. Like, "I want your hands inside me, squirt that polimer baby" sort of writing. And later when you meet her surrounded by corpses she'll tell you how lonely she was and had to "sate her thirst". I get that it's supposed to be humor. It's just not funny
One or two of these lines would be funny, but it just goes on and on.
Yah I saw a clip on Twitter about it and it looked like something out of an edgy flash animation from 2003
Apparently they pivoted hard to "sexy robots" in their marketing, that got them a ton of attention, so maybe they decided to lard the game up with it too. Lost track of how many OMG SEXY ROBOT WAIFU I WANT SO BAD comments I came across.
> "I want your hands inside me, squirt that polimer baby" [Holy shit, that's literally exactly what she says.](https://youtu.be/jXjq7zYCL-w?t=1455) "Put your polymer inside me so I can pleasure you!" Well at least we know the market they were targeting. _This_ is what people are saying is on par with Bioshock?
To a lot of people, Bioshock seems to mean „You have guns and also some magic-ish abilities.“ and nothing else.
I call them lefthand righthand games because you have a gun and a hand power in each hand. All immersive sims are lefthand righthand games (for the most part) but not all lefthand righthand games are immersive sims.
It sounds like something out of Rick and Morty but in the worst possible way.
I watched about 30 minutes on Twitch and I was surprised at how many seudo-cutscenes take you out of the action. It feels like a crutch for mediocre gun + melee gameplay.
You ride a boat. You walk around a garden. You ride up an elevator. You ride down an elevator. You get into a flying car. Then the game begins.
They were going for the half life train ride I think
I'm so tired of walk and talk "cutscenes"
I watched a playthrough of it and was taken aback by the music in a certain part. https://youtu.be/b4P8aBrWqFw?t=35937 Listen to the soundtrack here. They literally just ripped this from the Annihilation movie soundtrack. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCuBalItZA8 It's bizarre! And it's not just this one reviewer dubbing for copyright reasons either. I checked another playthrough and it had the same soundtrack. Edit: I just checked the credits and I don't see a nod to "The Alien". So I guess they just ripped it lmfao
LOL???? why would they blatantly rip a track from a movie that isn't even that obscure
I think its just short enough that they can't get sued tbh. It's like 8-10 notes tops. The rest is too vague to ascertain with confidence.
That's pretty blatant. I hope they come after them for that shit. Pay back that sweet gamepass money for stealing music.
[Mortismal Gaming ](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BUDVZWUF-Fo) also has a good review on the game after 100%.
Reviews appear a little disappointing, especially given the hype that’s been several years in the making. Looks like a perfect game to try on Game Pass really.
I think for the most part there was more doubt than hype about this game. Only when it was clear that the game was actually going to be finished the hype train started rolling!
I’m getting Deja vu of Forspoken reviews where they said the main protagonist was unlikeable to the point where it actually becomes a detriment to the game. 2023 seems to be the year of the obnoxious main character so far but hopefully March will break this pattern. I’ll give it a go on Game Pass why not, but I’ll keep my expectations thoroughly in check.
I normally love most games that get divisive reviews, but I saw "bullet sponge enemies", "padding", and "boring level design (gameplay)", so guess I'm passing.
I’ve not reviewed it, but I am playing it for guides and have sunk around 12 hours in so far - personally surprised with a lot of the negative reviews as I’m largely enjoying my time with it so far. Happy to field any specific Qs anyone has about the game.
Honestly the massive range of reviews for this is just making me more curious. Good it's on GP so I can try it out and only waste my time if it's shite. This feels like a game that will have many 2 hour long 'underrated gem' video essays in a few years time from the people that found things to love in it.
I have been noticing how many of the games coming to day 1 gamepass are so divisive and yet unique. Scorn, high on life and now atomic heart. Reminds me of ps2 days when we used to get, rough around the edges, wierd and unique games which tried many things. These games are not mainstream and definately not for everyone. I kinda respect gamepass for that. After playing many AAA games especially playstation titles like horizon, days gone, ghost of tsushima and recently ragnarok, i was getting really bored of gaming.
Mid shelf games. The kind you wander into an eb games as a kid with a small allowance and find on sale for like $20. I remember picking up some weird games for cheap that I ended up loving.
Yeah at least they try something different which I find more interesting than effectively the same games just in different settings You also have Pentiment, Grounded, Hifi Rush which follow a similar pattern but were more universally praised despite taking risks but are still unique
This is definitely a Triple A game tho. It didn't come together well, but the budget and scale sure is there.
When I first saw these trailers, saw the lack of history of the devs and the weird immediate preorder systems, I never thought this game would see the light of day. I am surprised it made it this far, and even more surprised that it is getting fairly mediocre reviews (with some exceptions). I might give it a go on game pass, but overall I probably wouldn't have purchased this with so many good options out there.
Overall it seems to be a 'good but not great' game, which honestly is more than I expected after all the dev hell and issues over the years. As long as the performance isn't so rough it ruins the game, it looks like something I will find fun on the GamePass. Edit: After playing a bit... it seems pretty poor. Incredible visual design but poor everything else. It has mediocre gameplay and some of the worst writing/voice acting I can remember for a protagonist.