Atomic Heart

The world they created is very interesting, both conceptually and aesthetically, but unfortunately the rest of the game isn't to the same standard. Combat is a bit clunky, voice acting and, to a lesser extent, the script aren't great, while the story it tells is nothing groundbreaking. Some mechanics, such as enemies reviving, are more frustrating than enjoyable, and had me effectively skipping its open-world portion. Still, I could see this being the somewhat rough start of a good series.

Besides being pretty boring in gameplay, the main character being dull and it being too long, it's creators have sympathized with Russia in it's criminal war against Ukraine. There are also some, uh, "coincidences difficult to explain" things to say the least, like a drone next to geraniums. For those who don't know, the Geranium-2 iranian drones are the ones used by Russia against Ukraine. Stuff like this happens more times in the game, I don't believe it to be a coincidence.

Aside from the strong art direction, everything about this is a miscalculation, especially the annoying-as-shit protagonist

Garbage pacing, garbage protagonist, great setting. Shelved forever after a few hours I'll just read the plot synopsis and have just as much fun

The good is that the style is really nice, and the shooting feels fine. I enjoy the story. But AH gets in the way of itself constantly. Mapping looting/scanning to the same button is frustrating. But the real problem is the padding. Too many dumb puzzles everywhere. Objectives get extended because you constantly have to collect things. You can't go anywhere without the pace slowing. Open world is worthless. This could have been Bioshock exploration/depth but it's just not. So disappointed.

Some highs, some lows. If you got rid of the open world, cut about a third of the content, eliminated a lot of the repetition of enemies, environments and puzzles, and paced the combat intensity so you had time to breathe occasionally and weren't just having insane hordes pelted at you constantly, then what you would be left with could be a pretty good game.