The first great dystopia of 2023 is a ‘Bioshock’ with Soviet airs: this is the dazzling world of ‘Atomic Heart’

With unmistakable airs of ‘Bioshock’ (especially its sequel ‘Infinite’ in the aerial city of Columbia, since the world in which we move is made up of a kind of floating archipelago from which we will descend throughout the game), this ‘Atomic Heart’ has taken the gaming community by surprise with the arrival of some first impressions that have revealed some of the secrets of their first hours of play. The originality of its setting, its shameless thematic and visual ambition and the vibrantness of its mechanics seem to put us in front of one of the most attractive games of this first stretch of 2023.

This is the first title from the studio based in Cyprus Mundfish, and it sends us to a dystopian world, in the Soviet Union of an alternative 1955, where the Russians have defeated the Nazis 14 years before: in this world, the superpower has in its power a series of scientific advances of the first order. On the one hand, polymer, a plastic electrical storage device that has allowed the creation of advanced robots connected by a neural network that allows them to learn instantly.

Of course, the rebellion of the robots will not be long in coming, and that’s where the action begins. Before remedying it we will be able to immerse ourselves in a vibrant and magnificent world, full of colossal statues of Lenin and other leaders of the Russian regime, and who drinks equally as much from the propaganda of the real Soviet Union as from the buried threats of literary dystopias such as ‘1984’. The result, in any case, is quite a spectacle. Until the chaos begins, which will lead not only to seeing piles of junk taking on very aggressive attitudes, but to technology being able to revive our dead comrades: terminator plus zombies, a haven for lovers of bleak futures/pasts.

How does the ‘Atomic Heart’ action work?

At our disposal we have the control of a KGB lieutenant colonel, related to the scientist who invented the polymer. And we are equipped with Charles, an intelligent glove with which we will have surly conversations full of insults and aggressive exchanges of opinions. But it is not the only thing we can achieve: in the purest style action RPG we will be able to equip ourselves with a multitude of weapons that we will combine with melee attacks.

Of course, the weapons (ranging from the traditional shotguns, machine guns and bazookas to Charles himself) can be improved with parts that we will take to a center commanded by a fridge with unleashed libido, which allows us to add accessories such as bayonets with extraordinary features. We will do it through the typical skill trees, and in the case of Char-les, our manual companion will become a versatile tool that both gives us information about the world of ‘Atomic Blonde’ and provides us with freezing or anti-gravity powers, in the purest form of fiddling with physics that ‘Half-Life’ or ‘Portal’ gave us.

The world of ‘Atomic’ Heart is open, and therefore we will not only have to explore it with a clear shot, but we will also go through interludes with puzzles to open secret sections, areas to overcome based on platforms and also levels that we can tackle through stealth. There will also be vehicles at our disposal to travel long distances. At the moment none of these aspects have been revealed in depth.

These puzzles take on an unexpected role in the dungeons: closed buildings that we will open by hacking nearby devices and that form self-contained challenges, again reminding ‘Portal’. In these first steps in the game, we have seen a dungeon with magnetized walls and another built with rotating panels. There is, apparently, a third style to these minigames, which will provide us with parts to repair and improve our weapons if we solve them.

A simmering start, in which we can only gawk at the majestic world that rises before us, is the perfect starting point for a semi-historical fantasy that soon turns into a veritable festival of frenetic violence closer to bloody and the latest ‘DOOM’ than the ups and downs of a ‘Far Cry’. For now, this multi-platform game is scheduled for February 21 and promises to plunge us into an original, distorted vision of the Cold War. We will be there, with the Charles literally at hand.