There’s a lot to be said about unapologetically single-player games like Atomic Heart: its entire focus is on creating an intricate world for us to explore and discover for ourselves. An eye-catching blend of super-powered shooting and first-person puzzling, this is a lengthy, tough, and terrific-looking shooter that has us bathing in the blood and gears of elaborately designed enemies both biological and robotic and dispatching them with an impressive set of combat options. Granted, it’s not as clever as it thinks it is when dealing with melee combat or its typical fetch quests, and the story doesn’t quite stick its landing, but the journey from point A to point B is a sight to behold.

Atomic Heart is an alternate-history shooter cut from the same cloth as BioShock and MachineGames’ Wolfenstein series. It’s a kind of retrofuturistic romp back to an imagined past perverted by ridiculously advanced technology; a world where science has made the supernatural a reality and robots are now running rife. These are far from the only shooters Atomic Heart is unafraid to crib from, either. Half-Life and the puzzle-solving of Portal are also clear inspirations, and there’s been an attempted sprinkling of Arkane’s successful brand of first-person stealth, too.

There’s a lot to be said about unapologetically single-player games like Atomic Heart: its entire focus is on creating an intricate world for us to explore and discover for ourselves. An eye-catching blend of super-powered shooting and first-person puzzling, this is a lengthy, tough, and terrific-looking shooter that has us bathing in the blood and gears of elaborately designed enemies both biological and robotic and dispatching them with an impressive set of combat options. Granted, it’s not as clever as it thinks it is when dealing with melee combat or its typical fetch quests, and the story doesn’t quite stick its landing, but the journey from point A to point B is a sight to behold.

There’s a lot to be said about unapologetically single-player games like Atomic Heart: its entire focus is on creating an intricate world for us to explore and discover for ourselves. An eye-catching blend of super-powered shooting and first-person puzzling, this is a lengthy, tough, and terrific-looking shooter that has us bathing in the blood and gears of elaborately designed enemies both biological and robotic and dispatching them with an impressive set of combat options. Granted, it’s not as clever as it thinks it is when dealing with melee combat or its typical fetch quests, and the story doesn’t quite stick its landing, but the journey from point A to point B is a sight to behold.

Atomic Heart is an alternate-history shooter cut from the same cloth as BioShock and MachineGames’ Wolfenstein series. It’s a kind of retrofuturistic romp back to an imagined past perverted by ridiculously advanced technology; a world where science has made the supernatural a reality and robots are now running rife. These are far from the only shooters Atomic Heart is unafraid to crib from, either. Half-Life and the puzzle-solving of Portal are also clear inspirations, and there’s been an attempted sprinkling of Arkane’s successful brand of first-person stealth, too.