


Stealth allows you to get the drop on bots and instantly deactivate them so it does pay to be quiet, but you need to be mindful of the fact that destroyed cameras won't stay down for long with those annoying repair drones around, so you also need to work pretty fast. There's also the fact that the drones swarming the skies can make life even harder, repairing damaged structures or enemies, flying in to pepper you with lasers and rockets, or even airdropping in huge crates filled with more robots if you let things get too far out of hand. It's a pretty drastic change of pace and it took some adjusting to at first, especially with how easy it can be to get spotted by the many security cameras and how hard it can be to escape the machines if and when they are onto you. This is most noticeable once you get out of the labs and complexes and emerge in Atomic Heart's overworld, a semi-open-world playground where the bots are out for blood. It doesn't take long for that sedate and serene opening section to make way for the absolute anarchy that ensues when a fully automated society goes wrong, and even that ramps up quickly - while just one or two of those regular worker bots will feel threatening at first, you quickly find yourself confronted with much, much worse. Its alternate timeline setting where the Soviets have engineered a world-leading communist utopia after winning the second World War hasn't come at the best time and will be an immediate turn-off for some, though the world-building itself is excellent and it's a fascinating thing to explore.Ītomic Heart escalates fast.

The opening tour of this stylish retro-futuristic Soviet utopia has a similar feel to first arriving in BioShock Infinite's idyllic Columbia and your various powers and some of the more outlandish weapons feel like Plasmids but with fewer restrictions on their usage (abilities are all based on short cooldowns rather than requiring resources), while the focus on machines running wild takes us back to BioShock forerunner System Shock.

You're probably going to hear a good few BioShock comparisons from people describing Atomic Heart, and it's not difficult to see why. Still, as one of the many games coming to Game Pass, Atomic Heart is worth a look, even if purely for the chaos and spectacle in which the game revels so. It's a noble effort for the most part, with some superb set pieces and a fantastic world, but marred by a few weaker elements and odd decisions that hold it back from giving Rapture too much to worry about. In some ways, Atomic Heart itself takes after its setting in this regard as well, and while it has looked absolutely jaw-dropping in most of its pre-launch footage, Mundfish's debut release was always going to find stepping out of the shadow of the similar BioShock games to be a tall order. Well, until it all goes wrong and that legion of mechanical labourers goes into Murder Mode, anyway.
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Take Atomic Heart's setting, for instance - a work-free paradise where machines do all the menial jobs and the populace is free to focus on self-improvement, academia, relaxation, or whatever else without a care in the world. How does the game stack up to the intense footage we've been shown in the lead-up to launch?Some things are just too good to be true.
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Atomic Heart Focus Entertainment Xbox Game Pass Xbox Cloud Gaming Xbox Series X|S Review Game review First Person Shooter Luke Albigés Atomic Heart explodes onto Xbox this week, launching into Game Pass for all to enjoy its over-the-top mechanical mayhem.
