Topic: Pure Xbox Game Club - Rise of the Tomb Raider (May)

Atomic heart took me about 15hrs to complete that wasnt doing all the testing grounds i only did 3 i think

I played quite a lot more last night and am enjoying it more. Though I still don't like the alert system in the open world compounded by the super-annoying reviving drones, can you even Finish one of these encounters? they seem endless. I also find the map super confusing and there are several things I don't know how to interact with in the world, I assume you get some power later, but the design language is unclear.

I got up to the bit where the Minister Molotov gets killed by ??? (probably you) and the blood polymer man appears to absorb his body. I don't think they've done a very good job of making the story very coherent so far, it's kinda all over the place with little direction.

The main character has slightly grown on me since @Balta666 said it reminds him of Duke Nukem Thanks for that.

@trev666 I think i'm probably at about 10 hours, but I'm always pretty slow. But hard to tell as the clock keeps counting when I fall asleep ton the couch

@themightyant totally agree with you on story itself but I am hoping things will make more sense in the end (I am just a bit further than you and I would say I was about the same amount of hours in at that point). About fighting on the outside you can try to dispatch both alarms and flying things first but Charlie normally tells you to avoid combat overall on the outside so it may be intended.

I started playing Atomic Heart when it was first added and it just did not click for me. Fast forward to the weekend just gone and I have put about 10 hrs into it so far.
I am really enjoying it now. A few of the boss fights add quite a difficulty spike but I managed...

@ZeD Yes definite difficulty spikes on bosses. This is amplified if you haven't chosen the right power ups, it can make some bosses much harder. Before I fought the giant rolling ball, that took out the train I didn't have fast movement, multiple dodges or dodge iframes upgrades and it seemed impossible to avoid some attacks.

Against the physical damage boss (when you are repairing the robot) if you don't have additional health, dodge or physical damage protection, or a decent melee weapon it can be much harder.

These felt a little more like a battle of attrition, was I going to kill the boss or run out of medkits first.

@themightyant I struggled with all of them because of bad upgrades.
I had the same thing.... used every medkit I had lol

@ZeD It is a bit of a problem. Though to be fair they let you respec all your upgrades at any point, at no cost, and there is usually a vendor before each boss next to the save.

But the reality is most people won't do this. Hence I had this issue too.

@themightyant they do clear up whats happening story wise later on.

My mini-review of Atomic Heart

Atomic Heart does a lot right. The world building, the architecture and the sense of place is phenomenal at times. It felt like a fresh take, rare nowadays, and I was immediately invested in this alternate reality USSR and wanted to know more. While it wasn't quite as awe inspiring as entering Rapture in Bioshock for the first time, frankly it wasn't too far off. It helps that it's graphically stunning, the artistry is mostly brilliant and unique too. I remember seeing the early trailers and commenting "It won't look like that on console" but happily I was wrong, and a few minor compromises aside, it really does. Kudos to the art team.

I also didn't have any major technical bugs or issues that were reported at launch, (FYI I started a few major patches in) as such my only real technical complaint was getting stuck on scenery a handful of times and having to reload the last save, more on this in a minute.

The feel of combat, the gunplay and the powers also felt pretty good, this is really hard to get right and it should have been an enjoyable FPS off the back of this.

Unfortunately Atomic Heart also gets a lot wrong too. It's frustrating that with the solid foundations listed above they dropped the ball in so many other, seemingly easier to get right, areas. With almost every area of Atomic Heart that I felt was good or great there was a big BUT to go with it.

Lets start with the combat. Yes the general feel of combat is good. But then there are many gameplay systems that are super-frustrating. Chiefly the decision to have drones that constantly respawn all the enemies. In the open world this led to seemingly never ending battles, and unless I wanted to farm for upgrade materials, I just started skipping all these encounters. The absolute opposite of how I usually play.

This was made worse by the threat level system, get spotted by a camera and it's raised to level 1 and all local enemies converge on your last known location. Attack an enemy in sight of a camera and it's Level 2: not only do local enemies converge, but reinforcements arrive. This is a problem as cameras ere absolutely everywhere so you are just constantly in danger of getting spotted and constantly on the lookout.

Enemy attack design was also frustrating, getting knocked on your ass from unseen attacks is never fun, but this seemed to happen a lot. You are also not very agile compared to many of the enemies, at least until levelled up, and level design often has waist high barriers that you can get boxed against that you can't jump out of, pinned by enemies. Again more frustration.

Combine all these together and as I said I preferred to just run, or better yet drive, past them all.

Even the boss fights, while often spectacular and with unique designs often fall apart by not being balanced against your skillset and ended up being a test of attrition - who has prepared more medkits. I could go on and on about other small issues in the combat, but suffice to say it was more often than not a slightly frustrating experience.

Sadly the combat woes weren't the worst part of Atomic Heart for me, that was the plot, narrative and characters. I made a prediction in post #2,422 when I was only a few hours into the game about what would happen. Almost beat for beat this happened and it was telegraphed so strongly, I assumed there must be a big twist coming. There was a small one, but that was also a problem, more below.

Worse the way the plot was revealed was so uneven and confusing, and at the eleventh hour there was just a great info dump. This is NOT how you effectively tell a story. Moreover this reveal wasn't really a big reveal as it was mostly all so obvious and everyone, except your avatar, seems aware of what is going on. Frankly your character is both stupid, in denial and annoying. I really tired of him saying "The boss wouldn't do that", or similar despite experiencing many things to the contrary, he's a mindless drone. I don't know about you but that isn't the character I want to play as, I can't empathise with him at all. Other characters in the game, with the exception of Granny Zina, are also pretty one dimensional and boring. It wasn't helped by the voice acting which took me out of this beautifully crafted world. I though we were meant to be in USSR, why does our hero sound like Duke Nukem? Was expecting more like Metro.

(ending spoiler) As for the final minor twist, Char-les, your glove, turning the tables at the last moment, this only works if it is foreshadowed well and makes sense, otherwise it feels contrived, as it does here. Deus ex Machina.

It has a few other problems like repetitive and nonsensical mission design - get 4 canisters to save the tree, to open a door, what? The overly long 30+ minute on rails intro. Far too many drawers to loot. Lack of good checkpoints that sometimes sent you back further than you would like to your last manual save, and a map that was not very useful. There are many other smaller woes, but these are all minor by comparison.

As I said at the top I REALLY wanted to like this game, there were elements I did enjoy and a few hours in I thought it might end up being great. It definitely wasn't all bad. But it was a frustrating experience as there were frequent glimpses of what could have been, but it was always just out of reach, and falling over itself. Hence I really can't recommend it. It's a shame as the dev seemingly did so much hard work in key areas, but just couldn't quite pull it all together into a seamless whole. But they have talent, that is clear, and I look forward to seeing what Mundfish make next.

My score: 6/10

Also just a small FYI that I may be a bit absent here in the next few months, lots of work and other commitments and I want to finish a couple of games before Zelda absorbs my life! I'll see what I can do though.

@themightyant You have captured my thoughts on the game. I have yet to actually fight a boss - I only just left the first facility and met up with the old lady .

One enduring thing about some of the ridiculous puzzle and game mechanics is that the main character is very aware of how stupid it is and even comments on it (e.g. the cannister puzzle).

I don't know if I will finish Atomic Heart because Bayonetta 3 and Metroid Prime Remastered are getting in the way. I mean, the story got more interesting at this point in the game, but my attention was pulled in another direction.

@GamingFan4Lyf That is true, he does virtually break the fourth wall saying this is ridiculous, and implying it's just gamified. I just didn't like his character much.

What would say is that it is a potentially a divisive game, if you aren't dragged down by some of the elements I mentioned, I can easily see other people giving it an 8 or possibly even more. It just wasn't that for me.

personally i liked the game despite its flaws inside is for fighting outside is for traveling through. .it had its flaws but i liked the setting and liked the story i liked how it wrapped up who the various characters actually were and what had happened to them.

7/10

@trev666 Fair points. I think the problem with some of these reveals is they just felt so sudden and the problem is HOW they were told. Unless I missed it your wife and Chariton were hardly mentioned in the run up to the massive info dump. Then suddenly it's like you have a wife, she is dead, and she is in the twins, all in a heartbeat. Similar for Zakharov. I just though it was bad storytelling

@themightyant i think you missed the conversations between charles and P3 telling you about them ealier because P3 and your glove talked about what happened to Chariton Zakharov early in the game and later on talked about your wife

@trev666 Didn't most of that happen (find out who you were etc.) right at the end in that info dump though?

I have completed Atomic Heart. I have enjoyed my time with the game (although not sure I would have enjoy it as much if I did not change the difficulty to easy earlier on). As mentioned prior and on opposition to most I like some of the characters and banter between them but have to say the ending is not that great as it fells both rushed and not that satisfying.

@Balta666 yes i suspect a continuation after the ending will be in the 4 post launch DLC packs in the season pass

@Balta666 I agree that the ending, in fact both endings, were unsatisfying.

@trev666 Thanks for the info. I like single player story DLC, but it has to be additive and not feel like the end was cut.

I was just having a look at the votes, looks like Return to Monkey Island is currently the choice for April with only 2 votes.

It's a little over a week until we switch, any more votes coming in?

@ralphdibny I believe I am still yet to vote. I have to think about it. Are you ok to take the lead this month or want me to do it?