![]() That's not to say it's a particularly brilliant one, and it's delivered with all the subtlety of an exploding pig, as AAA games' allegories often are - hardly an HBO's Chernobyl - but it's there. Its story is a condemnation of Soviet power struggles, corruption, and willful bureaucratic ignorance. Atomic Heart is far closer to being a critique of Soviet Russia than it is a ringing endorsement of it. ![]() What's strange, though, is that all of this sits in quite stark contrast to the actual game. What is Atomic Heart? Look at all the above as a whole, and Atomic Heart looks like a classic case of dog-whistling: each individual controversy has enough plausible deniability to never quite be conclusive - there's fear of retribution for anti-war statements everything in Russia has a problematic state investor they forgot the racist bits from that cartoon the we-steal-your-data policy was outdated the "Glory to Soviet Engineers!" stuff is just marketing lots of people have that one exact, historically significant, Ukrainian hairstyle! And changing the release date would, er, require a bit of paperwork? - but it's enough circumstantial evidence to know that something here seems, at very best, off. Atomic Heart, by my count, has been through at least seven before it had even been out for a full day. Three or four though and you really are rapidly approaching the region of naivety and ignorance. Making one or two questionable mistakes, of course, is easy enough to chalk up to clumsiness - plenty of other games in our deeply awkward, foot-in-mouth enthusiast of an industry have made and then atoned for a dodgy mishap. Mundfish has not responded to any of Eurogamer's requests for comment on all of the above, but you can read about much of it in more detail in our report. As a result of all this, Ukrainian retailers have reportedly refused to stock the game, while its government contacted Sony, Microsoft, and Valve requesting a ban on selling it in the country. And last but not least, there's Atomic Heart's release date, on the one-year anniversary of a Vladimir Putin speech which more or less kicked off the war. Here's Digital Foundry's tech review of Atomic Heart to give you an idea of how it performs.Īnd there's more! Ukrainians have noted that the game's scene-stealing ballerina robots - which are also, you discover in-game, sex robots - bear an uncomfortable resemblance to Yulia Tymoshenko, a Ukrainian politician reportedly loathed in Russian political circles and known for, among her staunchly pro-NATO, pro-EU, anti-Eurasian Customs Union stances, her distinctive blonde, plaited hairstyle. (Curiously, they appeared in the PC version but on Xbox, where we played, a large number of TV screens have just been blank white since launch.) And there's also the "racist cartoons" controversy. Plus this old gem for good measure: "we do not comment on politics or religion." Then there's the data scandal, about its Russian store website allegedly including a clause informing users their data may be collected and sent to Russian state authorities, which Mundfish emphatically claims to be "outdated". against violence against people," and so on. There was a disappointing non-statement about the Ukraine war in response: "global team. And to lesser concern, questions about the studio's own origins and location. There's been concern and confusion over Mundfish's funding, with one of its key investors being tied to state-controlled Gazprom in a couple of ways. As we've reported elsewhere in more detail, developer Mundfish has come under scrutiny for, first, putting on some poorly timed marketing events in Russia, featuring big red banners reading "Glory to Soviet Engineers" during the country's own land-grabbing, and deeply horrifying, invasion of Ukraine. Availability: Out now on PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S (Game Pass), PC ( Steam, Microsoft)īefore you get to that point, you will most likely know it as at least "controversial" - and there have been just a few controversies.Publisher: Focus Entertainment, 4Divinity.If you're like me, you'll probably get a good way through the game before you have much of a clue yourself. As it turns out, like a lot of games that front-load on the dramatic marketing events, spark off controversies, and define themselves by reference to other, beloved games rather than on their own terms, Atomic Heart doesn't really know what it is either. There have been lots of questions about Atomic Heart, but maybe the biggest remains the question of just what exactly it is. A half-interesting game is buried by a mess of its own making - and represents an industry conundrum that will only continue to grow.
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