Cor, has it really been almost half a year since we've done one of these? Apologies, readers. I honestly don't know where the time goes. It's probably because we're spending too much time with our favourite guilty pleasure games, which is the subject of this latest Ask RPS column.
The question comes courtesy of ronzilla, who asked: What were your favourite guilty pleasure games of 2022? As in, I play this all the time and I'm semi-embarrassed to admit it?
A good question! In canvassing the wider RPS Treehouse for their responses, it quickly became clear that most of our guilty pleasure games extend way beyond the bounds of just the year 2022, so we've answered a bit more broadly than the original question perhaps intended. Still, hopefully there are still some entertaining answers in here nonetheless.
]]>Alternate history shooter Atomic Heart is getting its first (out of four) DLC pack on August 2nd, developers Mundfish have announced. The Annihilation Instinct DLC picks up right where the base game left off, plopping us into the steely Mendeleev Complex and the surrounding swamp areas to dent some more mechs. Take a look at the new tools on offer below:
]]>A most peculiar quandary has befallen Atomic Heart players on the Steam Deck, though mayhaps not to the extent that it’s worth writing like a knockoff Sherlock Holmes for any more of this article. Basically, the display and graphics settings have gone missing, leaving the Sovietpunk FPS without any means of resolution or visual quality adjustments.
]]>Atomic Heart continues to dominate both my professional time and my personal brainspace; it really is a fascinating game, for reasons good and terrible alike. Its most recent twist came in the complete lack of ray tracing at launch, despite various pre-release builds having been held up by Nvidia themselves as the technology’s exemplars. Crispy critters, indeed.
]]>Atomic Heart’s long development cycle has provided ample opportunities to show off the power of ray tracing. From an Nvidia tech demo back to in 2019 to an RTX-branded trailer released just last month, this souped-up lighting and reflection tech has been a key piston in propelling the Soviet sci-fi FPS’ hype train. Some slightly awkward news, then: the PC version won’t support ray tracing at launch.
I noticed the lack of ray tracing options in the review build we received last week, and got in touch with the game's press relations team to check if I was missing something, or if they were due to be added via update. The response confirmed that their absence was not an error, and that "the devs will be looking into implementing this post-launch." Well then!
]]>I’ve played a lot of strange games, but never one that lurches between greatness and bafflement as hard or as fast as Atomic Heart. It’s a fascinatingly chaotic medley of ideas, and a rare FPS that lacks even the slightest whiff of battle pass-peddling live serfdom, but those ideas so often fail to gel that it can feel like a game made by several different dev teams. For a shooter set within an alternate history Soviet Union, it could perhaps have used some more central planning.
]]>Atomic Heart looks like an exceptionally shiny first-person shooter in the vein (geddit?) of Metro, which suggested that its system requirements might be the sort to bleed (geddit) your machine or your wallet dry. Not so, it turns out. The target specs have been released today and they're relatively modest at both the low and high end.
]]>Another month, another fresh batch of Game Pass goodies. February’s PC Game Pass additions have plenty of variety and should appeal to fans of the following subjects: American ‘football’, the Dark Ages, stabbing Japanese demons, and shooting Soviet robots. February’s Game Pass picks kick off tomorrow with the online action-RPG SD Gundam Battle Alliance, and EA’s Madden NFL 23 - which corrupted a number of players’ saves last month.
]]>I've played around four hours of soviet-punk FPS Atomic Heart, which took me from the story's opening moments to plenty of the game's earliest bits. The final hour or so was split into two parts, thanks to a lovely dev who time-skipped me forwards and into the game's open world, before warping me through a gate and into an early boss's lair. There was a lot to take in, from robo-gloves, to sex-dom vending machines, to grannies with bazookas.
I went in with expectations that it might be a little like BioShock, all steely and serious in its delivery of some vaguely philosophical truth. But I emerged with a totally different impression. Far from polished seriousness, Atomic Heart seems a little disjointed in its ambition, with a main character who almost immediately kills any atmosphere when he opens his mouth.
]]>Happy New Year, folks! Crikey, there are a lot of games coming out this year, aren't there? When I first asked the team to put together their most anticipated games for 2023, I was thinking we'd have a reasonably sensible number of things we were all looking forward to, you know, somewhere in the region of the 43 games we highlighted at the start of 2022. Very quickly, though, it became apparent that, actually, there are simply loads of games the RPS Treehouse is personally excited about this year, and cor, it would be rude not to include every last one of them. I'll be upfront: there are a fair number of TBA games on here that probably aren't going to come out in 2023, but as ever, we remain hopeful and optimistic all the same. So let's dive in.
]]>Robots! Flesh! Fleshy robots! Robo-worms! Swirly Big Hero 6 lookalikes! Upcoming sci-fi Soviet FPS Atomic Heart seems chock-full of weird, mostly robotic things that want to kill you, and its latest trailer shows off all the ray-traced reflections and particle effects you can admire as they do so. We've seen a lot of this before, but it doesn't half look pretty - and now at 4K, if you can handle that. I worry for my poor 1080p-tier GPU, though at least there's also freshly-announced DLSS 3 support.
]]>There's no real news to report about Atomic Heart. It's still a Soviet-inspired first-person shooter about battling unsettling robots in an alt-history 1950s. It's still coming out on February 21st, 2023. There is a new trailer however, shown tonight during The Game Awards, and it continues to convince me that Atomic Heart won't be short on spectacular setpieces.
]]>Developers Munfish have finally announced that its bonkers Soviet shooter Atomic Heart will release on February 21st, 2023. The new trailer for shooty alternate universe action RPG Atomic Heart is a bit of a trip, frankly. Barrelling along at the speed of Sonic The Hedgehog, you can just about make out some weird looking Soviet robots, head-splitting mutants, and what seemed to be a truck plummeting towards towering futuristic architecture. Watch the eye-meltingly speedy trailer below, you’ll probably need some bugeye goggles afterwards to recuperate your peepers.
]]>Freaky sci-fi shooter Atomic Heart has often been as mysterious as the Soviet research base-cum-house of robot horrors it takes place in. It looks like the four-year wait for answers will end this year, though: a new story trailer ends with confirmation of a 2022 launch, apparently in a month ending in “ber”. As in, “#######ber” literally pops up on screen. There’s your release window, puzzle fans.
]]>Oh Xbox Game Pass, that subscription service I constantly forget that I have. It's always nice to be pleasantly surprised by new games I didn't expect to play (or had no plans to buy outright). Microsoft have detailed a bunch more games I'll likely be surprised by coming to Xbox Game Pass for PC when they launch over the next year or so - from epic space RPG Starfield, to Arkane's vampire hunting adventure Redfall. It looks like they're revealing more later this week too.
]]>Sci-fi shooter Atomic Heart got a new 're-announcement' trailer this evening courtesy of Microsoft's Xbox and Bethesda Games Showcase presentation. The supernatural post-apocalyptic shooter first burst onto the scene back in 2018 around the time Nvidia first revealed their ray tracing capable RTX 20 cards, and they kinda haven't stopped talking about it since. Despite the hype, though, Atomic Heart still isn't out yet, and sadly we aren't any the wiser this evening, either. Still, it sure looks pretty. Let's have a looksie at its 'new' trailer, shall we?
]]>Atomic Heart is an upcoming sci-fi RPG set in a warped version of the Soviet Union. Robots are running rampant at a strange facility, and it's up to you to find out what's cracking. Let me tell you what isn't cracking, though - the protagonist's skin. A new trailer for the game's mega-realistic photo mode shows off his flawless complexion. Oh yeah, and the robots look alright too.
]]>Creepy Soviet sci-fi romp Atomic Heart has been in the works for a while but it's still ticking away. A new seven minute gameplay video has protagonist P3 smashing and exterminating his way through a museum overrun by plant creatures and robot vacuums before eventually coming face-to-mace with a very spooky boss creature that'll smack ya right off your feet.
]]>After a bit of an information drought, we finally got to see some new footage of the alternate universe Soviet FPS Atomic Heart yesterday courtesy of a lengthy breakdown video. Today, there's a shorter but more concise official gameplay teaser in case you didn't feel like sifting through 45 minutes of talk to find the in game clips like Matt did.
]]>In the world of Atomic Heart, too many things have tendrils. They're on the computers. They dangle from the robotic resurrection bees. They're in your hand, squirming outwards in some heinous fashion that grants you telekinesis. Every peek we get into Mundfish's upcoming Russian immersive sim makes me want to get my squirming telekinesis hands on it sooner.
The news comes courtesy of YouTuber Alexey Makarenkov, who delved into the Atomic Heart of darkness and revealed this and more in his hands on preview. Wait until you see the drillsnakes.
]]>I've enjoyed the look of Atomic Heart since its announcement last year and after watching a new ten-minute gameplay video I'm glad to say yep, I still don't understand its whole 'strange Soviet sci-fi theme park turns into horrorhell' thing. That's good. This is a place I want to find strange and confusing at first, with its terrible medical robomannequins, its wee walking buzzsaws, its railway of spinning gondolas, and its miracle goo. Here, see those and more in the video below, which I'd guess is from right around the start of the game.
]]>It's been a while since anyone has taken a solid shot at recapturing that original BioShock spark. Atomic Heart, an upcoming 'adventure FPS' from Moscow-based studio Mundfish might be in with a chance. Within, an elegantly cut trailer featuring at least four distinct brands of illicit super-science, rampaging robots, undead clowns and a horse made out of blood-tentacles.
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