Drizzlehell
Banned
The only other game that has the potential to be an even bigger disappointment this year is Starfield, given the immense hype surrounding it. However, if that one turns out to be good, then Atomic Heart will likely end up being one of the most sour gaming experiences I've had this year. It may not be the worst game to come out, but I had exceptionally high expectations after watching the amazing trailers. Unfortunately, the flashy visuals are pretty much the only aspect I can compliment the developers for, and it's a bit baffling to me why so many people are being so positive about it...
The story simply falls flat, and I despise the dialogue and voice acting to the point where I constantly wanted to mute the audio to avoid enduring any more of that annoying drivel. All that exposition would have been better served as shorter text and audio logs. I mean, why not? The game already borrows every Shock-flavored trope under the sun anyway. If the developers truly wanted to innovate, they should have prioritized better writing instead of elongated and mostly aimless conversations between the most abrasive and annoying cunt on the planet and his pet glove.
The cutscene direction is also among the worst I've seen in recent years, as they are tonally inconsistent, poorly paced, and even the character dialogue feels rushed, often resulting in characters talking over each other—not in a natural way like people sometimes do in real life, but rather because the dialogue lines were too long, leading to the next one starting before the previous one ended. It was even more comical when the same character interrupted themselves.
Then there's the gameplay, which I just fucking hate with a passion. Every passing hour playing the game felt like running through a field full of rakes. Each step that I took off the beaten path was rewarded by getting slammed in the face with a stick. It's just impossible to focus on your objectives, which are already pretty obtuse, when you have to constantly look around for cameras and those annoying flying fuckers that resurrect everything that you kill. Plus the game is really stingy with resources so after a while, instead of trying to explore and engage in combat, I just started sprinting past everything just so that I could get this stupid shit over with. I don't know about you but that doesn't sound like fun at all. To top it all off, melee combat is awkward, and it takes an eternity to kill anything, making it a lousy fallback option.
The entire experience feels soulless too, by the way. It borrows the aesthetic of 60s Soviet retro-futurism and boasts impressive visual and animation work that's well-polished, making for a really impressive spectacle sometimes. However, the further I progressed into the game, the stronger my impression became that it was merely a hodge-podge of various ideas that were nicked from different video games and science fiction works. There is no consistent, overarching vision or message behind any of it. It feels more like a "throw shit at the wall and see what sticks" kind of game. Let's just say that I couldn't feel invested in any of it, and none of the elements elicited any significant emotional reaction beyond the initial, "huh, that's neat... and also strange that it's here." Like those fungus zombies with their heads split-opened that look like The Last of Us rejects. I guess they look neat but what the hell does that have to do with the robot uprising?
Anyway, that's probably like 5/10 for me. Maybe it would change had I finished the game but it was so goddamned long and my patience can only last for so long...
The story simply falls flat, and I despise the dialogue and voice acting to the point where I constantly wanted to mute the audio to avoid enduring any more of that annoying drivel. All that exposition would have been better served as shorter text and audio logs. I mean, why not? The game already borrows every Shock-flavored trope under the sun anyway. If the developers truly wanted to innovate, they should have prioritized better writing instead of elongated and mostly aimless conversations between the most abrasive and annoying cunt on the planet and his pet glove.
The cutscene direction is also among the worst I've seen in recent years, as they are tonally inconsistent, poorly paced, and even the character dialogue feels rushed, often resulting in characters talking over each other—not in a natural way like people sometimes do in real life, but rather because the dialogue lines were too long, leading to the next one starting before the previous one ended. It was even more comical when the same character interrupted themselves.
Then there's the gameplay, which I just fucking hate with a passion. Every passing hour playing the game felt like running through a field full of rakes. Each step that I took off the beaten path was rewarded by getting slammed in the face with a stick. It's just impossible to focus on your objectives, which are already pretty obtuse, when you have to constantly look around for cameras and those annoying flying fuckers that resurrect everything that you kill. Plus the game is really stingy with resources so after a while, instead of trying to explore and engage in combat, I just started sprinting past everything just so that I could get this stupid shit over with. I don't know about you but that doesn't sound like fun at all. To top it all off, melee combat is awkward, and it takes an eternity to kill anything, making it a lousy fallback option.
The entire experience feels soulless too, by the way. It borrows the aesthetic of 60s Soviet retro-futurism and boasts impressive visual and animation work that's well-polished, making for a really impressive spectacle sometimes. However, the further I progressed into the game, the stronger my impression became that it was merely a hodge-podge of various ideas that were nicked from different video games and science fiction works. There is no consistent, overarching vision or message behind any of it. It feels more like a "throw shit at the wall and see what sticks" kind of game. Let's just say that I couldn't feel invested in any of it, and none of the elements elicited any significant emotional reaction beyond the initial, "huh, that's neat... and also strange that it's here." Like those fungus zombies with their heads split-opened that look like The Last of Us rejects. I guess they look neat but what the hell does that have to do with the robot uprising?
Anyway, that's probably like 5/10 for me. Maybe it would change had I finished the game but it was so goddamned long and my patience can only last for so long...
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