Written by Shawn 2022 Cohort
When the giant buildings and statues appeared before me, I was shocked and speechless at the unforgettable sight. At that moment, everything around you seems to put you in an ideal communist utopia. And this is the background setting of Atomic Heart, where the Soviet Union won a landslide victory in an alternate world line.
I must admit that Atomic Heart is one of the best opening performances I’ve seen recently. The game was released on Feb. 23 and developed by a Russian studio. Suddenly, it became the hottest trend topic on TikTok and other social media. Even one of my friends who never plays video games comes to ask me about it. The Atomic Heart does generate enough buzz on its own. First, few games on the market today are willing to delve into Soviet culture and use it as the background setting for their worldview. Secondly, unlike previous works, the Atomic Heartbreaks, through the stereotypes of the Soviet mainstream in Western culture, demonstrates order and highly developed social productivity through the art design. These reasons might explain why it stands out and dazzles the players.
Crumbling scenes, cold winters, and vodka often populated the Soviet Union we once saw in video games. A fantasy, technologically highly advanced Soviet did not initially seem to meet people’s expectations. But in such an empty worldview, everything looks so reasonable if society develops towards the ideal picture of communists: What if their scientific research has led to breakthroughs that can change the human world? What would it be like to live in a society where goods are abundant, and robots have replaced all the jobs, yet accompanied by a collective human mind?
Although its scene design and music are gorgeous, the game’s disadvantages cannot be ignored, such as the lack of gameplay and the poor playing experience due to the unfinished open areas. I saw an interesting comment left like this: The art of the game is as excellent as Russian literature, but the content of this game is as rough as their light industry.