The release this week comes without any hint of ray tracing support, the devs say 'it will be added at a later time, no ETA.' No idea what went wrong here, but Atomic Heart kinda doesn't need ray tracing anyway. NVIDIA has been promoting 'Atomic Heart with RTX On' since 2018 (!). DirectX 12 is the only API available, which makes sense, considering they are implementing technologies such as DLSS and ray tracing, which only work on DX12. Just like many other recent titles, the developer chose to use Unreal Engine 4 to power their game. Only a minority of the gameplay happens in the open world-here the vegetation, trees and map geometry look excellent, next-gen I'd say. NPCs have surprisingly low texture and model details, almost reminding me of a cartoon art style-but that doesn't match the highly detailed textures of the rest of the game. Overall it seems to me like the team responsible for the textures did a fantastic job, while the people doing the level design were more focused on pushing out content quickly than to polish it with lots of geometric fidelity. In terms of graphics, Atomic Heart can impress, I would rate the graphics at 'good.' If you've taken a look at our screenshots you'll agree that some areas look stunning, especially when it comes to textures and shadows, and then there's levels that remind of games 15 years ago. Overall it's a decent game, do check out the reviews from our colleagues.

Our main hero is a grumpy dude that's somewhere between sarcastic and snappy, a bit over the top sometimes-not unlike some dialogues in Forspoken.

The main story is alright, nothing we haven't heard before, I still wanted to learn what's going on and why. The puzzles are fairly simple in difficulty though, but sometimes a bit annoying due to other game mechanics (no spoilers). For $60 you're getting an entertaining shooter experience that focuses not only on shooting, but you also have to solve some puzzles. ConclusionAtomic Heart is fresh shooter material that reminds me of Bioshock and Wolfenstein, thanks to a dystopian alternate reality that's well-crafted and believable, with great level design in several locations.

Atomic heart beta release