The gameplay entails a lofty banquet of baddy bashing weaponry, that isn’t restricted to holstering an assorted ranged arsenal. If anything, Atomic Heart embarks on an onslaught of utilising a mixture of mechanics, encouraging the player to switch their loadout on a frequent basis. With ammunition becoming second nature, almost sparse across the entire open-world, it becomes apparent that you’re going to need to work in tandem with CHAR-les to create unique offense combinations, rather than going all out-guns blazing. Hacking down a frozen robot with an axe in one hand, while freezing them with your Polymer is a lot of fun, but not as fun as crushing an oncoming enemy like an aluminium soda can. Various bots come in different shapes and sizes, which call for different forms of offensive strikes and respective utilities to attack with.

An abundance of QTE’s (Quick Time Events) do no favours here however, slowing the pace of any intense altercation that may have been exciting to encounter at first, but ultimately falls flat with the cinematic mechanic taking control of key segments. Upgrading your arms, including elemental offense used with your glove can be accessed through the “cassettes” feature, that is more-or-less the game’s skill-tree. The crafting system allows players to dissect their weaponry, albeit your guns or elemental attacks, while saving progress in the “attend room”, a secluded safe house for players to take a break. Cartridges can also be used on guns to deal different types of offense such as fire or ice, even whilst performing close ranged melee attacks against a hoard of creepy moustached androids.