Great visuals, art design and lights. Design of every interior is gorgeous, the game was clearly inspired by Prey and Bioshock.
Open world part is way less impressive, and infinitely respawning enemies making it even worse.
I beat Atomic Heart two times. During the first playthrough I was only follow the story and most of the abilities. After that I was thinking the game worth 7/10.
Decided to see the second ending and went for the second walkthrough, entering every testing ground and immediately felt similarity with Portal games, where you need to solve physics puzzles inside testing chambers. After visiting dozen of testing chambers it seemed like in the first playthrough I missed at least half of the game.
Also unlocked all abilities and some of them make game way easier compared to me just shooting everything at first.
What's good:
- Story and (some) characters
- Visuals
- Interior designs
- Puzzles
What's not good:
- Some puzzles are annoying
- Worst implementation of snake game in history
- Infinitely respawning enemies
Technically Encased needs some time to get used to, like most 3D games made in Unity.
Battles have very little tactics or strategy - pick weapon with correct damage type and shoot each other for 10 full minutes.
Story is the only one that kept me going. But no twists, no epic conclusion. Very anticlimactic.
It's 2022, 7 whole years since game was released and to this day there weren't that many games with better graphics or art direction. One of very few games that after such time doesn't require a remaster or remake.
Recognisable visual design of Arkane game in a retro-futuristic setting. Mystery that needs to be solved. Move forward by going back in time loop. Get more information, return and use it to get more information.
Soundtrack is good too.