It has been five months since the release of action-adventure Atomic Heart, and the developer Mundfish Studio already released the first promised DLC. Titled Annihilation Instinct, it continues the story of the main campaign and allows players to embark on a journey through the Mendeleev Complex and discover the truth about NORA.
If you couldn’t help but anxiously wonder what’s next for Atomic Heart’s story, the DLC sheds some light on what happened with P-3.
Note that the review contains heavy spoilers to the ending of the main game and the entire plotline of the DLC. If you are okay with that, let’s dive right in. This our review of Atomic Heart: Annihilation Instinct DLC.
Like the majority of players out there, I thought that the “canon” ending would be the one where P-3 kills Sechenos, fights with the Twins and Charles ascends to become the highest form of evolution.
But it isn’t so. The real ending is the one where Nechaev snatches Charles, “betrays” granny Zina and goes on an indefinite leave. The events of the DLC start 3 days after the end of the main campaign. The protagonist ends up in the hands of Eleanor and her Dolls.
The beginning is quite peaceful and quiet. You have to listen to dialogues, go into every room you come across to find something interesting. The location of the hotel is amazing, featuring magnificent futurism and a sense of freedom. It is quite fitting that the symbol of the hotel is the chemical element Helium, the lightest gas after hydrogen.
At a later point you will have to leave the hotel and find answers to the numerous questions that are plaguing P-3 and players alike. And the main one is “what is going on here, anyway”. As it turns out, granny Zina managed to seize control of the new robots and isolate a small area alongside Eleanor.
The DLC itself is very short both in duration and in the overall number of locations but it works out in its favor. The main game features a lot of half-empty houses that only have some kind of a note hidden inside. While the DLC has, for example, a dozen houses in the swamps that all have something interesting. At the same time, the Mendeleev Complex doesn’t really have all that many empty rooms to simply skip through.
The fanservice is top-notch, even overdone at times. In the main game, the huge number of references were smeared across the entirety of the game with a degree of skillfulness. However, there are so many easter eggs and throwbacks in the DLC that they make your jaw drop. You’ll run into such things as the various references to previously encountered familiar matters (about the cat Musya, for example), jokes and various references. Among the ones I have recognized there were Resident Evil, The Last of Us, Breaking Bad, Harry Potter, Miyazaki’s anime, How I Met Your Mother, Shrek and much more.
There is one huge reference to the Untitled Goose Game: a goose that gives out a huge number of references, so much so that you can’t catch them all. Many of them are related to the Russian literature and movies which is incredibly fitting, considering the setting of the game.
But, to put it in numbers, just the goose itself gives over 30 references to various memes, movies, books and so on. It even has a throwback to streamer Kuplinov. It is obvious that developers treat references with love when putting them into the game. It is no easy task to introduce quotes from old Soviet moves into the game in such a way that they fit seamlessly.
The dialogues in the DLC are written quite beautifully and manage to add new touches to the lore and reveal unexpected sides to certain characters. Similar kind of attention is also given to the music. ScaryON, BassnPanda – BEA-D Theme is truly the theme of the DLC. Players will also get to experience a nice remix of Kaoma – Lambada which adds a certain spice to the first boss fight. When encountering the new robots for the first time, players also get to hear the amazing Danse Macabre by Camille Saint-Saens.
All in all, the DLC introduced a couple of new enemy types and two new weapons. The Klusha is a brilliant addition to the game which should have been there from the beginning. It is a spear/ax hybrid that allows you to slash and pierce and has amazing animation while being extremely deadly. The Secateur is a ranged weapon that looks like a mix of machine gun and energy scythe and it features 2 firing modes.
P-3 also received a new ability, Stasis. With the help of a neuropolymer, you can slow down time in a certain area which makes it easier to dodge enemy attacks and deliver your own. Enhancing the ability also gives additional resistance and increases damage done against enemies.
While the protagonist is given a number of weapons in addition to the Klusha and the Secateur, the abilities are limited to Stasis and Polymer Shield. That narrows down the scope for experimentation and gameplay variety and forces you to play in the way the developers want.
Out of the new items, players get “Alyonka” which can be occasionally found as you progress through the story. Thanks to some scientific method, “Alyonka” can turn into an explosive device that spectacularly turns into a fiery hurricane and deals a ton of damage in a large area.
Frankly, I used “Alyonka” only in a single battle that featured too many enemies for comfort. Thankfully, by that point I have already accumulated 4 pieces of this explosive chocolate. Also, for some unknown reason, the new mechanics cannot be accessed in the main game even if you access New Game+.
The biggest disappointment of the DLC was the plot and the behaviour of the characters that made appearances in it. In the main game, the story was written well and had nice continuity and flow. There were certain flaws and drawbacks, sure, but they were cleverly hidden and swept under the rug due to the sheer length of the game.
In the DLC, the stupidity of the plot is right there on the surface, mercilessly left in the spotlight. Project Atomic Heart eventually began its implementation, “Collective 2.0” was launched, the proletarian revolution took place in the USA while Argentum units were distributed around the world. Apparently, in AH2 Sergey will be fighting against evil communists and their military-grade robots.
I find it hard to wrap my head around the fact that the “fun” ending was the one made canon. The one that made granny Zina into a counter-elite that was taking revenge not only on Sechenov but on Sergey as well. There is also that strange gesture at the end of the story where Sergey abruptly accepts Eleanor’s offer to betray Lebedev in exchange for some information about Katya. The phone call with Sechenov also felt too strained and unnatural.
When it comes to the technical implementation, the game is well-optimized but the number of bugs is quite large. Yes, the developers are working on fixing them, but sometimes they still manage to spoil the impression and ruin the game. There were a few times where I had to re-load a save due to a boss getting stuck or a quest not counting.
To sum it up, I couldn’t shake off the feeling that the DLC was launched very fast and it had a certain effect on the overall quality. It could have used some extra time in the oven. To begin with, there is a location that got cut, however, its files and map still remain in the game and can even be accessed with some console commands.
Although the gameplay is fun and action-driven, the plot is clumsy and awkward and can be quite annoying when it comes to character development or the lack of it. Annihilation Instinct also features artificial complexity, lack of weapons and a meager variety of enemies.
Atomic Heart: Annihilation Instinct features fun action-driven gameplay on the level of the main game and some seriously clumsy plot points. It remains to be seen how well the DLC can serve as the launch point for further additions.
- Similar to: Bioshock
- Note: the Steam version of the base game & the DLC are a verified purchase by the author
