Atomic Heart: Annihilation Instinct DLC Impressions
After launching Atomic Heart earlier this year in February, developer Mundfish is back with Annihilation Instinct, a story DLC for its debut title. Having enjoyed my time with the base game, I was looking forward to getting back into the game’s alternate history fiction and seeing what this expansion would bring to the Atomic Heart storyline.
Atomic Heart: Annihilation Instinct picks up after one of the base game’s endings and sees protagonist Major Nechayev/Agent P-3 back in Facility 3826; this time in a new explorable area, the Mendeleev Complex. Nechayev quickly learns that the complex has been taken over by NORA, the game’s upgrade and items crafting “smart fridge”. While NORA’S AI has gone rogue and annihilated pretty much everyone in the complex, she still has a soft spot for Agent P-3 who she has kidnapped and tasked to do her bidding. While out in the Mendeleev Complex to do as told, our protagonist encounters scientist Lebedev, who created NORA in the first place, and together plan for a way to stop her annihilation instinct.
Starting off the DLC can be a bit disorienting as it isn’t clear from the get-go where in the Atomic Heart storyline it takes place. However, as the game progresses, we slowly learn the events that preceded Agent P-3’s abduction by NORA as well the motives behind her rogue AI.
To flesh out its location, this DLC offers a decent amount of lore from dead NPCs’ consciousness talking through Thought devices and digital communication logs. Major Nechayev also encounters characters that recur from the main game, although with different (and sometimes confusing) levels of friendliness.
While the explorable locations are mostly linear in Annihilation Instinct, they are still as visually engrossing and littered with details as the base game. The Mendeleev Complex’s swamp area, aircraft hangar and labs are captivating sights of their own. There are also a few light puzzle segments that aren’t that testing and add a welcome layer of diversity to the gameplay.
In addition to the new locations, Atomic Heart: Annihilation Instinct introduces new enemies, new weapons and a new ability. The new enemies include a manikin-like robot, somewhat akin to a prototype of the VOV-A6 Lab Tech that populated the base game, and the spherical BEA-Ds that can even connect to form larger and more ferocious enemies. In fact, the game’s two bosses are larger amalgamations of the BEA-Ds. The new enemies and boss fights offer a fair challenge, and you will have some new offensive options at your disposal to tackle them.
Early on, Agent P-3 receives two weapons: the machine gun-like Secateur that also has a charged firing mode and the melee Klusha that can slash and pierce. I found the latter to be hard to manipulate and made combat more challenging but you do gain some of your old arsenal which I found to be more powerful and reliable.
Further assisting Major Nechayev in combat is with the new Technostasis ability accessible from his new polymeric glove. Technostasis enables P-3 to manipulate time and I found this to be handy during heated combat against hordes of BEA-Ds. It creates a bullet time sequence of sorts, allowing you to slow down time and find enemies' weak points. The new ability was the most welcome addition of the DLC for me.
There’s also a new item, the Alenka “chocolate bar” that can create a whirlwind of sorts to damage nearby enemies. This also comes in handy when outnumbered but this item is quite a rarity.
Atomic Heart: Annihilation Instinct replicates a lot of the gameplay and feel of the base game but in a toned-down fashion. It not only has a relatively short runtime of 2-3 hours with a mostly linear progression but also has only two available skills to use and relatively limited number of weapons, even if new ones are introduced, including a machine gun that doesn't deal much damage and a hard to manipulate melee weapon. As it replicates the base game’s experience, it also replicates some of its flaws such as limited enemy types and still doesn’t enable increasing subtitle font size.
And while it does improve on the plot exposition by not entirely focusing on having conversations with a talking glove, it is not clear where in the story it is set and the ending still leaves some questions unanswered.
Even if I was very much looking forward to Atomic Heart: Annihilation Instinct, I was left somewhat disappointed by its overall execution. It was nice to get back to the game’s universe but its toned-down presentation might not offer the best impressions. You could try it out if you’re craving to immerse yourself in the game’s universe, and it will offer a new, visually-striking location, expand on the story and offer a fair challenge. If you’re in no hurry, you might as well wait until new DLCs come out (three more are planned) as these might weave better with Annihilation Instinct and (hopefully) answer some of its unanswered questions. And judging by the ending, we might be off to a totally different location than Facility 3826.
If you haven't played Atomic Heart yet, be sure to check out our full review linked below!
Atomic Heart Official GBAtemp Review
Atomic Heart Official GBAtemp Review
