Electric Nightmares

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Here's a new gameplay video for Soviet sci-fi RPG Atomic Heart with music by Mick Gordon

Getting face-to-mace with your enemies

Creepy Soviet sci-fi romp Atomic Heart has been in the works for a while but it's still ticking away. A new seven minute gameplay video has protagonist P3 smashing and exterminating his way through a museum overrun by plant creatures and robot vacuums before eventually coming face-to-mace with a very spooky boss creature that'll smack ya right off your feet.

P3 starts off making his way down through the entry to some sort of museum which quickly opens up into a massive atrium crawling critters that he's been asked to clear out. It doesn't take but a quick few whacks from his circular saw mace thing to dispense with the plant-based life forms before the real action begins. It's also got an action-y soundtrack from Mick Gordon whose name you may know from his work on recent Doom games. You can catch the smashing and dashing yourself below. Make sure to turn the closed captions on.

The critters leading up to the boss fight aren't the most interesting compared to the beasties we've seen in Atomic Heart videos before. Those drone bees and plenty of other big baddies were spotted in the gameplay teaser earlier this year. The focus in this video seems to be on the boss bad called Plyush that looks like it crawled out of the tangled cord drawer in my office. Be a pal and hand me a display port, would you Plyush? On the real, it's a pretty spooky fella, slapping P3 off his feet multiple times with its freaky fast arms.

You can also get a good look at the smashing capabilities. For most of the new video your character is favoring the saw mace thing that for some reason also includes a chain. At one point it transforms, turning into an electrical boom stick that shoots balls of lightning bolts to track and harass your enemy.

Make sure not to miss the healing animation either. It's pretty horrifying. Wires emerge from your character's palm and latch onto a red and white capsule. My skin's crawling.

Okay wait, one more thing. Is anyone else very distracted by the arm hair on this guy? Do other protagonists not have arm hair? Have I never noticed it before? Seriously, watch those first couple minutes again and just take a look at his left arm.

There's no release date for Atomic Heart just yet, though Mundfish recently said that the game is currently in the "polishing stage."

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Atomic Heart

PS4, Xbox One, PC

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Lauren Morton

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