A Soviet retrofuture in stunning detail
With its uncanny robots, fearsome enemies, and slick style, Atomic Heart has to be one of my most anticipated games of 2023. It somehow manages to reference all of our favorite blockbuster games while still managing to carve a path of its own — naturally I’m excited to see a game going all out to try something new. We’ve gotten to see a nice lineup of trailers since Atomic Heart was announced back in 2017, and now we’ve got one more to add to the list. During Nvidia’s CES 2023 showcase, the devs behind the game, Mundfish, let fans in on how amazing the game’s ray-tracing and particle effects will look, especially in 4K.
This new trailer came along with an announcement that Nvidia DLSS, or deep learning super sampling, technology will be supported on 33 upcoming games, of course including Atomic Heart. The company describes DLSS as “a revolutionary breakthrough in AI-powered graphics that massively boosts performance.” That sounds great to me, but I’m also assuming you have to have the latest graphics cards and processors to be able to run it. Not to mention a 4K monitor and all the fixins that go along with it. I’ll likely play it on the PS5, because I’m probably the least tech savvy person in all of gaming. I hope the computer whizzes out there have fun though.
I can say with confidence that Atomic Heart is going to look incredible with top-of-the-line graphics, but I also think it’s going to be a gorgeous game regardless of specs. It has such a fun, distinct art style and atmosphere, I think Mundfish will have it locked down regardless of which platform we choose to play the game on. I’ve certainly been let down before, but if nothing else, it’s cool to see a studio putting something out that’s so different from what we’ve seen in the past few years. Nice graphics are just icing on the cake.
