I had rock-bottom expectations for Atomic Heart. I used to be assured I’d benefit from the recreation, however I’ve been burned by too many half-baked, stuttering, buggy PC ports over the previous a number of years to place an excessive amount of religion in an bold AAA title with next-gen tech from a first-time developer. It appears like a recipe for catastrophe.
But Atomic Heart not solely defied my expectations, it blew them away. It’s not an ideal recreation, nevertheless it’s practically an ideal tech demo. It comes filled with a number of the finest visuals yow will discover in a PC recreation proper now, and regardless of that, it runs properly on a wide range of {hardware}.
Ditching RTX
Atomic Heart has been the centerpiece of Nvidia’s ray tracing showcases for the reason that first RTX technology was launched in 2018. That may shock you contemplating Atomic Heart doesn’t help ray tracing on PC (or consoles, for that matter) at launch.
Developer Mundfish says ray tracing is coming after launch in a patch, however Atomic Heart is best off with out it. It’s no secret that ray tracing tanks your efficiency, and with video games like Portal RTX introducing options like RTX Direct Illumination, it could possibly make even high-end programs look downright puny.
I’m certain Nvidia would really like one other showcase of ray tracing to take a seat alongside Cyberpunk 2077 and Warhammer 40,000 Darktide, however Atomic Heart doesn’t want ray tracing. It would, as ray tracing usually does, add further depth to lighting and shadows, however the conventional rasterized methods employed by the sport already look implausible and save loads within the efficiency division.
Although Atomic Heart ditched ray tracing, it didn’t ditch RTX altogether. Nvidia’s Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) is obtainable, together with Frame Generation for RTX 40-series GPUs. Frame Generation works properly in a recreation like Atomic Heart, too. It’s not practically as quick as Marvel’s Spider-Man Miles Morales, so artifacts are few and much between, and so they’re powerful to identify.
It’s not only for Nvidia customers, both. AMD’s FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) 2 is obtainable within the recreation, so you’ll be able to increase your efficiency no matter you probably have an RTX GPU or not.
There’s an elephant within the room right here — Atomic Heart promised ray tracing for years by means of Nvidia showcases and pulled the plug simply hours earlier than the sport went on sale. I believe it was the fitting resolution given how properly the sport runs and appears with out ray tracing, nevertheless it’s nonetheless a bait-and-switch state of affairs.
Stutter-free
Mundfish
The most stunning a part of Atomic Heart is that it doesn’t stutter on PC. I’ve grown accustomed to any new PC launch displaying some quantity of hitching, however I’ve had zero issues with Atomic Heart. Even Returnal, which I’d take into account one of many extra secure PC releases I’ve seen up to now few years, would often dangle for a pair seconds and straight-up crashed on me 4 occasions throughout testing. The bar is fairly low.
In 15 hours of Atomic Heart, I had one snag as I loaded into a brand new space, no crashes, and no steep body price drops. Even extra spectacular is that Atomic Heart makes use of Unreal Engine, which is a recreation engine infamous for stuttering in video games like Gotham Knights.
An enormous motive why Atomic Heart is so easy is that it compiles shaders in your graphics card previous to beginning the sport. Shader compilation is the primary wrongdoer of stuttering in video games like Elden Ring, and Atomic Heart took a web page out of Uncharted Legacy of Thieves’ ebook by loading the shaders onto your GPU so there aren’t any hang-ups whereas the sport is operating.
Because the sport is so well-optimized, options like DLSS and FSR really feel much less like a crutch and extra just like the free efficiency increase they have been meant as. You even have much more room to experiment with settings. Atomic Heart contains your commonplace suite of anti-aliasing and high quality choices, nevertheless it additionally has sliders for animation high quality to take some load off of different elements in your system.
Between precompiled shaders, dense graphics settings, and plentiful upscaling choices, Atomic Heart runs higher than any AAA PC video games I’ve performed within the final three years — and possibly longer than that.
With the RTX 4090, I used to be between 120 frames per second (fps) and 165 fps the place my Alienware 34 QD-OLED tops out with the best Atomic preset. That was with out DLSS as properly. With it, I used to be locked at 165 fps. Similarly, I used to be above 100 fps with an RTX 3070 at 1440p and DLSS set to Balanced.
Great on Steam Deck
Jacob Roach/Digital Trends
Atomic Heart hasn’t joined the listing of Steam Deck Verified video games, nevertheless it presently has a Playable standing. I think about it’ll get a inexperienced checkmark quickly. The recreation runs excellently on Valve’s handheld.
At native decision with the Low graphics preset, I used to be locked at 60 fps in linear areas, and between 50 and 60 fps within the semi-open sections. You can activate FSR, both by means of the sport or by means of the Steam Deck itself, however I by no means wanted to. Plus, there’s a steep drop-off in picture high quality given how little decision AMD’s upscaling algorithm has to play with.
Once once more, precompiling the shaders is an enormous win right here. It takes a bit longer on the Steam Deck than it does on a PC — about 5 minutes — however I extremely advocate leaving your gadget to compile the shaders earlier than operating.
PC releases have been abysmal for a number of years, with the expectation being that you just’ll must endure not less than minor stuttering and efficiency drops no matter your {hardware}. Atomic Heart is refreshing as a result of it simply works — even with out ray tracing accessible at launch.
Today’s tech information, curated and condensed on your inbox
Check your inbox!
Please present a sound electronic mail deal with to proceed.
This electronic mail deal with is presently on file. If you aren’t receiving newsletters, please verify your spam folder.
Sorry, an error occurred throughout subscription. Please strive once more later.
Editors’ Recommendations