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Though modern gaming is not my thing, all the hullaballo around new russian “masterpiece” called Atomic Heart was quite hard to miss. As well as ruskies’ efforts to make it popular everywhere.

Thanks to sharing and streaming, now one can try out a game by watching someone playing it absolutely for free. I won’t say here what is wrong with game mechanics itself (like with most of modern games, unfortunately); there’s plenty of dedicated communities to complain about it. Its political ingredient is something more significant here. Maybe even revelatory.

As everybody knows, glorious russian “liberators” failed to get in Kyiv in 3 days, and even one year was not enough to get rid of “evil Ukrainian Nazis”. And there’s a very old ruskie tradition: when tzar’s escapades fail, serfs need some whipping and distraction. Older vatniks have enough with cheap booze and TV propaganda, but the new generation of bearded and branded vatnik smartphoneheads must have something kinda progressive. (Yes, there are millenials in TerroRussia.)

So the answer was geek-style commie utopia game released on invasion’s anniversary, obviously targeting aforementioned youngsters who didn’t live a single day in Soviet “paradise” and ready to fall in Soviet nostalgia.

In case of Atomic Heart it’is supposed to be triggered by a brainsick mix of all things googled “soviet”, few things googled “russian” with absolutely no regard to chronology (indeed, putin’s cannon fodder doesn’t need no Histrory), loads of unscary gore spiced up with wannabe-sexy stuff, and futuristic environment hastily bound together by bug-infested code. And in the epicenter of events, a filthy-mouthed ax-wielding crazy hipster asshole.

As a person with first-hand memories of real USSR, I find it all so mawkishly surreal sometimes it can look funny. But most of the time, this game looks absolutely miserable. A failed ruskie’s attempt to challenge Half-Life. Even such game as You Are Empty looks like a true masterpiece compared to Atomic Heart. Far from being perfect, You Are Empty was made by simple, free guys who just didn’t overdo it. And what’s much more important, they knew the USSR from the inside. Ergo, its possible alternative ways.

Atomic Heart creators, Putin’s hipster serfs had a government-ordered job to glorify something they didn’t know and failed it completely. All that Atomic Heart thing reminds me of an old Soviet-era joke: he tried to stand up with an epic speech, but fell flat with an epic fart instead. In this case, an ATOMIC fart.

Just like ruskies did in their war against Ukraine. And frankly, particularly everywhere except in spreading their stinky filth over the entire world.