Atomic Heart: Annihilation Instinct Review

ign.com:

Making one of Atomic Heart’s quirkiest side characters the star of its first dose of DLC is a clever touch. Few moments in the main game were more memorable than those spent with NORA, the sex-mad Soviet AI running riot within the lewd and lustful upgrade machines dotted throughout Facility 3826. Annihilation Instinct’s story picks up after the weaker of the main game’s two anticlimactic endings and pits us against NORA, who’s gone completely rogue. Unfortunately, unlike the main campaign itself, the gauntlet you run in Annihilation Instinct is a largely linear and fairly forgettable few hours, with a stripped-back suite of weapons and power-ups giving it less of an opportunity to distinguish itself.

The added context Annihilation Instinct eventually provides about why NORA has consistently had the hots for our main man P-3 in the first place feels inessential, but it fits firmly within the fiction. What’s less elegant is the fact that, since Atomic Heart has two entirely different endings, Annihilation Instinct can only pick up from one of them and – at least for a while – it didn’t seem entirely clear which one that was. If you’ve only finished Atomic Heart once (and battled all the way to Sechenov’s office in the process) you’re probably going to be thoroughly confused at the outset.

It also creates a weird kink in the storytelling where we know more about certain characters than P-3 does himself in this timeline, thanks to a pivotal encounter that appears now to have never occurred. I will admit, there were also times where Annihilation Instinct leans a bit too heavily into its techno-babble, to the point where I found myself simply nodding along politely. It’s a little like trying to explain nuclear fission to your