“Atomic hearts gathering system SUCKs” said far too many punny reddit users, before getting voted into oblivion by humourless drones.

The following video is going to be an overly nitpicky look at the looting in atomic heart, and looting in general just a tad, if you have any thoughts at all on this or even think I’m off base feel free to vent in the comments.

Before I get back to that thought let’s lay some groundwork Here are the best things about atomic heart.

The delicious melee combat. It feels so friggin good. More games should take note.

The twins. Best marketing gimmick ever, I’m sorry but it’s true and you’re just gonna have to live with the fact that sex sells, and it always will, especially in Russian robo ballarena town

Here are the worst things.

Just literally everything that comes out of them protagonists stupid mouth hole.

The sucky hands.

Ok I know what you’re gonna say, the sucky hands are great they make looting rooms a breeze. I love watching all the drawers swing open, it feels as cathartic as smashing open a filling cabinet for no reason in Control.

Now yes you’re entirely right about all that, but you’re also wrong. Why did they make such a cool game but bog it down with rooms you need to rub your big Soviet strong boy all over. It’s not power wash ruskie edition.

Let’s be real. The sucky hands are an admission that picking through drawers for banana peels in something like Prey kinda blows. Sure it gives you much needed down time between fights. But in prey it was supposed to create a feeling of survival. Making do with what you had, and learning that recycling is important. Even on a monster infested space ship.

So instead of rethinking whether they needed the system at all they instead bandaided the situation as best they could by making sucky hands a visual bonanza. It’s a cowards consession.

In atomic heart it’s a prerequisite for upgrading your shit. Nothing new here. You get a bunch of misc items that you then go and use to upgrade your kit. But I honestly couldn’t tell you what any of the lootables are. It’s not like i go to a paper clip factory to get the much needed paper clips to upgrade my shotgun. I’m not going to an ore deposit in the mountains cause I need more iron. I’m just getting misc stuff from misc places. The loot doesn’t help direct gameplay and exploration. It just puts me in yet another dirty cluttered Soviet shithole and tells me that after I’m done cleaning my room I can buff my baseball bat with a sexually aggressive fridge.>

Sucky hands are making the best of a bad situation, and valiently might I add! But maybe the game didn’t need so much plundering. There’s already enough bullshit puzzles to slow down your progress, and you could still have your precious upgrade tree I GUESS, just make it comprised of fewer more consequential items that are a just reward for poking around where you don’t belong off the beaten path.

Just because every game has bitsy looting and crafting benches doesn’t mean your game needs em too. Just saying

Just saying you should like the vid and feel disagree with me I’m the comments below.