What I learned from playing Atomic Heart

Growing up, I was a rental kid. I never owned that many games—this was before every week was a bespoke Steamfest—and the ones I did own, I had played to death. Until the Xbox One, I had fewer than 10 games for each of my consoles. Games were (and are!) expensive, so when Friday rolled around, the family would pack up and head to Blockbuster or Family Video to find what would consume our weekend.

While my stepdad would plunder the latest releases—typically searching for blockbuster fare (“Lost in Space” comes to mind), I’d comb through the rental games section, making my weekend’s most important decision based on an arcane combination of box art, half-ripped user manuals, and esoteric box quotes. There’s some magical combination of those three things that would become a “Phil Game,” something I’d be willing to spend a few bucks on for a week, knowing that this was my only brush with something categorically new for me. I can’t tell you what that combo is and my hit-rate was probably 50/50 at best, but it felt like hitting a home run every time it worked out.

I’d rarely repeat-rent something; even in 2005, there were too many games. Instead, I’d find one—or if I was lucky, two—new games to bring home, hoping against all hope that I got the equation right. More often than not, my adolescent brain found a way to tolerate even the worst drivel. Go read magazine reviews for the games you have flashbulb memories of. Oftentimes, they’re trash. But to me, Lord of the Rings: The Third Age or Pariah was my entire world.

Sometimes, though, you’d get an absolute clunker like Ocarina of Time that would ruin your weekend. I’d spend hours of my free time banging my head against this one particular boss or sequence (usually loading a late-game save without thinking about it) and make it nowhere. That low, of never getting to ride Epona across Hyrule Fields, of watching Link, soft-locked with half a heart in a dungeon, get his ass handed to him time after time, was enough to put me off a game forever. I’d rarely repeat-rent, but I’d always remember spending a child’s hour not understanding Z-targeting. Those childhood memories die hard, and some of those games (Ocarina of Time, included) I’ve never gone back to.

No matter the quality or enjoyment of the game, though, I’d keep playing it. I’d push through awful controls or bad stories because dammit, I rented The Outfit and I’ve played all these other games ten times through already. What am I going to do, let this new game sit unplayed because it’s…not fun? No way.

This need to squeeze worth and value and fun from something that isn’t clicking with me has followed me from those childhood days. Sometimes it’s the peer pressure of getting into Foo Fighters (I still haven’t), or maybe it’s the monetary pressure of spending all that money on Tom Clancy’s EndWar (it’s actually pretty good). You get what you get and don’t throw a fit.

Rarely did I rent something that felt like an all-timer, but I was 12, did anything feel like an all-timer?

I’ve been playing a lot of Atomic Heart lately. I’m not having fun. It’s a fine enough game, though the writing and tone are so antithetical to what I come to games for. I’m so thirsty for something good, but I feel like I’m trying to squeeze water from a cactus. Every time I find something that is sustaining me in the game—the interesting powers, the incredible design, the unique concepts—the game pokes me, reminding me it’s more Borderlands or Duke Nukem than Bioshock. So it goes.

More than anything, Atomic Heart is reminding me of those grim weekends when I’d shoot my shot with a game that looked and sounded cool, only to end up disappointed. I’m a cat, playing with a mouse I’ve already killed, batting it around, hoping it’ll do something and bring back the joy I felt in the chase. But it’s dead, the excitement on the box, the pull quotes, and the manual can only bring so much. Now that I’ve got a controller in hand, it’s not working.

Which is fine. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in playing, writing, and talking about games, it’s that not everything is for everyone. That doesn’t quiet the twelve-year-old in the back of my mind, though. That voice is still haranguing me to squeeze all I can out of this game, to find the fun, to see why people love it. To make it worth it. I spent my allowance on this game; not playing it is not an option…right?

This is my great lesson with Atomic Heart, something I’m slowly learning with all forms of media: it’s fine to quit. This stuff is only ever worth it if you make it so. There’s no amount of time that you’ll hit that magically validates your money and time spent. It’s up to you to make that call, to have the conversation with yourself. It’s okay to quit.

Even as I write this, I’m thinking about playing Atomic Heart again. Maybe this time it’ll be different, maybe this time I’ll find a weapon that changes it all, maybe this time the writing will change, maybe this time I’ll have fun.

But I won’t. Probably not. Because not everything is for everyone. That’s okay. It’s okay to quit. It’s okay to take this game and drop it in the dropbox Saturday morning, even though your rental was for the whole weekend. Sometimes, it just doesn’t work out. Sometimes you get an Ocarina of Time when what you really need is Too Human. And sometimes, you just need twenty years to figure out how the hell Z-targeting works so you can finally have fun in a game everyone says is so good.

I don’t think age is gonna help with Atomic Heart though. So it goes.