Atomic Heart's new combat trailer has no right to slap this hard

Atomic Heart has debuted a new trailer focusing on combat, and this game just looks more wildly fun every time it rears its weird little head.

For the uninitiated, Atomic Heart is the debut title from Moscow-based developer Mundfish. It's an action-RPG set in an alternate version of the 1950's, in which the Soviet Union developed highly advanced robotics which ultimately turned against humanity and started wreaking havoc. Thing is, these aren't your usual robots - in fact, Atomic Heart has some of the most uniquely terrifying creatures I've ever seen in a video game.

At the beginning of the new combat trailer, a pair of robots embrace each other in a bizarre sort-of dance before one of them sprouts tentacles from its forehead, which form into a single sharp appendage, which the robot slowly buries into the belly of the other robot without meeting much resistance. It's one of many highly distressing scenes I've been exposed to watching today's trailer and others before it.

Thankfully, Atomic Heart looks like more than just a collection of freaky looking machines; its dystopian vision of Soviet Russia looks like a genuinely thrilling, awe-inspiring place to explore, and the combat looks explosively fun. You'll have access to a bunch of powers that let you shoot freezing blasts of ice and throw around enemies telekinetically, as well as a ton of guns and melee weapons, which you can use simultaneously with your powers.

There seems to be a lot more going on here than just the classic Robots Gone Bad story, and I can't wait to dig in when Atomic Heart launches, hopefully sometime near the end of 2022 as planned. I'm getting a little concerned that we're only a few months away from 2023 and we haven't heard of a concrete release date, but I'd also be happy to wait a little longer to play a more polished game.

Here are a whole bunch of new games of 2022 to look forward to.