Mundfish’s Atomic Heart is here, bringing gamers an alternate universe look at a successful USSR. However, alongside being a rather rubbish game, Atomic Heart also has some rather racist content.
In our Atomic Heart review, we pointed out the game’s rampant sexualisation of female robots — such as an overly horny vending machine — but we completely missed its racist caricatures.
Warning: Below there will be an image of the racist cartoon character shown in Atomic Heart.
Within the game’s save room, an animation can play off an extremely racist depiction of a African tribesman. Drawn in the 40s-era Rubber Hose aesthetic, the non-white character is depicted as being fully black with bright red thick lips, an obvious reference the offensive minstrel designs.
The save rooms feature 22 complete episodes of the Russian cartoon ‘Nu, Pogodi!’. Via PlayStation Lifestyle, one episode of the series features this offensive stereotype caricature.
In the episode, a wolf is running after a hare. At some point, they pass the stereotype in the form a painted statue. While only on screen for a few seconds, the animation has already brought the ire of multiple people who have seen the save room show.
As it stands, the animated clip is only ok screen for five seconds, but it’s five seconds of offensive content that is no longer acceptable. Furthermore, there’s not even a warning that this type of content can be found within the game.
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During our playthrough of the game, we completely missed the racist Atomic Heart cartoons. However, in our defence, not a single one of those cartoons played for us during the review period. Just another bug, perhaps?
Hopefully, by the time Atomic Heart DLC is released, these offensive seconds will be removed from the game. While some may complain about “censorship”, it’s just a few seconds to remove to make millions of people happier with the final product. A worthy trade in our opinion.