Atomfall marks Rebellion’s first new IP in years and is remarkably different from their Sniper Elite series which has been the studios main focus. Based around the very real Windscale nuclear disaster that occurred in England in 1957, Atomfall is a self-proclaimed action survival game that is at its best when it leaves out the action and survival parts and focuses on exploring its world and investigating its intriguing narrative. One thing is for certain, though: Atomfall another great example of why the double-A gaming space is so important. Although it may lack the polish and scope of a triple-A title, it isn’t lacking in cool ideas and passion.
Note: this is not my best work. During the writing of this, my dog has been near his time, and right now every day is waiting to see if I need to make the call. Right now, I’m spending nearly all my time with him outside in the garden where he can watch the world go by and enjoy the sights and sounds, since he can’t go out for walks. I haven’t been able to concentrate on writing, and as such I’m worried this review isn’t up my usual (admiteddly, not very good normally) standards. I do apologise for that.
Available On: Xbox One, Xbox Series, PS4, PS5, PC
Reviewed On: PS5
Developed By: Rebellion Developements
Published By: Rebellion DevelopementsReview code provided by the publisher.
You awaken as an unknown human being with no memory of how you came to be in an underground bunker, which honestly just sounds like a regular weekend for us Brits Scots. Emerging from the bunker in a scene very reminiscent of Fallout and Elder Scrolls, you find yourself in the lush, green countryside of England. Rolling hills and stone walls do nothing to distract from the Windscale nuclear plant in the distance, though, a strange blue plume billowing out from its ruins. Cleverely, Windscale can almost always be seen as you explore the cosy town of Windham, the Druid-infested Casterfell woods and Skethermoor. It looms over everything you do, and unsurprisingly your journey will always lead to there eventually.
While somewhat forgotten about, the Windscale fire was a very real event that resulted in panic. Subsequently, the government attempted to cover up how bad the radioactive fallout was. Atomfall takes the idea further, as you find that in the game’s world, the area has been walled-off and quarantined for five years already, leaving people and even some military stranded inside. Clearly, something else is going on at Windcale, and to escape you need to figure out exactly what it is.
Not that Atomfall wants to help you do that. Stepping out of the bunker, you have no pre-ordained objective or direction to head in. The game does attempt to give you a few obvious starting points – the classic British red telephone box with a ringing phone right in front of you being the most obvious one – but you are free to just amble off and figure it all out at your own pace. There’s a mystery to solve, and you’re going to have to Scooby-do the shit out of it.
Although Rebellion were keen to say that Atomfall was ditching the traditional quests, the “leads” system they replaced them with are essentially the same thing, just with a bit less handholding than we normally see these days. In the various zones, which are connected via loading screens – probably due Atomfall being on Xbox One and PS4 – you’ll run into several people promising to help you escape the quarantine, and all of them have their own agendas, from Mother Jago and her desire to grow closer to the mysterious voices in the soil to Colonel Sims, the leader of the stranded military forces. If you want to get out, you’ll need to help them out.
Whichever path you venture down, you’re still free to follow the other leads as well. Working with others, and exploring the world, might reveal information which paints trusted allies as in a new light. There aren’t a lot of big obvious choices to be made as such, but you can end up betraying allies, getting back together with them or even wind up in a situation where options are completely removed from the board. And that’s not even mentioning how you can confrot them with evidence you’ve found or been told about, or just pull out a gun and shoot ’em point blank in the noggin. Even if you avoid the main story leads, there’s plenty to be found in the world that will fill in the story and gradually push you toward the ultimate goal.
That ultimate goal is Windscale itself, and The Interchange, a massive underground bunker that must be gradually powered up throughout the game by using special Atomic Batteries. These will naturally tend to turn up along the main narrative lines of the game, but they can also be found in various places off the beaten path, a reminder that Atomfall can be completed even if you choose to ignore the majority of the main plotlines. The Interchange is a vast place that also connects all the different zones, thus acting as something of a shortcut system in a game that has no fast-travel. Powering up another chunk of the Interchange acts like the completion of another chapter, another step toward solving the mystery.
Rebellion told us during previous that it really hopes you’ll play through it more than once. That’s why it’s actually a surprisingly short game (my first escape tok 9 hours, and there’s a trophy/achievement for doing it in under 5) because to get a better idea of what’s going you need to escape a few times with different characters. If you play it just once, the ending will likely be unsatisfying unless you’re the kind of person who prefers to be left with more questions than answers. Although to be honest, even if you replay the game quite a few times your curiosity probably won’t be entirely sated. This is by design as Rebellion wanted Atomfall to ape its speculative fiction inspirations by leaving some questions unanswered. The result, I feel, is likely be divisive but will hopefully spark a lot of fun debate about what exact is happening in Atomfall’s alt-history world.
However, there’s one big problem: I’m not sure Atomfall is a game you’ll want to play a few times over. One playthrough was fine – I enjoyed it, but I’m not sure the gameplay is enough to get me to come back a few more times. That said, for the purpose of this review I did escape several times, though for the last few runs I just loaded up a save file I strategically kept for this very reason. The way the game is designed means all paths eventually lead to the same area, and even to the same few things you need to do. Part of me wishes there was a little more variety in how the final hour of Atomfall plays out, though.
To put it simply, the writing and mystery-solving aspects of Atomfall are where the game shine, although that might just be the radioactive fallout giving everything a nice glow. The four zones, plus The Interchange, aren’t huge but are fairly dense with plenty of optional reading and environmental storytelling to find. The side-quests (sorry, side-leads) aren’t plentiful but the few on offer are enjoyable and again tend to add some more meat to narrative. The actual design of the missions isn’t going to win any awards, mind you, usually being nothing more than sending you across the map to the furthest point to find an item.
Outside of the great writing and the mystery, though, Atomfall flounders. The game’s so-called survival elements are pretty lightweight. You don’t have to concern yourself with starving, sleeping or anything like that. It’s really just about exploring enough to fuel the minimal crafting system.
Crazed woodland druids, giant mechs, odd creatures and the military are all things you might have to face in Atomfall’s seperate zones. One option is stealth, but it’s barebones at best. You know the drill: get in some long grass that magically hides you, pop out to snap a neck. However, enemy vision is so inconsistent and the basic takedown so noisy that stealth feels useless without some upgrades first. Even with them, stealth is rather dull.
Speaking of which, I do quite like the upgrade system. The skill tree is small, but most skills are locked away until you find training manuals dotted around the world, providing another good reason to explore. You also need to grab special serum, a strange substance that the science boffins were working on in Windscale. Like the survival and stealth elements, the skill tree is simplistic, but unlike those two other elements feels like it strikes a good balance. This isn’t a huge RPG chock-full of skills and abilities to buy, but the upgrades that are there feel useful instead of adding on 0.2% to some random stat.
There are no shortage of melee weapons lying around, from sickles to crick bats to big-ass knives. Sadly, getting into fisticuffs is easily the worst part of Atomfall. With no blocking and dodging, and just one attack, as well as the slow movement speed, your only option to evade damage is to use the special kick to stagger enemies or to help control crowds. But that just means fights come down to whaling mindlessly on the enemy. In one-on-one fights, the only real tactic is to kick, spam a few attacks and then kick again, keeping the foe stun-locked. Multiple opponents does at least force you to be a little strategic by using the kick to keep people at bay. Without the kick, combat devolves into button-mashing since there’s no way to mitigate incoming damage. And there’s a few foes which can soak up far, far too much damage become dying, making the already dull melee combat even duller.
Really, though, once you have a gun (which can be found pretty quickly) there doesn’t seem to be a reason to rely on the shitty melee combat. Prior to launching and even during my hands-on preview, Rebellion talked about how rare runs and ammo would be. After all, Britain doesn’t tend to stock guns in the local corner store, so outside of rusty shotguns that farmers use the only ones should be in the military’s possession. In reality, though, there are shotguns, pistols, revolvers and rifles scattered around the place like American Santa flew overhead with a hole in his magic bag. Ammo certainly isn’t raining from the sky, but it’s in enough abundance that anyone with half-decent aiming skills shouldn’t have too many problems. The guns do feel quite good to use, and most enemies go with a headshot, but otherwise the gunplay is entirely mediocore.
Really, though, it feels like Atomfall wants you to stay out of fights where possible, which makes sense because you are not play as a super-soldier or some kind of action here. And I appreciate how Atomfall often lets you avoid both combat and stealth, though. Provided you aren’t trespassing in specific areas, enemies will not attack on sight, and by slowly walking around them or backing away hostilities can be avoided. Even cooler, if you whip out a gun and point it an unarmed enemy or somebody with a melee weapon, there’s a chance they’ll call it a day and fuck off. This can work even if you don’t have any ammo, too, which is a great little detail.
In a sense, then, the underwhelming gunplay and fighting kind of work in the games favour. One or two enemies is fine, but tackling groups when you don’t have much ammo is a waste of time since it’s going to cost you resources and probably just result in a huge chunk of your healthbar deciding to go on vaction. And tackling enemies that have ranged weapons head-on when you’re out of ammo is completely stupid, too. Does this mean the combat mechanics shouldn’t be criticised? No. They are in the in the game, after all, but I’m willing to at least admit that it somewhat works in the game’s favour – you aren’t here to fight, and it should always be a last resort.
But there are also plenty of customisation options available in the menu to tinker with. For example, you can choose for leads to be marked as “Main Story” and for markers to be displayed on the minimap for easier exploration. You can also tweak how rare resources are, aggressiveness of enemies and much more. In other words, while the default difficulty lends itself to a sense of exploration and discovery, you can also turn Atomfall into a more guided, relaxed experience. Or you can ramp it all up to the maximum.
Honestly, I probably wouldn’t have liked Atomfall if the difficulty wasn’t so customisable. Being able to tweak so many aspects meant I could turn down the elements that bugged me – like the combat – and emphasis the aspects that I enjoyed – like the exploration and narrative.
One aspect of the game I found intriguing was that you can kill literally everyone you meet, including those who give you leads. Seriously, you can shoot the buggers, blow them up, snap their neck or murder ’em in whatever way is most convenient. Even with everyone dead, you can still beat the game and escape because Rebellion has ensured there’s still one option left. Maybe the true mystery is all the friends we made on the way…or the bodies we leave behind.
In Conclusion…
Atomfall is a tricky game to review. Its wonderfully realised and colourful world is a genuine joy to explore and plays host to an excellent mystery. But every time I had to set aside that mystery to fight some enemies or sneak past them or just run from one end of the map to the other yet again, the hook that the story and writing had buried in me was damaged. Being able to adjust so much of the gameplay, by which I mean basically turning all the combat and survival stuff to the lowest setting, certainly helped a bit for my second playthrough, though.
In other words, if you can soak up the thoroughly bleh combat and stealth, and the thin survival elements, and just focus on the world, storytelling and mystery then you’ll have a good time with Atomfall. But if go in looking for Fallout in Britain, as it was often descried prior to launch, or even for action-survival gameplay mentioned in Atomfall’s own description, you’ll be left dissapointed.
One thing is absolutely for sure: Rebellion has the groundwork for something special here, and a sequel has the potential to be fantastic. I want to come back to this world, to find out what happened after I left it and to see what Rebellion can build on the foundations they laid.
Now how about some kind of Atomfall/Sniper Elite crossover?
