Feels like too much
I, like most people, immediately saw the first trailer for Rebellion Development’s Atomfall and we all assumed it was going to be “Fallout” but set in the UK. Set in 1962 in an alt-history version of England 5 years after a nuclear disaster. Players will find themselves in a quarantine zone filled with make-up wearing cultists, giant rocket powered mechs and of course horrors of nuclear radiation, and that’s about where the similarities to Fallout really end. In truth, Atomfall feels like a scarier and more violent version of ‘We Happy Few’ more than anything, including crafting, light survival elements and a reliance on melee over firearms.
As I said players awaken in this zone and meets a dying man in a hazmat suit who rambles on about finding the Interchange. It’s here that players get the first taste of a new system that the developers use for this game known as ‘leads’. Unlike most games like this player won’t use the traditional quest system, where they follow a marker, do a thing, report back and wash, rinse, repeat for 40 hours. In fact, Atomfall is much more about the mystery, instead of turning the game into a checklist of objectives. Once players discover a lead, it usually points them in the general direction of the objective rather than pinpointing it exactly, the more leads you find the closer it will lead to the final objective. The main story is also told this way which while leading to the exploration of the gorgeous game world (more on that later) sometimes led to some frustrating wandering and many deaths.
MSRP: $59.99
Platforms: Xbox (reviewed), PlayStation, PC
Price I’d Pay: $49.99
Atomfall isn’t really an open-world game but is full of large zones in which players will explore. This led to lots of wandering past things I needed for quests or which was more common, the description being really vague so I spent undue time convinced that this is the right location only to realize it was across the map. As frustrating as this was what really helped was the fact that Atomfall is an extremely pretty game. Usually with the post-apocalyptic games the only colors you see is browns and grey but here the English countryside is lush, green and full. I was taken aback by the look of the world as I walked through, constantly amazed about just how ‘British’ the game is. Players will find foods that they can eat for health like Cornish Pasties, and tins of tea. Players will find lots of red phone boxes around the map but I could have sworn I saw a certain blue phone box that phased out of existence as I got closer.
Where Atomfall starts to falter for me is the enemy AI and stealth… oh man. So, let’s start with the AI, I don’t even know what to say that is janky. Sometimes they are just eagle-eyed and can spot players a mile away and others you will stand right next to them in a crouched stance and they will signal the ‘all clear’ to their buddies. I was just taken aback by the wildly inconsistency of it honestly. But even if you manage to stealthily make it behind someone, you won’t just slightly snap their neck. No, there is no quiet kills; instead, you loudly knock out their knees, and then I don’t know, do like a yell as you stand and break their neck. At which point 17 men have showed up and you are going to die. If there is more than 1 combatant combat becomes very difficult, as the enemies will surround you and beat you mercilessly and it never fails that at least one enemy during every encounter had a gun so death is all but assured. To be fair the game does advise that players “prepare for combat”, to that end there are lots of tonics and things that players can craft to help them out.
But melee combat while I loved how brutal it was depicted it lost something in actually playing it making the whole experience just very underwhelming. Weapon and fist swings just felt slow and combos were non-existent; yet enemies are out here putting together blows like Muhammad Ali. Which would just lead me to pulling out my gun and then everyone would back up, it is possible to even bluff your way out of some situations by pulling out an empty gun. This was rare for me because as I said every combat encounter I ran into, at least one of them had a gun and while the unarmed folks would back up, the gunner would run down on me. But the really wild thing about this combat system is that players can throw punches, pipes and even kicks but you can’t block or dodge. Why, in the year of our Lord 2025, would we make a game with melee combat…but…not…include a freaking block ability?
I really wanted to like Atomfall, as I said that first trailer I was already intrigued by its weird and very British world but its narrative was boring to me. While its visuals for the various zones are drop-dead gorgeous at times, its ‘Leads’ system, while certainly unique; just leads to more frustration that innovation for me. And when you combine that on top of the combat system that has a reliance on melee but then refuses to give you the ability to block an on-coming punch while simultaneously letting you get beat-down by 13 dudes… nah, I had to fall off of this one.
Review copy of game provided by publisher.
