The developers at Rebellion are known for crafting innovative titles like Sniper Elite and Zombie Army. Their newest creation, Atomfall, is no less unique and offers post-apocalyptic adventuring in a bizarre alternative reality where most of England’s picturesque Cumbria Lake District has been walled off and quarantined following a nuclear disaster. Players are dropped into this strange new world with almost no backstory, while also suffering from amnesia, and are left to try and survive while figuring out what the heck is really going on in this uniquely British survival adventure.
Atomfall has a shooter interface, and between that and the post-apocalyptic theme, many people would be right to think of the adventure as a sort of British Fallout. This is especially true following the release of the unauthorized sequel to that series, Fallout London. But that is pretty much where the comparisons should end. Atomfall isn’t really like Fallout very much at all. In fact, for me it seemed much more like Gearbox Software’s We Happy Few with its bizarre British-themed vision of the end of the world – minus all the crazy drug references that plagued that title.
Whereas pretty much all of the Fallout titles offer sprawling, open world gameplay and role-playing opportunities, Atomfall’s playable world is much smaller. Its story is also more focused like a traditional adventure game versus a full-scale RPG. The plot of Atomfall is loosely based on the Windscale nuclear incident which happened in 1957 in real life when a reactor caught fire. But in Atomfall’s world, that fire caused a disaster where most of the land in Northern England around the site, specifically the Cumbria Lake District, was walled off and quarantined, becoming a Stalker-like exclusion zone that nobody is supposed to enter or leave ever again. There are only five main areas to explore within the quarantine zone, although most of them are pretty big. And with no fast travel options, players will be hoofing it back and forth through those scenic hills, dales, woodlands and villages quite a lot on their journey.
The story of Atomfall starts five years after the Windscale nuclear event, so the exclusion zone has become well-established and fortified. There is more to the story than that, but those are the basic facts that players will discover pretty quickly after starting out. I was honestly kind of shocked at first at being dropped into Atomfall with no backstory briefing. To begin the adventure, someone in a radiation suit comes running into a bunker where your character is sleeping, frantically asking how they got there. But my character had no idea because I didn’t either. That actually kind of brings players more into Atomfall’s world because they can identify with their character because neither of you have any idea what the heck is happening.
Atomfall really leans into that lack of information and almost becomes a detective story as a core element. When you find interesting facts about the zone, its history, the people who live there or the situation in general, that tidbit is added to your journal as a lead. You can then pinpoint any places that the lead mentions on your map and make your way over there in order to keep following the trails of clues until you learn more about this beautiful and deadly world. As might be expected from a character without a backstory, players are never really pushed in any direction. You can play Atomfall as an investigator trying to solve the mystery of the zone, someone who really wants to escape or just a person trying to survive in difficult circumstances. It’s actually kind of refreshing to be able to approach the adventure however you choose.
The environment in Atomfall looks really nice, picturesque really. It’s not exactly photo-realistic but not really like a fairy tale or animation title either. Atomfall certainly has its own unique style that should set it apart from most other titles. There are a few limitations in the game world, such as a lack of any weather or a day and night cycle. It’s always sunny, bright and clear in Atomfall, which is kind of out of character for England’s weather, but at least it’s a nice, never-ending day during players’ travels.
Obviously, with a shooter interface, the emphasis in Atomfall is going to be on combat. And while the game does some really good things, like not having hostile patrols immediately attack you without at least shouting out a warning first, the fighting is pretty clunky overall. For a development team that made the Sniper Elite series, I was expecting a little bit more, especially from the gunplay. You can’t lean out around corners, there is no strafing and no way to hug cover. So, gun combats generally turn into bouts with you and your opponents just standing there shooting each other like Revolutionary War soldiers much of the time.
The AI is also not very smart and tends to bunch up, get caught on corners and things like that. In one combat where I needed to clear out a bunker full of bandits, I simply had my character toss a grenade to get their attention and then retreated to a chokepoint hallway, hitting each of them with a shotgun blast when they chased my character down like lemmings until there was a pile of bodies and nobody left to fight. In another shootout, I had my character standing on a high railing above my opponents and they kept infinitely shooting into a steel plate I had my character standing behind instead of trying to find a better angle, which they could have done had they moved just a few feet in either direction. When they stopped to reload, which they helpfully told me they were doing by screaming about how they were out of bullets, I slowly had my character step out and picked them off with a few headshots without breaking a sweat.
Melee combat is even less precise. There are a bunch of melee weapons in Atomfall, but no options to parry, block or dodge in combat. So again, players are pretty much just standing there swinging wildly while their opponents are doing the same thing. That means that a speedy but low damage weapon like a shiv, which can be crafted near the start of Atomfall, is a really great choice because players can stab much more quickly than the enemies. And once you start staggering them, it makes for a pretty easy kill. Here, the unskilled AI also hurt the bad guys quite a lot too. For example, in one crazy melee combat, a huge patrol of bad guys chased me, and I had to jump and climb up some blocks of rubble onto a broken bridge to get away. For a long time, the enemies did not know how to climb up and follow. When they finally did figure it out, they slowly climbed up one at a time. I was just there at the top playing whack-a-mole with a cricket bat until everyone was dead.
On the bright side, one really nice thing that Rebellion did was to put a lot of emphasis on letting players customize the difficulty level of Atomfall to match their preferred playstyle. There are five levels to choose from where players can emphasize everything from the aforementioned detective work to the combat, while making all of the other elements easier or less taxing if so chosen.
Beyond the base levels, you can also fully customize most aspects of Atomfall’s difficulty. For example, I kept most of the default settings in place, but added more resources to it so that I could find more bullets and supplies. Given that all trade in Atomfall is by barter (as there is no money), I was very happy with that choice since I didn’t have to lug a bunch of junk in the limited inventory space over to shopkeepers to trade most of the time.
There are also no character levels in Atomfall, but you can purchase skills to help improve certain things like making aiming down the sights with guns steadier, adding more hit points or learning special abilities like being able to disarm traps. To buy those skills you need to find Skill Stimulants, which are mostly located in hidden bunkers spread all throughout the various maps. That encourages players to explore the many dark and secret areas of Atomfall, which is a pretty smart way of getting players to experience all of its world, since doing so is a key to buying new skills.
While Atomfall is not quite a fully polished gem, it’s still a lot of fun to play. For gamers who like to explore every nook and cranny of a title’s world to uncover all its secrets, Atomfall has a lot to offer. It’s kind of a survival horror, adventure and detective story all rolled up into one. And while the combat is kind of primitive compared with other titles with shooter interfaces, it works well enough to keep players alive, especially when using mostly guns and ranged fighting over melee. Atomfall is available for consoles and on Steam for about $50, which is a really good value considering it’s a new and well-crafted game that has a lot of unique elements and a fascinating story to tell.