Atomfall Review — As Spicy As British Cuisine

Seeing Atomfall’s take on the post-apocalyptic aesthetic had me gushing when it was first announced. With its verdant overgrowth and old country-side towns, Rebellion’s new survival-crafting game had promise. Surface-level comparisons to Fallout or STALKER aside, I was expecting a rich meal adorned with great gunplay, an interesting world, and strong British accents filled with nonsense words. What I ended up eating was a plain, old, tasteless toast sandwich (look it up).

To its credit, Atomfall grips you right out of the bunker with a compelling hook and a few threads to pull. Taking place in an alternate version of history in the aftermath of the 1957 Windscale Fire, you’re hastily introduced to the world by a masked man who hands your intrepid amnesiac a MacGuffin and thrusts them into The Quarantine Zone alone to wander, survive, and eventually escape.

The game’s narrative structure is pleasantly deep, Rebellion exceeded my expectations when it came to the more personal storytelling. With your trust in others constantly tested as you uncover the truth of what happened in the Interchange, it gives you pause when talking to NPCs. For the most part, you can’t simply skip through conversations lest you say the wrong thing and cut off an important source of information. Character’s words also can’t explicitly be trusted, the game really pushes you to dig a little deeper when in conversation. Conversely, you can just kill everyone if you please. Rebellion didn’t want that to stop you from progressing further, and I think it’s a novel take on player freedom. 

However, complete player freedom does come with some downsides. If you aren’t going to search around for every bit of aid when trying to leave the quarantine zone, you’re only going to receive a fraction of what the narrative has to offer. Before getting roughly halfway through at least three people’s questlines, I was clueless as to how in-depth the narrative structure was. It’s a shame that the best part of Atomfall can be entirely skipped over.

Another stand-out system is the handful of vendors you can barter with around the Lake District. Instead of any form of currency, you can trade whatever you have on your person, including weapons, ammo, and meat. Additionally, each vendor may prefer a certain item to be sold to them, allowing for a little more buying power during the transaction. It’s a novel system, especially when you come across an important item that may allow you to avoid future combat.

Instead of stock-standard quests, there are plenty of compelling mysteries to investigate through Atomfall’s Lake District with varying degrees of complexity and incentivization. The game’s freeform exploration, being crafted around rumours and coordinates, made the initial journey feel like an exciting treasure hunt. Placing a waypoint on my map after discovering evidence of a buried envoy cache or hearing about a mysterious woman in the woods somewhere north of my position, Atomfall wanted to constantly pull me every which way with the promise of discovery.

Issues arose when everything in between said points of interest was almost lifeless. The impressive landscapes, while beautiful, were simply scenic fodder. Atomfall doesn’t have a huge map to play through compared to some of its inspirations, yet it feels emptier due to its underbaked systems and world. 

Completely randomised enemy spawns don’t play well with the world design and leave encounters feeling poorly timed or out of place entirely. The game lacks any curated encounters that complement the emergent gameplay that makes games like this pop. It was far too often I’d enter a building lined top to bottom with traps, only for there to be no one around when I set one off. Every time I carefully crept into a cave behind a waterfall, I was disappointed to find no one inside to sneak around and, similarly, no group of enemies to greet me outside once I had finished spelunking.

Encounters themselves have a noticeable number of issues. I appreciated Rebellion’s attempts at multiple styles of play; most bunkers and cave systems had a stealthy route to navigate, while the guns-blazing technique was equally viable. No matter how you choose to play, however, it’s all just unimaginative. Melee combat is awkward and frustrating as there’s no way to block or dodge, and enemy swings come down faster than yours. It’s much easier (and safer) to just stand in place and wait for the AI to line up single file while you consistently one-tap headshot them. Outside of a handful of examples, there’s little variety in both enemy types and player models. There’s even less variety in AI behaviour, with some slowly firing from behind cover and the others kindly running in a cluster so you can easily grenade them.

Guns are tactile and provide decent feedback when fired, but there are no interesting weapons to collect or use, and upgrading them is a bother when you’re constantly out of inventory space. Stealth either works far too well, with you becoming nigh invisible in tall grass; or not at all, with enemies spotting you through a gap in a door you didn’t know was there.

This is all such a frustrating shame; the DNA that’s present has so much proven potential. Fallout, Bioshock, STALKER, and Metro harbour some of my favourite worlds in gaming; post-apocalyptic environments are rife with opportunities for social commentary and creative character and world design. Atomfall has spatters of that sauce, but it constantly takes itself too seriously to get creative.

The Interchange has most of that spatter. While not enough to redeem the rest of the milquetoast experience, there was enough tension to keep me on my toes and puzzles to keep me engaged. The unfortunate part of this is that I can’t tell you about The Interchange because it’s far better for you to experience it yourself.

Frankly, this summarises my thoughts on the game as a whole; as many gripes as I have with Atomfall, I do think people should experience it. While boring, it’s competent enough that I think some people will enjoy it, namely the compelling narrative structure. I’d stick it with a growing library of games I’d recommend only through services like Game Pass or PlayStation Plus. If everything in this game were just slightly better, Rebellion would have a knockout winner on their hands — unfortunately, it just Atom-falls short too frequently.