Atomfall review: a seriously swift survivalist scramble through a scenic section of Sadness Island

When I played Atomfall for a few hours in the preview earlier this month, the main game of Rebellion’s action and Sacre Vival was left to me (“Where is the nearest place to buy a vegetarian paste form to eat for tea?”) how interesting the bits were beyond what I played?

What if you really started opening pastries of real rough, sturdy travel razor blades, then actually started opening pastries of travel to the Cambrian quarantine zone, which was installed after the fictional variant of the actual front-scale fire?

After all, the answer is probably a little less serious than I’d hoped. But it’s here. I think this lack of depth depends heavily on whether it’s positive or negative, and who you are. Here is the situation to properly rip the hurried bandages. Just 11 hours later we reached the ending of Atomfall’s first playthrough. It was pursuing several main quest threads that each offered a different way to attack the ending, but not all of them.

I was present in the recommended “survivor” difficulties (the second toughest game to offer), so I have already not done anything that might artificially shorten things by potentially misunderstanding the general hardness of things to match the uber-mlg capabilities. There was no support, such as special pre-order bonus gear. Atomfall is just a game and prioritizes going through every place in the zone if you’re not planning on getting lots of long breaks from pursuing a main story lead, but there’s not a very long runtime.

That doesn’t mean that what’s in the game is regularly intrigued or engaging, but not satisfying. Nor will it come out of either end you choose to feel a short change. However, this truncated runtime makes the game interesting to grade.

Given the opportunity to settle properly for build and craft setup, I was drawn to the general strategy of moving everywhere to stupid places, galloping over them to take most of my enemies, dodging shots and swings wherever I could, and dying and dying my enemies with cricket bats that I could.

I found that I could take perks to enhance character melee damage and round out most human enemies with two or three hits. And as long as I can keep a stable stockpile of alcohol and fabric and make bandages that can be used when food and first aid kits are not on the rise, this strategy can easily recover from most of the damages exposed to me.

In a scenario where I didn’t want to reduce the risk of charging, I used guns and bows from afar. The latter and the bolt action sniper rifle provided to defeat enemies with a decent healthy mass from range. On the other hand, my fourth largest weapon slot had SMGs that I could save for the most brown pants encounters, so that I wouldn’t burn relatively rare and easily flammable ammunition.

Towards the end, I began using one of the smaller backpack slots on my pistol if I fantasized. The toughest enemy – a giant bard robot with flames and machine guns – I just rubbed too much or ran like hell, making the game seem so intended. At the other end of the scale you can kick and slap a herd of mice, bats, pigeons and leeches. It’s fun.

However, most of my perks fell into survival and conditioning. Something that helps me to bolster and prepare me to fight hostile environments that spend most of the game. These three – Casterfellwoods, Skethermore and Slattendale – are the outdoor areas of the game’s ground sandbox, each being patrolled by their own enemy faction, each of which shoots you in sight. Known as masked druids, wildly-looking outlaws and protocols, the British Army should be addressed in any way you think is most practical when exploring each area that resists these themes, all boasting robust beauty that fits the dangerous atmosphere.

Wyndham is the fourth bit of the puzzle, the biggest of the rare safe havens you can soak up when you’re being beaten, and requires a quick reprieve from Atom Fall. In other words, unless you ruin the soldiers of the protocols that are occupying it, it’s a little less secure than you first think. There are some proper plots going on in all of these areas. A decent roster of friendly NPCs to chat with, there are small mysteries to lead to tracking and research.

However, when you push towards the endgame, you will find yourself spending a lot of time on interchanges – a secret underground bunker that needs to gradually come back to life and access different bits, discover what happened in the front-scale plant in the game’s version and kick the quarantine. I won’t dig deep into the territory of spoilers, but I feel that what you’re revealing is pulling a bit from the video game apocalypse you may have played before.

I was very reminded of some of the elements from us at the end, along with Fallout: New Vegas, especially the Dead Money DLC. It’s not a vacuum issue, and Atomfall offers that story with a unique taste that is unique enough to make you crazy, but I feel it only hurts the surface of the possibility that its premise will be ejected from a narrative standpoint.

The mechanics that provide the story work well. The detective-style lead system in Atom Fall is a refreshingly peeling alternative to the more UI-heavy quests and navigation systems that you’ll find in most open-world games (I know what I mean) unless you choose a low difficulty level that allows hints like map markers and extra hints.

It often meets with the disappearance of the story’s tone of rebellion. This is very modest and keeps many of its cards close to your chest. That style of storytelling is very British, part of what Atomfall feels different from something like Fallout, and the latter often becomes more open – in terms of acknowledging what is happening, why is happening, and philosophical debate in theatre.

In theory, both work well, but I feel that Atomfall’s approach holds it down from offering something more appealing or something a little deeper. Many lore – for the lack of better terms – about exchanges, quarantine events, and the mysterious oberon lying at its heart, are delivered in notes and short conversations that feel like they have stopped offering a proper whiff of atom falls that truly fascinate you.

I’ve seen four different endings of the game so far, and they all felt a bit flat, like they were either not broken or broken before they conclude things in a proper and satisfying way. Mystery Weaving in Atomfall may result in a good short-term choice as the story progresses, but it doesn’t drop much of the curtains even if you’ve reached the point you felt it should be.

It reminded me that many of the Chinese rooms are still so deeply awakened – well-made, unquestionably fun, but it feels like perhaps the weakest part of something.

There’s still a chance you’ll still love it. The gameplay loop is satisfying and the environment is fun to explore. The short runtime is an ideal game pass that can get a little old to the end without forking for more than 60 hours. But I think Rebellion’s departure wasn’t a good game on the table here, and could have made Atomfall a great game.

Given the cool premise, we are approaching deep puddles when it can become a lake or ocean. Or, to put it in a more atom fall, it is a paste-like product that does not completely provide a stuffing that matches the look of the pastry.

Atomfall will be released on March 27th for PC, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, PS5 and PS4. I’ll be coming to Xbox Game Pass on the first day. This review was conducted on PC using code provided by the publisher.