Rebellion is back with their second major release this year, and this time they are releasing their first new IP in over half a decade with Atomfall. The game is an open area survival game in the vein of Fallout, but with more emphasis on player exploration and discoverability than anything I’ve seen in awhile. As someone who really only had cursory knowledge of Atomfall prior to previewing the game a few weeks ago, I was engrossed in the world that Rebellion had created and trying to discover every mystery that I could.
Atomfall is takes place in an alternate timeline version of 1962 Northern England five years after the real life Windscale fire nuclear accident. However, in this timeline, the accident was significantly worse and the entire surrounding area has been cutoff from the outside world as a quarantine zone. At the start of the game, the player character, a complete unknown, wakes up in a bunker in the quarantine zone with no idea how they arrived there. They’re only given a single lead of find “The Interchange” and escape the quarantine zone. After you leave the bunker, the world of Atomfall is fully yours to explore and discover and solve the mystery of what really happened five years ago and, more importantly, find a way to escape.
This is where Atomfall starts to show its best qualities; freedom and discoverability. Right from the get-go, you are able to go basically anywhere and everywhere the game has to offer. The world is beautifully colorful compared to the drab greys and browns we usually get from a post apocalyptic settings. Atomfall is divided in four main regions and you can go to any of them at any time, and all are decently sized with plenty of places to find within. Areas are interconnected via a plethora of secret tunnels and systems, so it’s not impossible to get between areas faster. This is definitely important as there is no fast travel nor any mounts or vehicles to get around faster. Giving the freedom to venture anywhere you want does have a minor downside as you might wind up somewhere you shouldn’t be yet. There was one time where I was exploring an area that I hastily entered, however, when I tried to leave the area, I kept dying to environmental damage at the entrance to the area as I was missing an item that would reduce the damage I was taking, and had to reduce the difficulty of the game so I wasn’t taking as much damage to be able to leave the area.
These aspects don’t just apply to the world of Atomfall, but to the story as well. Atomfall doesn’t tell a traditional story where you are given a main quest with loads of quest markers to follow. Instead, aside from the initial push of “Find The Interchange,” the story is yours to freely discover at your own pace and basically in any order you wish. This is where Atomfall shines brightest especially compared to a lot of modern games that have a plethora of handholding dialogue and quest systems to help navigate the story. The game forgoes a traditional quest system and implements a leads system that points you towards storylines or objectives, but can be ignored completely in favor of doing something else and following other leads. Then, you don’t even have to find leads in a certain order as you can stumble upon a lead while exploring an area that may be deeper into a story than a different lead in a different area. I was introduced to a lead differently than I was during my preview of the game, and it made pursing that lead wildly different than what I was doing then.
There is a little downside as characters don’t necessarily react to everything you’ve done as players are able to tackle the story in whatever way, thus someone could’ve done more than someone else and the story may not take that into account. The game features six different endings, and I was able to follow enough leads to do five of the six of them. However, this is where my biggest gripe of how Atomfall presents the story comes in, there are some leads that say that you need to do something a certain way, but then that ending can still be achieved anyways. Then, no matter the ending you choose they all are presented similarly.
Then, there’s the gameplay. Atomfall is a survival game first and first person combat game second. The devs even made how the player holds their weapons so it doesn’t feel like you just point and shoot when holding a gun. Though combat isn’t necessary either as you can back away or run from enemies pretty easily. With the game taking place in an isolated environment for five years, ammo is scarce and weapons don’t do a whole lot of damage as plenty of guns you find are rusty and don’t do much damage. Luckily, melee is where the combat succeeds most as you get access to a lot of different melee weapons such as axes, knives, and even a cricket bat! These are far more fun to use and can even be thrown at enemies. There are also a plethora of skills to unlock, but you still needs to find the skills in the world and then have enough supplements to unlock those skills.
The survival aspects are also top notch as you scour every building, room, and area you find. You will find so much crafting material to be able to make things from makeshift grenades, bandages, poison bombs, and more. You learn recipes to unlock crafting, but you can only learn these recipes once. Thus, if you find more of them you can trade them with different NPCs to be able to get different items as you barter instead of just buying items outright in Atomfall.
Atomfall is a delight that engrosses you the in the eerie quarantine zone that Rebellion has created. The freedom to explore and piece together its story is refreshing in the modern age of gaming. With some colorful graphics, an intriguing mystery to solve, and a runtime that flies by, Atomfall is a great new IP before the onslaught of games the rest of the year.
Score: 8 out of 10
Reviewed on PlayStation 5