Atomfall Reviews
Atomfall can be a fun diversion, but it really needs to take a gap year so it can find itself.
If you can get over a difficult start and fancy a lean take on the survival genre, Atomfall delivers an intriguing tale worth discovering.
Atomfall is a compelling, post-apocalyptic survival story that satisfyingly bends to your choices and discoveries no matter which direction you take.
Atomfall looks amazing and has some really great ideas, but most of those ideas are overshadowed by frustrating game design and mechanical roadblocks.
As someone who spent countless childhood holidays roaming these same Cumbrian hills before returning to a static caravan or family tent, Atomfall perfectly captures the British countryside. Combine that with a brilliant quest system and the tension of survival combat, and you’ve got a recipe for success. Now grab that cricket bat and decapitate a zombie before it eats your brains with Yorkshire puddings and gravy.
"'It's up to you' is the philosophy at the heart of Atomfall"
I don't regret my time with Atomfall. It knows what it wants to be, with a reasonable scope and solid shooting mechanics. But issues with the skill system, its underbaked stealth, and an unengaging narrative are asterisks too large to ignore. Like the world it depicts, something exciting and unique lies at Atomfall's core. I just wish it wasn't walled off by my laundry list of frustrations.
With its wide-open quest design, Atomfall takes a novel approach to storytelling that helps push through some of its lesser parts.
It reminded me a lot of The Chinese Room’s Still Wakes the Deep in this way - well-crafted, unquestionably good fun, but with a story that feels like it’s probably the weakest part of the thing, either because it’s leaning a bit too heavily on genre tropes or holding back from actually committing to delivering on the elements that could go beyond that.
Atomfall falls flat in its attempts to homage and recreate the magic of other apocalyptic survival games. The storytelling and level design might keep players interested enough to make it through the main story, but the lack of depth in gameplay and role-playing makes it hard to imagine anyone wanting to spend their time playing Atomfall over any other successful title in the genre.
Atomfall combines a highly original setting and a choice-driven narrative with a commitment to player-led exploration. It's a compelling mixture. However, lackluster combat and repetitive missions all too often tar the experience.
Atomfall looks and sometimes plays like a middling survival shooter, but its passions truly lie in exploration and investigation – and it's much better at both.
Immersive Sims are incredibly difficult to create, and Atomfall deserves heaps of praise for going against the grain and presenting an open-world format that bucks almost every established trend. But even more so for doing this with aplomb and crafting an immersive, engaging, and breathtaking world.
Atomfall is an interesting game. It might not be wholly unique in anything it does, but it combines its core ideas in a way that feels fresh. A big part of that comes through the drip feed of the underlying story, whilst another is the glorious British countryside that makes up its maps. It likely isn't going to blow your mind, but it's an enjoyable journey and you would still be missing out if you didn't give Atomfall a go.
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In its latest action-adventure game, Sniper Elite developer Rebellion lays out a solid plan to thrive in a wasteland of nuclear apocalypse games. Rather than aping Fallout or Stalker’s action RPG formula, the more streamlined Atomfall scavenges together some original ideas in its deconstructed quests and an emphasis on bartering. That could have made for a compelling survival story built around open-ended exploration, but it’s those pesky details that will get you killed during a nuclear disaster.
Excellent story design stunted by clunky gameplay.
Remarkable is one of the most appropriate ways to describe Atomfall. So many triple A games these days are situated in American cities and smother you with their American cultural values, but Atomfall is as British as a Yorkshire Pudding, and thus it's an absolute treat. The array of difficulty options, the elegant scenery, the incentive to discover and go off the beaten path, and all the pleasant sights and sounds of Atomfall make it an unforgettable and outstanding survival game that is irresistibly moreish and well-worth your time.
Atomfall turned out to be a conservative attempt by Rebellion to release an unusual game for the studio. The result was very interesting, although the game is not without a number of serious drawbacks.
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Atomfall is a thoroughly enjoyable game which looks and plays well, and offers a compelling narrative with surrounding exploration to keep you entertained. It's well-polished, offers good replay value, encourages you to do things a little different, and isn't bad on the eyes either, with a good design that allows it to both look good and support last-gen consoles. The score likely doesn't reflect the game as well as it should, as I would heartily recommend this to anybody, with the added advantage that it's coming to Game Pass.