ATOMFALL Review

The fire at Windscale nuclear power plant is a real-life incident that is considered one of the most serious nuclear accidents in history, and the most serious that had occurred in Europe until Chernobyl reactor no.4 exploded some 30 years later. In our "canonical" timeline, the plant's first reactor caught fire for 3 days, releasing radioactive fallout into the atmosphere until it was successfully extinguished. The British developers at Rebellion were inspired by this event and used it as the basis for developing a game, naturally introducing a number of twists to the story. The result of this process, a semi-open world, survival action game called Atomfall.

In the context of Atomfall's plot, as a result of a mysterious accident that occurred at the Windscale plant (on October 10, 1957, as in real life), the government ends up ordering the plant's closure and the quarantine of the surrounding area. This accident causes, among other things, interference to communications and electronic equipment, so that teams of scientists, military and government agents approaching the plant lose all contact with the outside world, which is largely left completely in the dark as to what took place (and is still taking place) there. As a result, various kinds of factions have emerged in the quarantine area that operate in complete isolation, from gangs of outlaws who simply loot everything, and from soldiers trying to enforce the quarantine and some semblance of law and order, to fanatical pagans who believe that the accident at the plant was due to the unrestrained use of technology and that a return to nature is required. At the same time, there are some who have suddenly started to... hear voices telling them that whatever happened inside the nuclear power plant should be an object of worship, not fear...

The mystery is to be solved by our character, who, 5 years after the accident, wakes up in a bunker within the quarantine zone, with no memory of who he is or how he got there. The amnesia and the character's "carte blanche" status seem a bit like a cheap trick, but I suppose they help the player approach the world under the context of the RP they want and without being attached to any personal history of the protagonist.

Looking at the game's title and the promotional material that accompanies it, the would-be player might assume that, in terms of gameplay, it will essentially be something like a British interpretation of Fallout. I've fallen into this trap myself in recent months, but in the end that's not really the case. Atomfall may indeed be fully British in terms of atmosphere (the speeches, the environments, the tea that is abundantly available everywhere), but in terms of gameplay I'd say it's closer to the logic of games like Bioshock or Metro rather than Fallout, meaning that it functions less as an RPG and more as an FPS with some light Survival elements. Combined, of course, with semi-open world exploration; "semi" because the world is not a single, seamless area but is divided into 5 regions with loading screens between them, while dungeons and many interior locations are also separate instances with loading screens. It is also worth noting the, at times, almost "metroidvania-like" logic of exploration, as there are paths or shortcuts to locations, plot-critical or not, which can only be unlocked by advancing the plot and/or acquiring certain items.

The Survival elements mainly correspond to the Crafting system, under which we collect junk items scattered around the world and these are automatically converted into crafting resources, with which we can craft consumables if we first find the recipes for them. They also correspond to managing the relatively limited ammunition found in the world and the amount of it the protagonist can carry, so simply spraying bullets at all enemies like in an FPS is not a particularly viable long-term tactic, and a certain amount of wisdom is required when deciding the battles we fight and the weapons we use. They also correspond, finally, to the existence of Heart Rate as an alternative Stamina meter - if we run, climb, or every time we make melee attacks, the character's heart rate increases and if it reaches the maximum then we are unable to run or attack, which once again leads to more careful management of our movements. It should also be noted that, as part of the game's full Britishness, if we consume tea then the rate of pulse rise is reduced!

The first thing that impressed me early on in Atomfall is that it literally just throws the player straight into the world. There's no tutorial, no extensive introductory cutscenes (beyond a brief newsreel that narrates the basic story points regarding the nuclear plant), no prologue or introductory area of any kind. We simply "wake up" in the game, participate in an initial dialogue where some rough exposition about what's going on is dropped, and head straight out into the outside world to proceed as we please. It also becomes clear that there's a general plot thread that tells you e.g. "you need to go there", but how we end up "there" varies depending on how we want to explore, as there are clues about our mission scattered throughout many parts of the world.

Related to the latter is Atomfall's Leads system. Leads more or less act as rumors/evidence for informal quests. Whenever we get information from an NPC, find a letter in the world or hear a recording, the Notebook/Journal is updated with that information, and then we can pursue and explore it at will. For example, if we read a letter stating that there may be a hidden supply cache in the northeast corner of a region, then instead of the game just placing a marker on the map and a blip on the compass to follow, it simply will be listed as a Lead in the Notebook, and if we want to find that cache then we will have to go to that region and search for it based on the Leads we've gathered that are related to it.

This applies fully to the main plot, as I mentioned above. Thus, we can find Leads about plot-critical locations in all regions of the world, and therefore there is no single path that players must follow to find those locations, but they can explore the regions in whatever way they want and in whatever order they want, and they will inevitably find Leads that will guide them to where they need to go in order to advance the plot. Even critical tools, such as the Metal Detector, can be located in more than 1 place in the world so that players can find them regardless of where they want to explore first.

This rather old-school exploration aspect of Atomfall is one of the main things I loved about it, combined with investigating the mystery at its core. The game also has 6 different endings, depending on which NPC we prefer to help and follow to solve the mystery of Windscale. The nice thing, of course, is that there is no purely "good" or "bad" choice regarding which NPC to support, as by searching the world and finding the right Leads it becomes clear that they are all morally "grey" and have done their share of evil in recent years, directly contributing to either the nuclear plant accident itself or the chaotic situation that now exists within the quarantine zone. It is also worth mentioning that EVERY SINGLE NPC in Atomfall can be killed, whether they are plot-critical or not!

But as impressive as the exploration of the world and the plot is, I would describe the individual gameplay mechanics under which this exploration takes place as "underwhelming". In theory, all the right elements that would serve as the basis for something truly exceptional are present, but most of them are implemented in a shallow or incomplete manner. The combat, whether melee or in terms of the whole gunplay, is pretty "basic", most firearms work more or less the same way and don't seem particularly distinct despite their theoretical differences in range and damage, and while fighting with melee weapons we see that for some reason there isn't even the possibility to block incoming attacks. There is a Stealth component to the game, but it's mostly limited to crouched movement and hiding in the grass (but only in the "appropriate" grass, not all of it) to get the "Hidden" indicator to appear in the UI, while enemy AI (even on the highest of the game's 5 difficulty levels) is also quite low-level and many times enemies don't see us even if we are standing directly in front of them, or they see us and point us out but if we literally go 1 meter to the side instead of looking for us they will say "hmmm must have spooked them off" and continue their patrol route as if nothing happened. Even the Survival elements are, as already mentioned, relatively light and end up acting more as an inconvenience rather than a challenge that enhances the gameplay.

Another hit-or-miss element is the fact that 2 of the 3 main factions in the world are basically there just to fill the map with more potential enemies to destroy rather than to have any meaningful interaction with them. The same goes for the fact that once we leave an area then all the enemies we've already killed there are automatically respawned (which I suppose offers at least the benefit of being able to farm them for ammo). Finally, it's worth mentioning that completing the game on the 4th highest of the 5 difficulty levels took me around 14 hours, having explored everything and investigated all the leads I could find, a length of time that might seem slightly short to some.

Despite all that, however, I can say that I had a good time with Atomfall. Rebellion took a risk and created a game that is drastically different from the Sniper Elite games they are mostly known for, and the result may not be a universal triumph, but it's by no means a bad game. There's gold to be found in Atomfall, in its "cold war sci-fi" atmosphere and in the way the player can approach the mystery at its core, and I'm already looking forward to the story DLC they've announced for the future that will further enrich its world. The foundation is already here, but the fact is that this further enrichment is needed for the game to reach its true potential.

We would like to thank AVE Group for providing us with the review code for Atomfall.

Go to discussion...