My mind didn’t immediately go to Bethesda’s Fallout series when it emerged from the quarantine zone bunker to the lush green environment of the Lake District of England at the opening moment of Atom Fall. Instead, I thought of Eldenling. That’s because, although not on a large scale, this survival action adventure takes a similar approach to FromSoftware’s 2022 masterpiece, in a way that drops you into foreign lands with just the inexplicable clue that you trust you to unearth many mysteries, as you find your fun and delve into fascinating mystery through many mysteries without a clear idea of who you are. It’s a freeform storytelling structure that has managed to make me completely engross and consistently amazed me in the 15 hours it took me to roll credits, despite occasionally struggling with inconsistent combat encounters with cruel enemies like the British.
Inspired by the real-world front-scale nuclear disaster that occurred in northern England in 1957, Atomfall’s story takes place within fictional, finely detailed quarantine zones surrounded by abandoned villages, forest areas and farmland five years later. The rifts separated from the outside world form within the surviving masses, seizing the existence of the occupying forces against many rival factions, thus choosing which quirky quests coordinate or contradictory moral confusion in the flexible system that betrays with fallout-inspired flexible systems.
To further enhance the sense of paranoia around each tough decision I made was regular communication from unidentified voices in one of the many red phone booths found around the world.
In addition to the main efforts to uncover the truth behind the front-scale accident, there are several minimasries to be featured in conversation and resolved along the way that can be found in discarded documents within many unique structures to explore the five interconnected maps of Atomfall. During opening hours, I found myself quickly stumbling on with the charming distraction that was trying to investigate the murder of a pastor’s assistant at Wyndham Village Church and trying to determine who or what was trapped in a residence above a local bakery. Sometimes I settled these leads in diplomacy, but at other times it ended with violence.
What I feel is really different from what I am currently in is that instead of the compass at the top of the screen, I tell you exactly where you need to go next. Atom Fall is doing a great job of directing more organically, instead teasing subtle hints. This allows you to connect these puzzles by actually measuring longitude and latitude coordinates on the map, deciphering vague descriptions of a particular location, or by catching eye with chimney smoke feathers from a distant farmhouse. It was refreshing to remove the game map from the clutter of typical open worlds and be allowed to use my own curiosity as a compass rather than being immediately grabbed and maneuvered by a series of unpleasant wayspoints like many other open world adventures. (That being said, Atomfall’s menu offers options that can provide a more guided experience if you like. At one point, the location of certain quest items seemed a little too vague, but it’s turned off here instead of default.)
Reactor Core Brimay
It is also very innovative for British people to experience a very cute survival action game. Atomfall is an adventure that introduces one quirky side character that sounds like a major in Fawlty Towers, while the other is a nauseating image of Queen Elizabeth II. You can create poison bombs using pint glasses filled with nicks from a local pub, replenish your health by pushing them into a cornish paste, or drink a warm cup of Earl Grey to lower your heart rate. Certainly, Fallout: A London total conversion mod that incorporates the same flavor, but Atom Fall’s detailed England detailed slices feel like a wonderfully unique place to set up a sandbox shooter.
The contents of its mystical quarantine zone are also shaped by the greatest science fiction and folk horrors of Britain. There are more obvious examples, like deadly flowers blooming at the intimidating heights of forested areas. However, there are also inconspicuous indications that I have never guessed my own senses again. At one point, you could have vowed to see the outline of the familiar blue telephone booth belonging to an English doctor on the far hill.
Not British means it’s not just the weather. With no weather system or day/night cycles, it’s nothing but the sunshine in Atomfall’s isolation zone. This not only brings me to one of the least boring apocalyptic gaming worlds I have ever explored, but also makes for an incredible contrast with each passing through to the dark depths of one of many underground bunkers and caves.
Keep calm and carry the gun
Most of Atomfall’s battles are found in these underworld facilities against looted outlaws, druid fanatics, wild mutants and timbers of the Killbot Sentry. Despite the facility with similar sandbox structures and multiple entry points, it has become very clear from a fairly early stage that Atomfall is far from a distant cry that can shoot down an army alone. Your character is like everyone who leapt out of the bunker five years after the disaster. So it makes sense to be desperate and cautious about melee. A fresh round chamber slows down on rusty shotguns and rifles, and heart rate deficits put too much physical effort into slowing down the stability of the weapon and relying on calm. By design, you’re not an oiled killing machine, but a shopping cart with one unstable wheel.
Therefore, Atomfall required careful preparation and execution to survive each encounter, resulting in a rather steep and satisfying learning curve at its recommended survivor difficulty level as I learned what I could handle and what I couldn’t. So I quickly settled on a slow, stable stealth approach, especially once I got my bow during my battle with the Druids in the Caster Felwoods Zone. Archery is effectively silent, so it is not easy to draw the attention of the enemy because it is thinned out. And I am often able to retrieve arrows that remain on the victim, which is different from when I relied on the hard and fast used shells of shotguns.
I have to say that Atomfall’s stealth system doesn’t feel that adaptable to developer Rebellion’s own Sniper Elite series, but I have consistently enjoyed sniping from the shadows. You can sneak up behind the enemy and gently crouch yourself in the neck or long grass to leave it hidden from detection, but despite the fact that almost every bandit camp or bunker is strewn with whiskey bottles to collect for the creation of items, you cannot throw any of them, for example, to create a split. Also, as far as I know, I can’t make smoke bombs to hide escapes from the area, but certainly I can’t be entirely certain about it. Given how much I love Atomfall pushes secrets into almost every dark corner of the world, it’s possible that somewhere in a few dozen hours later, a smoke bomb recipe clenches at the bottom of a mine shaft.
When my cover was blown away and things were loud I found Atomfall exhilaratingly rough and falling, but in a noticeable contradiction. I was ambushed by a series of life-supping shotgun explosions, squeezing under a half-closed roller door, before barely coming out of the crawl animation, and I was clearly burned by the robotic sentry flamethrower that seemed to be passing through the wall of the robotic sentry. Conversely, there were times when enemies were comically inappropriate, like when they turned corners of enemy groups, lure ladders like the Lake District Lemming line, or smacking British bandits with their stiff upper lips with cricket bats. I wasn’t entirely sure if the battle I was in was intense or if it would be a complete farce.
What I am grateful for is that you will encounter enemies patrolling from their home base and you will give them a berth wide enough. It’s great that they don’t shoot in sight, as the only way to travel in Atomfall is on foot. So reaching another world from a pretty corner of the world would have been a huge pain if we were constantly dragged into a firefight every few steps. That being said, although it may have been detrimental to the commitment to immersion, I understood that there was a considerable backtrack in the second half of the story, only relaxed in enclosed houses where secret sewer access points and dense crowds were welcomed, so there was considerable backtracking, as there was considerable backtracking.
Please gently train me
The skill tree in Atomfall is very streamlined, but to be fair, given the short, sweet 15-hour length of the story, it probably didn’t have to be overly elaborate. There are four main categories – Ranged Combat, Melee Combat, Survival and Conditioning – each to choose from nine unique perks. I unleashed slow motion with most of the meth I had collected to the bow, further silence of my sneak attack. But if you’re focusing on melee more than me, you can, for example, choose a buff that increases damage output with each brawl, or for example, shift the enemy for a long time to increase the power of a kick attack. There’s no big surprise here, but it’s enough to suit a variety of play styles, and after playing Atom Fall at the same time as the shadow of the Assassin’s Creed, it compares it and features a skill tree with more branches than an untouched bonsai.
Crafting is equally easy. Clean all parts of waste scrap metal, glass or liquid, all discarded environments removed throughout the environment, creating all versions of bandages to nail bombs, and ultimately untouched, powerful versions. Thankfully, all of this can be done on the spot, rather than having to stop what you’re doing to find a workbench.
Still, the most satisfying thing to craft in Atomfall was my own fate. I was able to maintain some major factions in order until the climax of the story, but in the end I was forced to make a decision that had satisfying consequences for my personality, but with serious consequences for others I took as an ally. From being able to be there, at least five different potential consequences need to be reached, and from what I’ve seen so far, I’m fully invested. This includes visiting many different areas that you have failed to explore during your first playthrough.
