When the offer to spend 90 minutes with Rebellion’s brand new IP Atomfall arrived in my inbox, my reply was less professional and more an enthuastic yes screamed across an Email. After spending some time with the upcoming alternate-history game (due to release on PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series and PC on March 27) I’ve come away very intrigued. Though a little stiff and rough around the edges – which is hardly surprising given the double A space Rebellion works in – Atomfall’s mix of slow-burn mystery, first-person survival gameplay and beautiful, post-apcolyptic British countryside might end up being something special.
The game is built around the infamous Windscale nuclear disaster that occurred in England in 1957, which ranked as a 5 out of 7 on the International Nuclear Event Scale. A 3-day fire raged at the facility, sending radioactive fallout across the country and Europe. At the time, the government attempted to heavily downplay what happened lest the public lose its faith in nuclear power. Atomfall plays on this idea, asking a simple question: what else was being covered up? what if the government locked the area down completely for years?
Atomfall takes place five years after the disaster, dropping players into a fictional version of the past in which the area surrounding the nuclear facility was put into quarantine, even going so far as to lock the military in as well. Now, the Lake District is a mess of civilians trying to survive, the military controlling what they can and cultists roaming around. But it isn’t just humans that are dangerous in this world. I get my first taste of this as I traverse a short tunnel. Lurking in the dark are Ferals, strange glowing blue creatures that may o may not have been human at some point. They spew some mysterious substance, briefly infecting me with a strange disease. They also take a fair bit of damage to put down.
The Windcale plant is a near-constant sight in my 90 minutes of hands-on time with the game. You’re never far from somewhere that offers a look at the plant in the distance, a strange blue plume billowing from the ruins. Atomfall is described as being a very open game in how you approach it, with numerous paths available, but the developers hint toward the majority requiring you to eventually enter Windscale itself. After all, it’s at the centre of the mystery.
But that’s not important to me right now. As the amnesiac lead character of unknown origin, age and gender, I’ve been dumped into a point some 3 or 4 hours into the game with little context of what’s happening or why. Rebellion is happy for me to wander freely, to chase down any lead I can discover. One of the core tenets of the game is that there are numerous leads that can take you to the end of the game, while many of them will go nowhere, and you’re free to explore all of them. The developers also hope that people will replay the game to explore other avenues that were locked thanks to the paths they chose, or indeed the people they kill because it turns out you can kill literally anyone in the game. I didn’t get a chance to test that particuilar claim, though, as I figured it wouldn’t be a great way to use up my 90 minutes.
Still, they have given me one lead in my journal already – a lady who has set up camp near an abandoned mine. She might have some useful information.
That brings me to the map and quest system. Instead of being given a nice big map marker to point myself toward, Atomfall makes you work a little harder. There’s no on-screen marker, so you need to refer back to the map figure out where you’re going. Sometimes characters will mark a specific location on the map, other times you’ll have a set of co-ordinates that will point in roughly the right direction. It’s refreshing, as I’ve not played many games lately that don’t point to exactly where I need to be at all times.
After taking 30 seconds to hit random buttons in a bid to figure out how things work, I set out and immediately lay eyes on a bright red phone box in the middle of a small valley. As a Scotsman, I’m not unfamiliar with these pieces of British history and have seen a fair few of them in odd locations, but this one is taking the metaphorical biscuit. These odd phones are useful, though, as I find out later because they allow a mysterious voice to communicate with you. Who is the voice and what does it want? Both are questions I cannot answer until the game releases later this month.
I walk headfirst into my first taste of combat in Atomfall before too long. Being set in Britain means guns aren’t so easily acquired or relied upon, with most of the firearms being what you might find on a farm – i.e a rusty shotgun or a hunting rifle that’s seen better days and a lot of cow shit. That means you need to heavily rely on melee weapons as well, like a trusty cricket bat or a fireaxe. At least, that’s the theory. In reality, I actually found plenty of ammo and guns scattered around, so provided I wasn’t overly trigger-happy and used reasonable aim, I was able to gun dowjn most opponents at range. This also led to me learning that some opponents who don’t have a ranged weapon of their own will back off if you aim a gun at them.
Of all the elements in Atomfall it’s the mellee combat that hasn’t got me quite convinced. Partially this is because streaming a game via Parsec isn’t very conducive to first-person melee combat. It’s easy to whiff even the easiest attacks when what you’re seeing on the screen doesn’t quite match up with what’s actually happening. The other issue is that there’s no dodging or blocking, and movement speed is quite slow, so no matter what I wound up taking heaps of damage. It wasn’t until closer to the end my of time that I realised I wasn’t using the kick to full effect. Listening to a Q&A later, I learned it’s meant to be used to push enemies back to give yourself space, especially important when facing groups.
Really though, the real answer is that combat should be avoided where possible. You aren’t a super-soldier, a mega-spy or freaking Duke Nukem, so taking on groups is a dumb idea, as is trying to fight an enemy armed with a gun when all you have is a cricket bat and an attitude problem. Stealth is the more sensible approach, as is circling around the many enemy patrols that amble across the landscape like they’re out for a Sunday stroll.
On my way to the old lady I find myself distracted by a small radio tower, because my gamer instincts kick in and inform me that tall, climbable things almost always have loot at the top. This one turns out to have some plot at the top, which is equally as exciting. The tower is deactivated, but a strange note discusses needing something to power it up. It also reveals someone is camping out at a set of co-ordinates near where I’m heading anyway, so I reckon a friendly visit is in order.
After raiding a few houses, exploring a cellar and battling some weird blue glowing bees, I eventually find the woman the note mentioned holed up in a bunker. After a quick chat, I end up chasing down a location called The Interchange, a massive underground bunker that’s without power. The structure is mysterious, and the character that informed me of its location wants power restored so that she might communicate with the outside world. But the strange voice at the other end of the telephone wants me to power it up too, though in this case it’s so I can kill someone or something called Oberon. That’s going to be tricky though, because to power up the structure I needed to head underground into an area rife with an infectious…stuff. It quickly became clear that I wasn’t equipped to deal with it yet, a hint that the Interchange is something to come back to later. Plus, I probably shouldn’t be too eager to listen to people on the end of a phone. The last time I did that I ended up with a restraining order.
My exploration of the Interchange brought short, I staggered back into the sunlight and tried to decide where to head next. Rebellion had mentioned being happy for me to explore, so figuring I wasn’t going to be advance the story much in the time I had left, I headed off to a point on the map which loaded me into a new area. I found myself in the town of Wyndham which appears to be the only remaining bastion of civilization. It’s under the control of the military, though, who also found themselves locked down and cut off from the outside world. Now the town is under control of the military’s leader who rules with an iron-fist and daily yelled briefings. There’s good news for me though, because he’s apparently willing to give newcomers a bit more leeway, or at least that’s what the chatty chap in the local pub tells me as I negotiate for some potentially valuable information.
It’s in this town that I also get my first proper glimpse at how Atomfall plays with its alternative view of history. Stomping around the streets are mechs that appear to be operating via some rudimentary form of A.I., although this A.I. does not seem keen on answering whatever random questions I have. Both them and the soldiers leave me along provided I don’t get too close, which I’m perfectly okay with because I’m fairly sure my trusty cricket bat and the single shotgun shell I have left are not going to make a dent in the mechs.
The rest of my remaining time with the game is spent exploring random things. I’ve been told I’m down to just 10 minutes by this point, so I quickly head to explore a lead that the pub’s owner gave me and wind up in the Interchange via another door. It seems like the Interchange could be used as a shortcut between areas, but that’s just speculation.
So I hot-foot it back through the Interchange and back into the original area I started in and decide to see if I can make it to a castle run by cultists to acquire a book that old lady from the abandoned mine wanted. Sure enough, I never make it because I am once again distracted, this time by a rundown manor that is apparently a hotel. At least, that’s what the crazy old bat living there tells me, but she might not be the most sound of mind as she seems to firmly believe there are still guests living there and that her butler Jenks will be back any minute. Sure, Granny, whatever floats your pyscho-boat, I guess.
By this point my time is up and I have to surrender control back to the developers. Despite feeling like I wasted my time by not focusing in on any one particular story thread and chasing it, I ended the session feeling like I had an enjoyable taste of what Atomfall is setting up to be. The description of British Fallout has been used quite a bit to describe it, and honestly it does conjure that feeling.There is a somewhat Fallout vibe to it all. But there’s no doubt that Atomfall is also its own thing.
Exactly what that thing is remains to be seen though. There’s elements of survival games within Atomfall, albeit nowhere near as hardcore. You don’t have to worry about food or sleeping, but you do need to scrounge for everything you can find (there’s a crafting system) and play cautiously. It clearly isn’t meant to be a straight shooter or action game, as your health drops far too quickly for that. The promise of there being no specific path through the game is an intriguing one, as is the idea that some leads go nowhere while other approaches will see you through to the end of the game while also leaving many questions unanswered. To figure everything out, you’ll need to play through a few times. Even then, Rebellion say there will be elements of the story left unasnwered, a nod to the speculative fiction which inspired the game’s creation such as Doctor Who, The Wicker Man, The Quatermass Experiment and The Day of the Triffids. And yes, Fallout: New Vegas is on the list of inspirations as well.
Whatever it does end up being, it’s nice to see Rebellion trying something very different. Atomfall is a huge departure from the power-fantasy of the Sniper Elite games where you can merrily pick off every Nazi from a distance, toying with the AI every step of the way. In Atomfall, you aren’t powerful. Still, old habits are hard to break, so for fun I threw a cricket bat at a mech. It did not go well. My squished remains shall lie on the cobblestone road of that little, charming English village run by by a military dictator.
Atomfall launches on PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series S/X and PC on March 27th. Expect a full review.
