If you read the headline, you might think that Atomfall still hasn’t decided what it wants to be. An identity crisis? In fact, it’s just an echo of the comments from players who were looking forward to the March 27 release. We put aside our preconceptions, moved deep into the exclusion zone in Windscale, and are now ready to answer: is this game worth your attention?
Content
We find ourselves in Britain in 1962, but not the one we studied in history class. Immediately after the 1957 disaster at the Windscale nuclear power plant, everything changed. The nuclear explosion caused huge radioactive contamination that covered the southwest of England, and the locals are forced to adapt to new living conditions.
During the game, the feeling of complete isolation is mixed with the barely noticeable remnants of the old Britain. The post-apocalyptic landscape is striking in its beauty, but looks a bit artificial. For example, the sun is always shining on the surface, and this is discordant with the viscous-horrific vibe of the bunker adventures.
This world is not just an empty ruin, but a place where wars for resources are waged, where modified flora and fauna prevent walks in the forests, and fanatics and cultists try to take control of every vestige of civilization. So don’t expect quiet tea parties in old pubs.
If you’re familiar with games like S.T.A.L.K.E.R. or Fallout, this world will be familiar to you. At the same time, you can feel a special British flavor — there are not only post-apocalyptic horrors, but also clear markers of our geographical and socio-cultural adventure.
Atomfall uses classic survival mechanics, where you need to collect the necessary materials to make medicines, Molotov cocktails, tinctures, etc. Firearms are represented by a quite familiar set from a pistol to a sniper rifle. You can «knock off» rust from it in the process of passing.
Atomfall awakens the spirit of exploration in the player. Here you will not only search for resources, but also fight monstrous creatures and uncover the secrets of the quarantine zone. Every step in this world is a chance to gain new knowledge about the disaster and its consequences.
In fact, a short introductory video in the style of a diatribe brings us up to speed, giving us a bit of information… and that’s it. We wake up in some godforsaken bunker with amnesia. We see a scientist in a spacesuit, who is going through a hard time. He asks us to make him a bandage. To do this, he hands us a recipe for making a bandage, and we start crafting the first one. After helping him, we leave the bunker walls and the amazingly beautiful landscapes of good old England open up before us.
However, after taking a couple of tentative steps forward, we see a completely different picture: the British Chernobyl, which emits a cinematic blue ray into space and gathers gloomy clouds above it. Perhaps this is the noosphere. Or maybe not.
Then there are abandoned private houses, barbed wire fences and a man by a fire in a metal tank playing a guitar. Hmm, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Windscale? The vibes are similar.
In dialogues with characters, we can choose lines based on their emotional coloring. Sometimes it can help, and sometimes it can turn NPCs away from us. Communication can be minimized. Whether you’re an introvert or an extrovert — it’s even mentioned in the ending of the game.
By the way, about the plot itself. It’s classic: a protagonist with no memory, a closed wasteland with its own rules, and the protagonist’s stubborn attempt to get out of here. But your mood may change as you meet key characters.
One of them is the hero of the trailers: a classic red phone booth. A mysterious voice that will try to «lead» us along the paths and the ultimate goal known only to him: «Oberon» must be destroyed! Almost like Carthage, he repeats this mantra with the persistence of a Buddhist monk.
I immediately thought of Andrew Ryan. I thought that we would be shown this gray cardinal cameraman and that there would be some kind of plot twist connected to this. We will only find out about it in a purely empirical way.
But from the perspective of the visual facade, the choice of Britain’s business card is a good one. And yes, it looks like the Tardis. There are plenty of «Doctor Who» homages. And on other cult things: Bioshock, Skyrim, and even a bit of «The Witcher».
Despite some borrowings, the game offers its own interesting solutions. For example, we don’t complete a task, but conduct an investigation. We collect clues and draw a complete picture of the life of this exclusion zone in our heads.
The quests in Atomfall are interesting, although many of them are template quests: «take-find-bring». And there are those that will lead you almost to the stunning ending of the folk-horror «Wicker Man» or allow you to conduct a real investigation of a mysterious murder in a local church.
Atomfall has an option to just get GTA-style fun, but without car chases. Instead of cops, there are soldiers of the military faction «Protocol». Actually, these are the British military, who were instructed to keep the entire perimeter of the quarantine zone in an iron fist. Their actions are sometimes controversial: civilian labor duties look more like serfdom, and the local Captain Sims gives you freedom of movement around the village, but wants to get some information about the locals. Whether or not to be his ears is up to the player.
Choice is the key to everything, because you can send any NPC to the next world: from a plot-important one to an ordinary extra. This frees up your hands, but it also gets boring pretty quickly and you want to play someone more interesting. This is an RPG after all.
The ability to gain classic level-ups has been replaced by Bur Grylls-style skills, because first of all we need to survive in this terrain, which is not exactly welcoming.
By finding learning stimulants, you can level up four different branches: melee/ranged combat, survival skills, and health. Many of them are not available by default and to open them you need to find thematic literature, the so-called manuals. It’s vital, to say the least.
The quality of your gaming life is also influenced by classic craft. Something you assemble with your own hands. Recipes that can be exchanged or found.
A few words about trade. It is based on the principle of barter. There is no game currency. There are conditional scales where you offer your bribe, and the seller must have something comparable. And then you can close the deal and shake hands.
If you want to fight, you can do it with your bare hands (which is not very effective, but it is effective), as well as with the help of unusual improvised things: a cricket board, an ax, a shillelagh, etc. This is an Irish stick, but this is The Great Britain!
We have already talked about firearms. Without revelations, it’s boring. But the rusty stuff looks authentic. It would be strange to expect bad shooting from the creators of Sniper Elite. It is perfect here.
Every shot is felt, and you are already thinking about where the next bullet will go. You immediately think of V.A.T.S., but no — we have a harsh realism here. Think for yourself. This will be relevant for the later stages of the game, when you need to look for a weakness in the armor of enemies. Having knocked them down, of course, you want to run up and perform a spectacular «spin» by pressing the F button in the style of Leon Kennedy. But no, not unless you throw an axe between their eyes.
A little more about iron: you can use a metal detector and find buried treasures. It’s not exactly a fun activity, but it refreshes the gameplay, even though it doesn’t directly affect it.
A simple flashlight and an interesting sci-fi gadget that can redistribute electricity in the right direction, thus opening previously closed doors or disconnecting an enemy turret from the network, really save the day.
After starting the game in a small bunker, we will reach a huge underground complex called Interchange, which turns out to be almost completely de-energized and connects all the above-ground locations to each other. One of the first main quests is to find all the doors to it from the outside world.
To move through the plot, we need to be «breathe» life into this Black Mass, which is teeming with dangerous neighbors: soldiers, bandits, wild zombies, colonies of strange blue spores. Yes, it seems that game developers and filmmakers do know something about the fungal apocalypse. And they directly hint at it.
The enemies we meet on the way are diverse and have different habitats. Bandits are usually located somewhere in remote areas as far away from the capital village as possible, which is controlled by «Protocol». They resemble both the Joker’s gang and circus mimes, and even one of them seemed to resemble the main character of the TV series and comic book «The Indestructible».
By the way, you can also collect comics and beat up garden gnomes here! We are in England, remember. As such, there is no use for this, except as a way to collect and get an achievement. Remember the «question marks» on the map of the third Witcher? Interesting, but not necessary.
But a mandatory part of the program will be getting to know the bards! No, not with Lyubystok, unfortunately. But with B.A.R.D. — giant autonomous retrofuturistic robots. These are the most difficult and fierce battles because if you don’t plan properly, you’ll quickly go back to your ancestors. They are formidable opponents like, for example, a dangerous species of infected.
The employees of the underground complex successfully cosplay «Terminator» and go at it in cold blood, so to speak. And if they are wearing bulletproof vests, it only adds to the drive.
There are also flocks of blue-eyed rats that need to be taught manners with their heavy boots. Among other things, there are swarms of wild wasps and flocks of crows that quickly attack the player and fly in your direction with a silent «For Hitchcock!
And in the forest and the vicinity of the ruined castle, druids are waiting for you, who have formed a real cult in these lands. And their intentions are not at all neighborly. They are a kind of «Monolithic» from Stalker, «Cult of the Tree» from Alan Wake’s sequel, or the inhabitants of a Spanish village visited by a policeman from Raccoon City.
The graphics in Atomfall — are not next-gen, creating a graphical revolution right before your eyes. It’s not even current-gen, but past-gen according to the Hamburg scale, so to speak. But the local game engine can create a true atmosphere of civilization’s decline.
You immediately find yourself in a world where everyone is trying to say that everything has gone wrong. But people are still people and try to recreate their peaceful life before the accident and quarantine restrictions.
The lighting here doesn’t grab stars from the sky, but the lighting effects, even as simple as the light of a lantern, can create a strong tension effect. In the long bunker corridors, you can feel the atmosphere not even of the Metro series, but sometimes as if it were «Alien» Ridley Scott. Sometimes this flashlight can become your worst enemy when a crowd of soldiers or mutated zombies notice you because of it.
But the skyboxes (the firmament and clouds) here look like they are from the mid-2000s. It’s a bit of a jolt because there’s a good, detailed and drawn world around: rural and industrial landscapes are depicted well.
Underground levels — not impressive «corridors» F.E.A.R. era with newfangled shaders and slo-mo, but something like Metro. The way Interchange is designed deserves special respect.
And while the detail of the world around us makes a good impression, a certain clumsiness of NPC animations can slightly spoil the overall impression.
Parkour here is also very simplified, unlike the unexpectedly pleasant Avowed. The foot braking animation will openly annoy you, as will the inability to move vertically wherever you want.
I can’t help but write about another «minus»: the lack of any options for fast movement between locations. Yes, they are not gigantic. This is not S.T.A.L.K.E.R 2: Heart of Chornobyl with an area of more than 7 square kilometers. This was probably done on purpose so that we could feel the world through such travels.
The soundtrack in Atomfall doesn’t stand out as anything interesting, except for the final song in the credits, which is a bit catchy. But in the end, the dark ambient and whispering English wind complement the atmosphere.
In general, the atmospheric world in Atomfall is its serious advantage, making every moment of exploring this broken world worthwhile. The atmosphere of the end of the world, where every day can be the last.
From a technical point of view, Atomfall balances affordable graphics and good performance quite well, which allows the game to run well even on medium-sized PCs. This is a big plus for those who don’t have a top-of-the-line computer but still want to enjoy the game.
What is interesting: onpage on Steam There are still only minimal system requirements:
The recommended requirements are not yet available. The author of these lines ran the game on the following configuration without any problems: AMD Ryzen 7 2700, 2×8 GB DDR-4, and Zotac Geforce GTX 1080 Ti. On ultra settings at 1080p — 60 fps with vertical sync enabled. No lag, even in the most intense battles.
Atomfall does not have Ukrainian localization. Yes, Rebellion studio is much smaller than its Ubisoft counterparts, for example. So we shouldn’t be surprised at the absence of our language. Although no, it is! The Czechs from Warhorse Studios with their recent AAA project showed us how to do it right. I hope that Ukrainian players appreciated it and thanked the creators by purchasing the game. This is the best way to invest in future game localizations.
The dialogues in the original sound are a pleasure to listen to (the British accents of some NPCs are simply gorgeous!). It is worth noting that it will be difficult for intermediate and higher English speakers to understand the game without subtitles or English. This can cause language barriers and distortion of plot subtleties.
The quests, or as they are called here «clues», allow you to complete them without any problems and without stumbling around. There was a moment in the game that I managed to complete by simply looking up. Maybe this will help someone. Don’t thank me.
In general, Atomfall does not suffer from bugs or optimization issues. It allows you to enjoy the in-game world without wasting time on technical issues.
Atomfall offers several versions of the game for purchase:
Atomfall is also available for PC Game Pass and Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription holders.
For PC players, there is an option to purchase Quarantine Edition for €97.95, which is available exclusively through Rebellion Shop. This edition includes everything in the Deluxe Edition, as well as an extra: a t-shirt with the Wicker Man, a graphic novel by the famous British comic book creators 2000 AD, a soundtrack, posters, and postcards.
Given the scope of the game, its atmosphere, and the large amount of content on offer, the prices for the first two editions do not seem unreasonable. Let’s not forget about the high replayability because discovering all the endings of this story is a desire that will arise during the first playthrough.