Atomfall Review - Action Survival at its Best

Many times over the course of my Atomfall playthrough, I found myself pleasantly surprised by it’s bold design decisions. This is an action survival game that isn’t afraid to keep the player at a disadvantage, it’s also a story heavy game that doesn’t lock the player into a linear narrative, instead allowing you complete freedom to roam around, encountering and completing quests in any order you please. However if I had to choose what impressed me the most, it’d have to be just how much developer Rebellion respects their players. I played the game on the highest difficulty which turns off the compass, map markers and any semblance of a structured narrative. There wasn’t an endless sea of icons on my map or way points littering my screen, hell I had to actually read the notes I picked up and listen intently to NPC dialog for clues about where to go next. It really made me feel like I was personally in this world, piecing together the mysteries of the zone as I wandered around, discovering new locations and information that’d help me complete the next quest.

Even on the recommended difficulty, Rebellion refuses to hold your hand and that is this games greatest strength, they believe in your ability to piece things together and figure it out for yourself. Throw in an interesting world with rewarding exploration, heavy deliberate combat, a balanced item economy, well written and voice acted characters and you’re looking at one of the best action survival games in recent years. In a lot of ways I found it to be something of a greatest hits album, combining some of the best aspects from the heaviest hitters in the genre with great success. I was reminded of Stalker, Resident Evil, Bioshock, Fallout, Dead Space, Control and Half Life just to name a few. Atomfall simply felt like a very well balanced and thought out experience, not just in raw numbers, but in it’s core design philosophies. Really, the game continued to impress me right from the start all the way through to the credits and despite a few minor nitpicks or some missed opportunities, I can tell you right now Atomfall is worth picking up and for those with the gamepass, it is an absolute must play AA title that punches well above it’s weight. I’m already finding myself waiting for that story expansion, eager to uncover more of the zones mysteries.

Speaking very briefly on performance, I played the game on an rtx 5070 ti PC and it ran great on ultra settings in native 2k. The frame rate was solid, it never stuttered and I didn’t experience a single crash in my 15 hours of play time. I really have nothing to complain about, it felt well optimized from start to finish and looked great, I’m not even sure I encountered any bugs or glitches, a very welcome treat in todays space.

Atomfall is inspired by England’s Windscale fire, a nuclear disaster in which a fire broke out within one of the Windscale facility’s nuclear reactors, releasing radioactive material into the atmosphere in the October of 1957. Set in an alternate timeline five years after the event, the entire area has been walled off and under quarantine since the disaster, trapping scientists, civilians and a sizable military force now calling themselves the protocol. Over the years it became clear there was something more supernatural going on within the zone as soon after some of it’s inhabitants began hearing voices coming from the soil and even forming a pagan ritualistic cult known as the druids, devoting themselves to the voice. The protocol, now authoritarian with heavy fascist vibes occupying the town of Windham, are locked in conflict with the druids, desperate to keep any ties to the disaster quiet and under control, through any means necessary. There is of course also a large force of outlaws roaming the zone, looking to take advantage of the now apocalyptic state of life.

The player finds themselves awaking in a bunker as a pleading injured scientist hands you a modified key card that grants access to the interchange, a huge underground military science installation that houses the zones biggest secrets. With neither of you certain of who you are or how you got there, all that matters is you access the interchange, learn the truth and escape the quarantine zone. With that, the game just gets going, immediately throwing you out into it’s world to fend for yourself, your first encounter being with the operator, a disembodied voice from old, out of service telephone booths scattered around the zone. Though the operator is often cryptic, one thing is made abundantly clear, they want you to kill Oberon. Who or where Oberon is, well that’s up to you to discover. The games quests, at least on the recommended settings, don’t point you to where you need to go. They instead function like investigations, with every piece of information you uncover unlocking more clues about where to go next or what exactly you need to do. From talking to NPC’s or finding notes out in the world, any useful information will contribute to the relevant task at hand in your journal. There’s also no set order in which you have to complete them, so you’re not only given complete freedom to traverse the entire world any way you see fit from the start, but also the freedom to piece it all together any way you please. It’s a very refreshing change of pace and I absolutely loved it. It really encourages you to pay attention, to actually read the documents you find or check your notes constantly like a detective solving a crime. Receiving map coordinates that you have to manually mark or investigating a rumored location is a real treat, it creates this highly engaging loop of intrigue within the already excellent exploration.

Speaking of paying attention, luckily it’s made easy because the world is so fascinating right from the start. Characters are well written and acted, with meaningful dialog that contributes to the situation or plot at large instead of assaulting you with nonstop exposition dumps. I also found most of the notes to be well written too, providing just enough information that’s actually useful without being overbearing. You’re also rewarded for your efforts as several times I read information that helped me figure out other quests even though the note wasn’t directly tied to it, like a quest mentioning a location then an unrelated note providing details on how to access it. Very early on this created a solid feedback loop that encouraged me to really pay attention to everything the game was telling me because it all felt meaningful.

That same care was put into the world itself, which is split up into 5 reasonably sized regions. These areas aren’t huge, which is good because there is no fast travel, but each one is dense with locations to discover both marked and unmarked. There’s not a lot of bloat or filler here, you don’t have endless checklists to complete or areas to clear, but with character progression so deeply tied to exploration, you’ll definitely feel compelled to clear every inch of each map none the less. Like any good survival game you’ll of course always be on the lookout for the obvious, like medical supplies, ammo, crafting materials, crafting recipes and of course weapons, but the real reward is finding training stimulants which unlock your skills. The skill tree itself is simple, but effective, there’s no wasted nodes or prerequisites that feel like bad purchases and even with light exploring you should be able to piece together something that compliments your playstyle. More skill options are unlocked through manuals, which can be found, bartered for and obtained through some quests.

Of course besides exploring you’ll primarily be engaging in combat, which is this very heavy, cumbersome dance with a focus on melee attacks, often against groups of foes. You can sneak and take down enemies, but you’ll inevitably have to fight head on especially on the higher difficulties. You have an attack, heavy attack, can throw your weapon and kick which is essentially your interrupt in place of a block or parry. Instead of a typical stamina bar you have to manage your heart rate, which mostly functions as you’d expect, a high heart rate means slower attacks, dim vision, more weapon sway and makes you easier to detect while sneaking. At the start you’ll be desperately trying to sneak around, picking off anyone you can before being detected at which point it turns into a slow paced back and forth, kicking enemies into each other, moving in for a heavy hit and then backing off. Then as often is the case in this genre, by the end you’ll be a walking armory of firepower, with an assortment of guns, throwables like explosives and tonics that grant buffs like resistances to various ailments. I really found the combat enjoyable, reminding me of the slower paced survival horror games, but with more freedom of choice since you can very quickly find a wide range of weaponry. Plus even on the highest difficulty, headshots are always more effective, throwables always hurt and every weapon felt viable even without the supporting skills. It made combat feel like a desperate shuffle to use everything I had to ensure I emerged victorious, it wasn’t until much later that I settled into a favorite loadout.

It’s a good thing you’re encouraged to use everything you can because as any survival game fan will tell you, inventory management is pretty much a requirement and Atomfall makes sure to tick that box too. While you’re likely to quickly fill your inventory space, you soon learn your favorites and it’s not a problem sorting accordingly. There’s also storage boxes scattered around the maps, so pile in all that excess and use it as trader bartering next time you’re doing a trade run. It’s also nice that ammo and crafting material have their own storage, not taking up the precious physical inventory slots. This was an excellent decision, as I feel it allowed Rebellion to better control their item economy. Often times, these games will live or die by how many resources they give the player and even on the hardest difficulty, I found the item balance to be impressively well tuned. I focused on a firearm playstyle and was constantly switching between my weapons, just barely keeping up with my ammo reserves. Again, it wasn’t until the very end that I felt like I had more firepower than I could possibly need, but I also explored every map and built up quite the stash. The same goes for healing and crafting supplies, I always felt like I had just enough in the moment so long as I didn’t make a big mistake within an encounter. This is a very difficult tug of war to win, you want the player on their back foot at all times, but you also don’t want to make the experience outright miserable through item scarcity. Rebellion absolutely struck the perfect balance here in my opinion, hats off to the team.

While I’m talking about balance, I just want to gush for moment about how well rounded of an experience this game was as a whole. Every part of it felt rewarding to me, every aspect feels well planned, thought out and executed. This is a huge shining example of a game not suffering from endless bloat, scope creep and bad management. Without even looking into it I can almost guarantee this game had solid management with a strong set of design philosophies and how every system should interact with one another from the start. It’s a game driven by player choice, not arbitrary things like branching dialog paths, but rather in the very literal sense of how one chooses to play the game and interact with each system. It’s also a game that respects the players time and intelligence, allowing even more freedom within it’s difficulty settings. What’s most impressive is how nothing is sacrificed in the process, you can approach combat how you want, progress through the story how you want and go anywhere you please without it sacrificing or conflicting with any other system. The bottom line is, this game was very well planned out and executed, it shines through in the product that was delivered and I cannot commend the team enough here, bravo.

With that said, it’s certainly not perfect. I already know that some players will find it’s focused simplicity to be shallow especially if they go in expecting fallout or another open world rpg, when this is more akin to a resident evil set within a stalker world. Combat could use an extra layer of something, like Bioshocks plasmids for example, to help alleviate some repetition. The enemy AI can be easily exploitable, especially given the slower pace of combat, ladders or choke points always make it far easier. Ranged enemies will often stand out of cover aiming at you, allowing you to jiggle peak nonstop like it’s the early 2000’s and you’re playing counter strike. Respawn timers often feel way too fast. There’s this fixation on throwing swarms of wildlife at you like whole colonies of rats or gaggles of pissed off birds, it’s fine at first but after mashing a few of these swarms down I’m over it. I know there’s an explosive bait bomb for it, but I never have on hand when I need it and didn’t have the recipe for the longest time. Also, you can’t hotkey medical items, so you have to go into your inventory like an early resident evil game, I’m sort of okay with this but.. Why do this?

The environments aren’t too different from one another with the exception of interchange and it’s always sunny out, seriously this game has the most pleasant weather of any survival game you’ll play. I’m not asking for a dynamic day night cycle, but it’d be nice if it got darker as you progressed the questlines. There’s a real lack of enemy variety, it’s basically just ranged or melee humans and that’s about it. Since I’m really nitpicking here, I do wish the game leaned harder into it’s horror elements. It never really commits to horror, even in the interchange and final areas of the game that closely resemble something out of a resident evil title, you’re still just fighting the same enemies you’ve seen in well lit locations. To really get petty, there’s this animation that plays when you’re walking over a ledge, like you’re losing balance or something, this shit is annoying as hell and tripped me up more often than not. Oh and why the hell do we crawl and squeeze through so many tight spaces? I get that a lot of games started using these as a loading transition, but here 9 times out of 10 I find myself asking why the hell even have this here? Occasionally it’s for a better ambush opportunity or out of sight secret, but mostly they’re in areas that could have just had a door instead, it’d have no effect on function or gameplay. I found it comically overused at times. Finally I didn’t find any of the 6 endings to be particularly great, I didn’t hate them or anything, they’re not terrible, but after such a strong experience they definitely left a lot to be desired and I hope the planned expansion ends on a stronger note.

But yeah, that’s Atomfall. I could go on for awhile about this one, I very much enjoy analyzing games down to their design philosophies and think this one really hit it’s target, but I don’t want to give any more of it away. This is a game that deserves to be experienced and you deserve to go in with as little knowledge as possible. I went in knowing nothing and it continued to impress me at every turn. We need to support games like these especially in the AA space from smaller studios, it’s a shining example of just how much bloat and filler is destroying the AAA space, with the incessant need to appeal to everyone for max profit. Atomfall strips a lot of that bullshit away and simply gives us a very strong, well paced experience that’s meant to be replayed from many different angles. I thoroughly enjoyed my time with it and already look forward to replaying it many different ways, so it’s no surprise that I highly recommend Atomfall.