Atomfall review — Splendid spot of tea

Bit odd, innit? How a team can develop a specific type of game for years and suddenly surprise you with something different? This was certainly the case as I sat in my seat at the Xbox Summer Showcase in 2024, watching the first trailer for Atomfall. While Rebellion hasn’t been relegated to the Sniper Elite series – remember, this team has been around for 30+ years – I wouldn’t fault you for only being familiar with them. Injecting something fresh is paramount to the growth of any gaming studio while keeping things from becoming stagnant. Atomfall is the result of a team that isn’t afraid to try something new and to quite solid results.

Everything begins with you waking up inside a bunker. You have no knowledge of who you are and how you got there, and a guy in a hazmat suit is asking for your help after being assaulted. You get the choice as to where to go from here, but it all culminates in your emergence from the bunker into jolly old England. Essentially, a disaster has led to a quarantine for the area, and you, being the nameless protagonist, must figure out what’s going on and how to escape.

This long and winding road leads to many mysteries, but thankfully with plenty of ways to solve them. Atomfall has a decent amount of narrative depth to it, with multiple layers you’ll have to peel back. Called the “leads” system, you won’t always get the most direct answer in your quests, having to move between different leads to figure out others in a puzzle-like way. Although I like this divergent method, I can also see it frustrating some depending on the difficulty they choose.

For instance, in the town of Wyndham, you’ll come across a murder on a visit to the church. Given the presence of the Protocol soldiers (the faction controlling the town and Skethermoor district), the vicar prefers to handle things in-house. Sure, he wants your help in finding the culprit, but to keep it all between you and him.

After taking care of the problem, I was rewarded with a few items by the vicar before continuing on my way. Down the line, as I continued to respond to different crises, I eventually ended up in front of the Protocol Captain, Sims. Here, I was presented with a quandary: tell him about the murder to get extra loyalty, or stay quiet. I tried to hold out for as long as I could, before succumbing in a moment where I wasn’t sure of a better way to enter the Protocol camp without resistance. There was an ultimate consequence that was carried out later, but by then I had already gone on my way. Some of these decisions can weigh on you, but there are a lot of reasons to explore your options.

That’s because Atomfall is a game you’ll want to run through quite a few times. There are multiple ways the endgame can shape out, depending on who you’ve helped and what you’ve done along the way to reach the final stage. While there is an end goal in where you’re heading, what you choose to do and who you escape with can be completely different. This works and doesn’t, as I find myself encouraged to jump back in and experiment, but the main story also feels a little more vague in the ending dialogue. Finishing my first playthrough, I wasn’t as sure as to how my escape went, although I did choose the most mysterious route of them all. This almost mimics Nier Automata in how multiple playthroughs will most likely be necessary to see the bigger picture.

Where most of your intel regarding this world comes from is dialogue. I found it largely good, with choices focused on your tone. Atomfall labels each piece of dialogue, allowing you the opportunity to be specific in how you want to respond. It doesn’t always matter, as certain moments of dialogue don’t lead to anything beyond the same answer from the NPC. Others, however, carry a lot of weight, like when I told the Wyndham shopkeeper to skedaddle (and quite successfully). My only qualm is that there aren’t any skill points behind dialogue, so it’s more choose-your-own-adventure than organic to my character’s level.

Similarly, the “survival” elements are a bit more watered down in Atomfall. Think of what Avowed did in comparison to Skyrim, streamlining the process. If you go in with that expectation, you’ll be good, but if not, you may be disappointed. Atomfall isn’t a sprawling survival RPG, but more of a semi-open adventure game, with elements from survival games and RPGs sprinkled in. You won’t be picking pockets or grabbing everything that isn’t nailed down; there are specific items littering the environment for you to scavenge. There are some great exploratory broken down buildings and bunkers where you’ll be able to search for those kinds of things, but the systems here aren’t that deep.

In all honesty, I appreciate this the most about Atomfall. It doesn’t look to waste my time with intricacies, but instead offers something intentionally built and solid. There aren’t a ton of perks, but the ones here are just fine. I didn’t have to mess with them much at all to tell you the truth. Bartering with trading NPCs isn’t difficult, just make your offer work and you’re done. There’s a little more to that considering you have to decide what you can live without until you pick something else up – like if you want to do without a pistol and can deal with a melee weapon instead in order to finish off that proposal for a first aid kit. In the end, what mechanics exist in Atomfall work, and that’s dandy.

If there were one area I’d expect Atomfall to be sound in, it would be combat. To no surprise, it’s just that. Like the other systems before, I don’t think there’s anything complex about it. Swiping a blade or bat around is simple. It’s probably most similar to Dying Light, just without the degradable weaponry. While I think the gunplay is a bit average (which makes sense when using all of these rusty guns), the bow and arrow is one of my favorite parts of Atomfall. It’s so incredibly satisfying from the get-go, easy to line up your shot and take out a foe with a single headshot if you get it right. Beyond melee and long-range, you’ll have a full arsenal of throwables, with makeshift grenades, molotovs, and nail-bombs to name a few.

I’m not all that impressed with the enemies, although I’m not mad at the design. Stealth is a hard thing to get right in this kind of game, and I found myself barely using it. Most of the sections of Atomfall take place in more open areas, and there isn’t a ton of cover. On the plus side, unless you’re directly trespassing, most baddies will leave you alone, yelling out occasional threats to keep you at bay. That said, the AI is pretty stupid, allowing me to pick them off quite easily. If my character wasn’t as brittle – you can die in just a few hits and probably worse on a higher survival difficulty – I’d be smoking these guys. There’s also not a lot of variety, with each faction having its own weaponry and a couple of creatures present to add some spice. I’d have liked to see the infected wildlife explored more, as it would have the potential to be fresh compared to the human foes.

Crafting is another part of Atomfall that is undemanding. As mentioned before, you can’t just pick up anything, but it also means that everything you grab is meaningful. Most of it will be supplies for crafting, which you will eventually have chances to use in crafting as you learn recipes by either buying them or coming across them in the world. There’s no mini-game to follow here; hold the prompt to craft until it finishes, and you have that thing. Everything goes into your inventory, which is admittedly quite limited, but makes sense for the more survival vibe they’re going for in Atomfall.

The flow of Atomfall is dictated by your choice of difficulty, and Rebellion has gotten creative with it in one of my favorite ways. Instead of simply making things harder, you choose a playstyle you prefer, which activates different levels of three key sectors. Combat, Survival, and Exploration difficulty have four different tiers, with five total playstyles giving you control over them. My personal preference is the Brawler, giving me more challenging combat, but guiding me through the story better. I’m all about this system; difficulty is more than just an enemy taking more hits to kill.

Exploring the world of Atomfall is another one of the heights of this game. This alternate universe take on the Windscale disaster in Northern England is a great choice, with outstanding visuals of the British countryside. Whether through green flourishing forests, rocky ridges, rolling fields, or underground tunnels, the setting pops. Rebellion has taken a lot of influence from British culture and inserted it as well, leading to some fantastic references and a believable world that feels alive, even if it isn’t densely populated. Walking around, talking with NPCs, interacting with the environment, I feel immersed in Atomfall. The decision for a semi-open world was a good one, as I never felt like an area overstayed its welcome and allowed the art team to outdo themselves with extra attention to detail.

My time with Atomfall was spent on PlayStation 5 Pro, and it runs phenomenally. I rarely had any frame dips, and the shine of the environment is aesthetically pleasing. I’ve heard of a few annoyances from bugs from another editor playing on Xbox Series X, but beyond that, everything has been fine on my side.