Atomfall is a AA Good Time

Move over AAAA game(s), AA is where it's at

This will be the only image in this post. It’s that good.

Atomfall might be the quintessential Game Pass game. It probably won’t “wow” you, but it probably also won’t bore you to death, either. Sometimes, that’s really all you want out of a game—not being bored to death.

Maybe if you were to spend your hard-earned money on it, you might be a wee bit disappointed. But, if judged as “something” to play on Game Pass, it’s a jolly good time, mate.

At least, for its 15-20 hour length, at which point, you’ll probably move onto the next thing and forget all about Atomfall in a month or two. (In my case, that next thing is South of Midnight—but more on that once I finish it in the next week or so).

Rebellion’s At It Again

But, for the unaware, Atomfall is the new game from veteran studio Rebellion, which has been pumping out games of varying degrees of quality since the early 90s. Surprisingly, Atomfall might be their best game yet—or at least up there … and at least in my opinion, which amounts to basically nothing since I don’t think I’ve played most of the other ones.

For all intents and purposes, Atomfall is an open world (ish) survival game (ish). The “ish” is there because it doesn’t really go hard in either of those areas. The world is relatively open, but it’s split into regions that you can travel between, which reminded me somewhat of the other “A” game that came out recently, Avowed. Only, I spent way more time revisiting the regions in this game than that one. Maybe too much time. I think some of that is due to my own haphazard way of playing.

The survival aspects basically amount to “don’t run out of ammo or the crafting resources for healing.” But even on the 2nd hardest difficulty, I never ran out of either of those things completely.

Jolly Old England

Perhaps one of the biggest draws of this game, especially for a dumb American such as myself, is the setting of Northern England, near the Windscale Power Plant, to be precise. For the unaware, Atomfall provides an alternate story to the famous Windscale fire of 1957, going from simply a terrible disaster to a terrible disaster of cosmic proportions, with a dash of conspiracies. Oh, and robots.

Artistically, Atomfall looks good, with rolling hills and some nice set pieces. Graphically, it’s a bit dated, but that’s not too big of a nitpick. For some reason, however, the game decided not to use any upscalers, which I’m sure was some kind of technical hurdle Rebellion couldn’t overcome.

I don’t think the game is really heavy enough to need them, but the antialiasing implementation is piss-poor, so it would’ve been nice to be able to use FSR or DLSS as an alternative. But oh well … I can’t imagine that’s a dealbreaker for anyone. And if it is, that’s weird.

Exploration Reigns Supreme

So, much like Avowed, exploration is the highlight here—although Atomfall didn’t reach the same heights as Avowed did, but it came close.

You’ll find yourself exploring the English countryside, delving into every nook and cranny in search of hidden treasures or interesting experiences.

This can include everything from ruined buildings or installations, hidden bunkers and caves, or just random encampments. Each place is fun enough to explore, but they reuse a lot of assets and layouts, especially with some of the bunkers—but I guess that’s the nature of bunkers.

These spaces are all enjoyable to explore, but they lack a “wow” factor that you might have found in a game with a higher budget and bigger scope.

There are some interesting things to see later in the game, but that would be spoilers, and nobody likes spoilers—well, some people do, but those people aren’t welcome here.

Pew Pew

No matter where you go, no matter what you do, no matter which cave you go spelunking into, someone’s probably going to try to kill you. Be it outlaws, druid cultists, or soldiers who are trying to keep this whole quarantine thing happening.

Most of these people will have guns—except for the druids, who seem to think that they can run at you with their axes and bows and not be popped in the head with a bullet. Sucks to be them.

Everyone else has varying degrees of firearms, with the soldiers having the best ones. There’s a whole condition system, with guns you can find being rusty, stock, or pristine. You can eventually learn how to upgrade guns, which involves just smashing two rusty guns together and somehow creating a stock gun, then doing the same with two stock guns to create a pristine gun.

Don’t ask me how you’re supposed to be able to carry all these guns to be able to upgrade them with the limited-ass inventory system, but you gotta do what you gotta do.

The gunplay is servicable, but it doesn’t exactly impress in any way, shape, or form. I don't think pristine guns really feel much better than rusty ones, but of course I didn’t analyze them too closely, nor am I a weapon specialist. They at least look way cooler when they’re pristine, so that’s a plus.

While ammo is limited, it’s never too limited to be a real issue, even if enemies respawn in a way that can best be described as stupidly. If you’re in a camp, save, exit the game, and load back in, I’ve found that they’ll often be respawned. They’ll also respawn if you leave and come back. It gets to be a chore, and I often found myself just sprinting past enemies. (Or, systematically taking them out with headshots because I’m a pro gamer.)

It’s a Survival Game, So of Course There’s Crafting

I’ll go ahead and cram a bit more about the crafting at the end of the section that’s primarily about combat, because nothing matters. Outside of gun upgrades, you can craft an assortment of other items, including healing, resistance potions, explosives, etc. Everything but arrows. And when 9/10 of your arrows break when you shoot them into the head of an enemy—that sort of bites. Huge missed opportunity to not allow you to craft arrows.

You’ll earn most of these crafting recipes by exploring the world and trading with merchants. That’s also how you get survival books, to unlock new skills to learn. The sense of advancement and growing more powerful is actually pretty good. There’s even a whole set of skills for the bow. If only you could craft arrows.

The crafting system isn’t too necessary, especially since there’s not much of a need to “survive” in Atomfall. But the resistance potions prove to be exceedingly useful for some of the environmental hazards.

I Listened to the Creepy Voice on the Tele(phone)

The crux of the story is to find a way out of the quarantine zone, especially since you can’t remember how you got into it in the first place. To accomplish this goal, you can align yourself with a few different characters who all say they will help you escape. So in that way, there are probably a few different “endings,” although I wager they are all variations on the theme.

One of those characters is someone (or something) that calls you up on the phone via the telephone boxes and guides you in your journey. I could’ve also allied with the army captain to escape with the soldiers (but nah I killed those fuckers). You could’ve also aligned yourself with a scientist or an herbalist. I think there are six or seven different ways to escape.

So, the story plays out slightly differently depending on whose escape plan you want to align yourself with. I just happened to like the creepy voice on the phone. He seemed nice, worth trusting.

Let’s Wrap This Thing Up

So, that was an awful lot of rambling for a game that I genuinely think is a 7/10. It does nothing exceedingly well, but it also doesn’t do anything exceedingly poorly. Not to compare it to Avowed again, but Avowed does a lot of things much better, but Avowed also has combat that almost bored me to death by the end.

At least in Atomfall, enemies die typically to one bullet to the end, even on the harder difficulties. But one’s a more traditional RPG and the other isn’t. So, it’s not really fair to compare the two.

However, 7/10 or not, I had an awfully enjoyable time making my way through Atomfall, and it’s not so long as to get long in the tooth, either. I guess the bottom line is that it’s basically the perfect AA Game Pass game.

And that’s something.