I knew little about Atomfall before playing a demo of it at a recent Xbox event in Los Angeles. I saw its trailer during June’s Xbox Games Showcase and assumed it was just a British take on S.T.A.L.K.E.R, which is getting a sequel this year. Although Atomfall certainly has that same survival edge and nuclear catastrophe setting, it also has RPG elements reminiscent of games like Fallout: New Vegas — especially when it comes to its dialogue system. Atomfall is a bold swing for a game developer best known for the Sniper Elite series, and I was left wanting more after my brief hands-on time with it.
The preview build of Atomfall I played began near the start of the game. My amnesiac player character emerged into a postapocalyptic-looking countryside in this alternate history where the Windscale fire nuclear disaster in Northern England was a lot more devastating. As is the case in S.T.A.L.K.E.R, players are thrust into a quarantine zone surrounding this nuclear disaster, and almost everyone else there is out for blood. In this early-game area, I walked around the ruins of a village while attempting to stealthily take out the crazed outlaws in the area, who had set up an outpost nearby.
Atomfall’s survival game roots really flare up here, as the game seems quite difficult. While enemies will go down after a couple of gunshot wounds and react to where they are shot, players are equally fragile. I couldn’t pause the game to heal, so I had to take account of that during gunfights. At least early on, stealth seemed to be the way to go so I could build up my arsenal of pistols, shotguns, cricket bats, and other makeshift weapons to fight through this apocalypse.
After that, I had an easier time taking on these outlaws, but then ammo and healing item constraints became my biggest concerns. It’s intentionally tough. Unfortunately, the autosave needs some work to support that challenge, as I got caught in a frustrating instantly-spotted-after-respawn loop at one point during my playtime. That’s the only aspect of the difficulty that doesn’t feel fair right now, but it’s certainly something that developer Rebellion Developments can tweak and sort out before launch.
While Atomfall will launch after S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2, it does seem like this will be a solid alternative for those already looking to move on from GSC World’s latest by next March. It also does a better job of appealing to more general gaming fans, mainly those of Western RPGs like Fallout. While almost every NPC in Atomfall wanted to kill me, one didn’t. His name was Nat Buckshaw, and when I spoke to him to gather information about this British nuclear wasteland, the conversation played out like it would in Fallout: New Vegas. I had full lines of dialogue to choose from, each associated with a different emotion or tone.
Buckshaw would give different answers depending on what the player said to him, and I even had the option to murder him with my weapons if I wanted to. There are also skill and crafting systems, although I didn’t have much time to go too deep with either of these during my playtime. None of this necessarily breaks new ground when it comes to RPGs, but it was a surprise to see those systems coupled with the nonlinearity and intensity of a survival game. Considering that S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and Fallout are both series about nuclear apocalypses, maybe I shouldn’t be surprised that the gameplay systems each utilizes mesh well together.
It’s quite the engaging mix, and if Rebellion sorts out the autosave issue I encountered, I’d play more. There were quite a few areas, namely nuclear bunkers, that were not accessible in this demo, and I really want to know what’s behind those locked doors.
Atomfall launches for PC, PlayStation 4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S in March 2024. It will be on Xbox Game Pass from day one.
