Atomfall shouldn’t be Fallout. The comparability has been a well-liked one, however the builders needed to make it clear that this new IP from the creators of Sniper Elite is “its personal factor for positive,” they usually’re proper. It’s. However there are occasions when the similarities bounce off the display. Each concentrate on a post-apocalyptic world stuffed with mutants, warring factions, and–most relatable of all–they each characteristic a sprawling locked bunker on the coronary heart of their tales. However the place the inciting incident in most Fallout video games is escaping that bunker, Atomfall asks you to get inside its mysterious facility, The Interchange. It is in that merely acknowledged goal that Atomfall’s open-ended world design elevates the sport to be one thing totally different and attention-grabbing in its personal proper, whilst issues like stealth and fight drag it down at occasions.
Simply as Atomfall’s main brushstrokes are by-product of Fallout and different post-apocalyptic fiction, its story begins with an analogous penchant for the cliche. You awaken as an amnesiac in a Nineteen Fifties-set British countryside. A close-by cellphone sales space rings, and the voice on the opposite aspect calls for you destroy somebody or one thing referred to as “Oberon.” That very same voice will name again practically every time you method a cellphone sales space within the wild. The cryptic messages do not make a little bit of sense, however it does swiftly push you towards your goal: Discover and get inside The Interchange, a locked-down facility of some kind that appears to have been the location of a science experiment gone unsuitable. In there, Oberon can perish, should you so select.
The area’s folks have been left to place the items again collectively following this occasion, and it is resulted within the forming of a number of opposing teams, such because the navy drive that claims authority, roaming bandits who use the chaos as an invite to resort to lawlessness, and a cult of pagans who imagine the disaster was good, really. These territorial factions are sometimes remoted to their very own areas, that are skilled as a sequence of open-world maps that may be explored with out limitations as quickly as you begin the sport.
It is this aspect that rapidly shines as Atomfall’s finest facet and stays as such. Many individuals you meet have tales to share, rumors to unfold, and quests to softly push you onto. Excitingly, the sport does not spell this out at its supposed difficulty–though, on decrease difficulties, it provides a extra conventional quest log– and I discovered this to be a refreshingly hands-off method. As a substitute of spelling issues out, you merely decide up “leads” discovered by studying notes, chatting with NPCs, listening to audio logs, or simply merely going off in a course and seeing what you discover there.
For instance, a lead would possibly counsel a automobile depot was reported to exist at sure coordinates in a particular area. You’ll be able to then place a marker in your map and observe your compass to the rumored landmark–the sport will not do it for you. Perhaps you may arrive to seek out it is guarded by enemies. Perhaps it is vacated however locked, so it is advisable seek for a option to open it. What you are strolling into is rarely clear, so it is all the time thrilling. Early on, your investigations could flip up a number of leads, resembling the place to seek out close by merchants with rotating stock, however by the tip of the sport, I had dozens of leads sorted into classes. The sport does not even inform you which of those are main-story quests and which could simply lead you to one thing like a weapons cache or a number of ability factors. This lack of solutions makes each breadcrumb really feel prefer it’s price following.
As a result of the sport does not prohibit the place you may go or if you’ll go there, it properly units up a number of figurative dominoes to fall, irrespective of the association of your particular journey. It is extraordinarily unlikely you’d see the world in the identical order I or anybody else noticed it, so the adaptable world drops sufficient hints scattered throughout the map in your leads menu to all the time develop longer, whatever the course you run.
This all culminates in a remaining act that branches off into many alternative instructions primarily based on who you align your self with within the story. Even the act of escaping the area calls for you decide a aspect, as a number of factions plan to flee, whereas others search to remain there for their very own functions. This provides good purpose to handle a number of saves and experiment with totally different outcomes should you’re actually having fun with the branching story. In my playthrough, I noticed 4 of its main endings by reloading a save made proper earlier than a remaining alternative, however the smaller particulars are mirrored in a New Vegas-like cutscene, too, so reverting even additional within the story would have ripple results of its personal.
It is uncommon {that a} sport leaves you to your personal gadgets on this approach, and for that purpose, throughout Atomfall’s 15-hour story, exploring the world by no means acquired previous. Every discovery felt earned. Most fascinating of all of them was after I revisited a hub of survivors and navy overseers in a spot referred to as Wyndham Village. The primary time by way of, I might spoken to some people, picked up a number of leads, then discovered a transitional doorway to a different new map. That was thrilling in itself, so I left and went away for a lot of hours. After I lastly got here again to the village, I seen that a number of buildings may very well be entered and housed a number of extra elaborate leads of their very own, together with missions that tasked me with saving a lady’s husband from sickness, exposing a secret defector within the midst, and even fixing a homicide in a close-by church. I may’ve occurred upon all or any of those in my first hour they usually’d have been attention-grabbing then, too, however to return to a locale and reveal I might mainly ignored a number of main questlines was an expertise few open-world video games supply.
This sense of discovery and self-guided story stored me engaged within the face of a few of Atomfall’s weaker elements. Although every map is as intricate as these within the developer’s Sniper Elite video games, sneaking by way of them is typically a chore due to how eagle-eyed enemies might be. Oddly, additionally they appear to be arduous of listening to, so it created a dynamic by which attempting to have interaction with an space stealthily meant circumventing enemies who heard too little and noticed an excessive amount of. I may usually run close to them and never disturb them, but when I had been many meters away with out a damaged line of sight, they’d spot me in a approach that felt unrealistic and in a fashion most different stealth video games have conditioned me to not fear about.
Fight is tough generally, too. Although melee works effectively and provides a whole lot of enjoyable selection within the weapons you should use, like a survival knife, a stun baton, or perhaps a cricket bat, gunplay is cumbersome, identical to utilizing first-person taking pictures (aside from with snipers) in Sniper Elite might be. It simply does not really feel good to purpose with a controller on this sport, and it felt acquainted, given I simply performed the staff’s latest Sniper Elite sport a number of weeks in the past. On the whole, Atomfall looks like a repurposed Sniper Elite in some methods, with a lot of belongings reused from the WWII sequence and every map expressing related design ideas, however I did not discover this stuff to be stale like I did in my Sniper Elite: Resistance evaluate, by which I might lamented how samey that sequence has begun to really feel. The underlying shared DNA is seen, however the mission design retains it extra partaking and helps it stand out from different Rise up video games. I solely want the staff may’ve distanced itself farther from its different video games by fixing an issue that is hindered these others for some time.
Atomfall would possibly sound like an RPG, however it has many survival-genre leanings, too. The identical default issue that makes use of the sport’s terrific leads system additionally makes fight fairly powerful as a result of characters hit arduous and purpose effectively, and your unvoiced amnesiac is not so sturdy. That is managed with an abundance of crafting recipes like Molotovs and bandages on the go, however I discovered this technique routinely to be at odds with itself. I by no means discovered a backpack-capacity improve and assume one does not exist, which felt unusual after I’d be so stuffed with crafting provides that I may now not decide up objects whereas additionally having a full backpack to the purpose that I could not use these supplies to make extra objects. Primarily, the useful resource economic system was imbalanced; I had too many supplies and too little house by which to stash their finish outcomes. I did not all the time have the whole lot I wanted, however I routinely did not have the house for rather more anyway.
Like in Sniper Elite, I did generally discover its unlockable abilities bland, resembling one which reduces weapon sway (in a sport with little weapon sway within the first place) and one other that made meals objects present extra therapeutic, despite the fact that I not often had the posh of giving backpack house to a Cornish pasty or a loaf of bread. I am undecided why, however Rise up by no means provides a capability to permit you to crouch-walk faster–the very first thing I unlock in any sport that has it–despite all of the crouch-walking that goes on in its video games.
The great factor about abilities this time is that almost all branches have to be discovered or bought from merchants earlier than you unlock them with ability factors, additional rewarding exploration. Since I did not discover all of them, it is doable my favourite ability in video video games remains to be on the market someplace within the British countryside, however I outright ignored most of the abilities I found due to their lack of helpfulness.
Atomfall is not Fallout. Generally, that is as a result of Fallout is understandably a a lot larger, higher sport. However Atomfall additionally buildings its story and world so not like typical open-world video games, Fallout or in any other case, that the excellence is not merely meant as a slight on Rise up’s newest effort. Its contemporary, mystery-laden open-world design overcomes a bundle of world-building cliches and some gameplay hindrances to really feel novel and worthwhile the whole time. Usually, a brand new online game IP takes till its sequel to actually set up its identification. The theoretical Atomfall 2 feels prefer it may very well be a a lot larger sport sometime, as long as it is constructed on this sport’s intriguing quest framework. Right here and now, Atomfall is an effective sport that generally will get in its personal approach, however it’s the method of discovering your distinctive path by way of its story that may follow you after the mud settles.