Atomfall isn’t Fallout. The comparability has been a preferred one, however the builders wished to make it clear that this new IP from the creators of Sniper Elite is “its own thing for sure,” they usually’re proper. It’s. However there are occasions when the similarities bounce off the display screen. Each give attention to a post-apocalyptic world filled 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 said goal that Atomfall’s open-ended world design elevates the sport to be one thing completely different and fascinating in its personal proper, at the same time as 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 Fifties-set British countryside. A close-by cellphone sales space rings, and the voice on the opposite facet calls for you destroy somebody or one thing known 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, for those who so select.
The area’s individuals 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 army 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, truly. These territorial factions are sometimes remoted to their very own areas, that are skilled as a collection of open-world maps that may be explored with out limitations as quickly as you begin the sport.
It is this component that shortly shines as Atomfall’s greatest 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 would not spell this out at its supposed difficulty–though, on decrease difficulties, it presents 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 choose up “leads” discovered by studying notes, talking to NPCs, listening to audio logs, or simply merely going off in a course and seeing what you discover there.
For instance, a lead may counsel a car depot was reported to exist at sure coordinates in a selected area. You’ll be able to then place a marker in your map and comply with your compass to the rumored landmark–the recreation will not do it for you. Possibly you may arrive to seek out it is guarded by enemies. Possibly it is vacated however locked, so you want to seek for a approach to open it. What you are strolling into isn’t clear, so it is all the time thrilling. Early on, your investigations could flip up a couple 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 would not even let you know which of those are main-story quests and which could simply lead you to one thing like a weapons cache or a couple of ability factors. This lack of solutions makes each breadcrumb really feel prefer it’s value following.
As a result of the sport would not limit the place you may go or while 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 last act that branches off into many alternative instructions based mostly on who you align your self with within the story. Even the act of escaping the area calls for you choose a facet, as a number of factions plan to flee, whereas others search to remain there for their very own functions. This offers good purpose to handle a number of saves and experiment with completely different outcomes for those who’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 last selection, 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} recreation leaves you to your personal units on this approach, and for that purpose, throughout Atomfall’s 15-hour story, exploring the world by no means obtained outdated. Every discovery felt earned. Most fascinating of all of them was once I revisited a hub of survivors and army overseers in a spot known as Wyndham Village. The primary time by, I might spoken to some of us, picked up a couple 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. Once I lastly got here again to the village, I observed that a number of buildings might be entered and housed a number of extra elaborate leads of their very own, together with missions that tasked me with saving a girl’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 fascinating 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 components. Although every map is as intricate as these within the developer’s Sniper Elite video games, sneaking by them is typically a chore due to how eagle-eyed enemies may be. Oddly, additionally they appear to be arduous of listening to, so it created a dynamic wherein 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 way most different stealth video games have conditioned me to not fear about.
Fight is tough generally, too. Although melee works nicely and presents numerous enjoyable selection within the weapons you should utilize, like a survival knife, a stun baton, or perhaps a cricket bat, gunplay is cumbersome, similar to utilizing first-person capturing (aside from with snipers) in Sniper Elite may be. It simply would not really feel good to purpose with a controller on this recreation, and it felt acquainted, given I simply performed the workforce’s latest Sniper Elite recreation a couple of weeks in the past. Normally, Atomfall looks like a repurposed Sniper Elite in some methods, with plenty of property reused from the WWII collection and every map expressing comparable design ideas, however I did not discover this stuff to be stale like I did in my Sniper Elite: Resistance review, wherein I might lamented how samey that collection 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 Riot video games. I solely want the workforce may’ve distanced itself farther from its different video games by fixing an issue that is hindered these others for some time.
Atomfall may 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 nicely, 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 would not exist, which felt unusual once I’d be so filled with crafting provides that I may not choose up objects whereas additionally having a full backpack to the purpose that I could not use these supplies to make extra objects. Basically, the useful resource financial system was imbalanced; I had too many supplies and too little house wherein to stash their finish outcomes. I did not all the time have every part I wanted, however I routinely did not have the house for way more anyway.
Like in Sniper Elite, I did generally discover its unlockable expertise bland, resembling one which reduces weapon sway (in a recreation with little weapon sway within the first place) and one other that made meals objects present extra therapeutic, despite the fact that I hardly ever had the posh of giving backpack house to a Cornish pasty or a loaf of bread. I am undecided why, however Riot by no means presents a capability to let you crouch-walk faster–the very first thing I unlock in any recreation that has it–despite all of the crouch-walking that goes on in its video games.
The good factor about expertise 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 lots of the expertise 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 recreation. However Atomfall additionally constructions its story and world so in contrast to typical open-world video games, Fallout or in any other case, that the excellence is not merely meant as a slight on Riot’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 your entire time. Usually, a brand new online game IP takes till its sequel to really set up its id. The theoretical Atomfall 2 feels prefer it might be a a lot better recreation sometime, as long as it is constructed on this recreation’s intriguing quest framework. Right here and now, Atomfall is an effective recreation that generally will get in its personal approach, however it’s the method of discovering your distinctive path by its story that may persist with you after the mud settles.
