Not long after I’d started college I found myself accidentally walking into an ongoing lesson. I can’t remember what was being taught, but I do remember the faces of 20-odd near-adults turning to look at me as I casually strolled into the room. “Can I help you?” the teacher asked safely behind the scowls. I mumbled something about being sorry like a charisma-less Hugh Grant, then backed out sheepishly wishing to never return and perhaps combust on the spot. Everyone has been in a slightly uncomfortable and perhaps aggro environment that you wanted to nope out of, so we all know the feeling. When I tell you, then, that Atomfall, a quaint-looking English-countryside-set first-person sci-fi survival adventure features the most hostile environment I’ve ever encountered, let it be a warning. The people here are carrying a lot worse than angry faces in this tale of a locked down community and a struggle over what to do about the mystery at the centre of it.
Atomfall reviewDeveloper: RebellionPublisher: RebellionPlatform: Played on PS5 ProAvailability: Out 27th March on PC (Steam), PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S
Within the span of about 10 minutes Atomfall had both delivered a wonderful first impression and made me wonder if I was even going to be able to see the game through to its conclusion. After a brief “Who am I and why am I here?” opening inside a bunker of some sort, a now classic ‘step out into the world’ moment showcases the game’s quite beautiful sprawling, lush green rural world, a red phone booth on a hill and a dishevelled home a little further down. A nice old man is playing a guitar. This is lovely, I think to myself. I wander a hundred metres down the road into what appears to be an abandoned mine. A group of people emerge, all with strong regional accents, and I’m dead in seconds – their northern tones don’t kill me, but their guns do. I try again, hiding in some grass for a while, but ultimately I’m still dead. Dead, dead, dead, dead, dead. With a more considered (cowardly) approach I make my way through, but this is largely just sneaking around slowly before legging it through a door into a new area.
Two hours into Atomfall and I wasn’t having a good time. Everything felt like a slog and progress was slow, owing to all those deaths. The game felt unfair, not challenging. To make matters more frustrating, I wasn’t even sure what I was meant to be doing, let alone how I’m meant to survive these violent attacks while carrying a weapon that’d struggle to open a can of beans (even one with a ring pull lid). Rather than point you directly where to go, Atomfall uses a leads system, wherein you get some information and use it to work out what to do – “someone told me they’d heard a rumour about its location, around where I’ve circled on your map,” rather than simply placing a marker and drawing a Google Maps-style route for you. It’s not as [insert the name of a famous detective relevant to where you live] as it initially seems, but it was a lot to deal with on top of the frustrating combat encounters. Thankfully you can do something about this.
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Judge me all you want, but I made the decision to go against developer Rebellion’s wishes, choosing to knock down the difficulty somewhat from the miserable default it recommends. There are plenty of options here to tailor the experience, but essentially you can tweak how challenging combat, survival, and exploration are independently. I dabbled a bit, in the end opting to make combat and survival far less challenging while keeping the exploration settings untouched. Honestly, it felt as if I was playing an entirely different game. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure some people might the grind, but these little alterations allowed me to finally get into an intriguing plot that manages to weave multiple disparate points together before finally asking you to make some tricky choices. I still died a lot, if you are wondering, which I think is needed for the world to feel dangerous. I just tweaked it enough to go from shouting rather rude words at the game (rhymes with DUCK WHO YOU CLUCKING DUCK!) to being miffed at being careless while sneaking up to a hidden back passage.