The robots are angry. The accents are northern. The atoms have fallen. That’s right, Atomfall is around the corner, and players are eager to get their hands on a game purported to be a ‘British version of Fallout’.
Having played through the game, though, I’m not quite sure that’s the case. Sure, the aesthetics are spot on. Instead of satirising the Cold War-era American nightmare, we’ve got that Keep Calm And Carry On wartime bollocks which has somehow made a comeback this millennium. It’s very twee, very British, and it’s got retrofuturistic robots. Ergo, British Fallout.
But when you actually start to play, Atomfall feels less Fallout and more Stalker; it’s less an RPG and more a survival game. Your perks don’t really matter, you can’t fast travel, and there’s no Deathclaw-smiting power fantasy. You’re just a bloke trying to be as quiet as possible in the face of some soldiers on a smoke break.
Atomfall Has The Fallout Aesthetic, But Not The Gameplay
Honestly, this is refreshing. I got very bored of Bethesda’s world in Fallout 4. At first, it’s exciting to don a suit of Power Armour and smash ten Super Mutants to pieces in order to steal their clobber, but it gets old fast. Soon you’re all kitted out in pristine gear with more bottlecaps than you know how to spend. That may float some peoples’ zeppelins, but it ruins the immersion of post-apocalyptic scarcity for me.
Atomfall tackles this problem in a few ways. First, there is no currency in the quarantine zone. You must barter with shopkeepers on an equal trade basis. The value of your items versus theirs. Some vendors may not think bandages are valuable, so they won’t offer many items in exchange. Others really want tea, so will give you the best part of a rifle in order to get their caffeine fix.
Combined with (very) limited inventory space, this means you can never be hoarding currency. You can’t just buy as many medkits as you need the moment you use all of yours. You must loot your fallen enemies’ corpses and trade whatever slim pickings you find to restock the important stuff. If you’re ambushed between your encounter and the vendor? Tough luck, you’ll have to muddle through with a cuppa and a prayer.
That’s another important factor: there’s no fast travel, at least none that I found in 30 hours of play. No vehicles, either. Just your two little legs, going as fast as they can before your rapidly increasing heartrate forces you to take a breather. This isn’t a game to go in all guns blazing before fast travelling back to civilisation to sell your loot. This is a methodical, slow-paced affair.
Shooting Blanks
Combat is quite tricky by default; a sure sign that you’re meant to avoid it where possible. There are four difficulty options, and if you head into the settings you can manually tweak all manner of sliders to suit your preferences, but the game falls a bit flat when you remove the peril. Sure, one time I set everything to easy and murdered everyone in the quaint village of Wyndham just to see what happened before reloading a previous save, but it doesn’t feel right.
The simplest way to kill someone is with a sneak attack from behind, which instantly takes them out. If there’s a solo foe you cannot avoid, this is the way. Tackling people head-on – or worse, a group of people – will waste all your ammo, and probably your life. You can’t play out these encounters like a Bethesda Fallout game.
Shooting in Atomfall is awkward. This is something I didn’t expect from the developers behind the Sniper Elite series, but it’s clearly deliberate. The strongest guns are often the least accurate. A revolver will take three shots to kill an opponent, and will simultaneously alert their allies to your position. A carefully lined-up headshot is a one-shot kill of course, but you still arouse suspicion and draw enemies to your location, so it’s not to be relied upon.
Atomfall rewards stealth and creativity. This is a survival game at its heart and, while sometimes you need to release a shotgun shell into a crazed pagan’s skull to make brain soup, that’s not usually your best course of action. By design, guns are cumbersome, take a long time to reload, and are often a poor choice of attack. Atomfall constantly suggests that you choose a different approach, and the sooner you embrace that, the better time you’ll have.
Funnily enough, this reminds me of Rebellion Developments’ own Sniper Elite. While your killing blow is more likely to be dealt with a cricket bat than a sniper rifle, approaching combat is all about preparation. What’s the best position to hide out in? How can you take out these five soldiers without alerting the others? How can you steal a bunch of scrap without killing anyone at all?
The more I played Atomfall, the less it reminded me of modern Fallout games. I got Stalker, I got Sniper Elite. I didn’t get Fallout. Conversations are not limited by your stat distribution. In fact, there is no stat distribution. You’re just a bloke. Skills you learn can improve how your character achieves certain actions – make your steps quieter or backstabs quicker – but you can’t immediately feel the difference. They’re not game-breaking upgrades that fill you full of super serum and turn you into Captain Cumbria. They’re incremental upgrades that reward your chosen approach to the game.
Atomfall still has that Falloutesque visage. It’s got that twee, retro-British feel that makes me so uncomfortable. It’s got the robots and zombie-like creatures. But Atomfall couldn’t be further from a Fallout game. And that’s the biggest compliment I could give it.
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Atomfall Was Almost A Metroidvania
Atomfall gives players the freedom to tackle the story however they want, but it was almost much more linear.