Atomfall

Atomfall is a compelling, post-apocalyptic survival story that satisfyingly bends to your choices and discoveries no matter which direction you take.

With its wide-open quest design, Atomfall takes a novel approach to storytelling that helps push through some of its lesser parts.

If you can get over a difficult start and fancy a lean take on the survival genre, Atomfall delivers an intriguing tale worth discovering.

Atomfall can be a fun diversion, but it really needs to take a gap year so it can find itself.

"'It's up to you' is the philosophy at the heart of Atomfall"

I don't regret my time with Atomfall. It knows what it wants to be, with a reasonable scope and solid shooting mechanics. But issues with the skill system, its underbaked stealth, and an unengaging narrative are asterisks too large to ignore. Like the world it depicts, something exciting and unique lies at Atomfall's core. I just wish it wasn't walled off by my laundry list of frustrations.

Atomfall looks and sometimes plays like a middling survival shooter, but its passions truly lie in exploration and investigation – and it's much better at both.

It reminded me a lot of The Chinese Room’s Still Wakes the Deep in this way - well-crafted, unquestionably good fun, but with a story that feels like it’s probably the weakest part of the thing, either because it’s leaning a bit too heavily on genre tropes or holding back from actually committing to delivering on the elements that could go beyond that.

Atomfall commits to embodying everything it means to be British, and it comes out the other side all the better for it. The mystery at the heart of the alternate 1960s setting is gripping, forever teasing clues and solutions to a way out of its rural quarantine zone. Its combat systems and mechanics let the experience down, but Rebellion's latest peaks when it makes you the countryside's Inspector Gadget with a bunch of Leads to pursue and villagefolk to suspect.

While Atomfall should be praised for its accessibility settings and innovative "Lead" system, a plethora of design shortcomings frustrate in this survival-RPG hybrid.