REVIEW – The (almost) open-world novelty of Xbox Game Pass hits what’s hardest to get right, but misses where it shouldn’t. A new attempt from the makers of Sniper Elite works – but with a bumpy combat system.

There’s something incredibly satisfying about announcing a game and having it arrive in less than a year. That’s exactly what happened with Atomfall. Rebellion unveiled the game at Xbox Games Showcase in June 2024, and from the first frames I was sucked in by the sight of a post-apocalyptic Anglia. It was a strange love at first sight: I knew the studio had never been considered a drawcard for the industry, but somewhere I secretly hoped they’d outgrow the Sniper Elite series this time around. But now, nine months later, I’m forced to write: Atomfall didn’t give me everything I hoped for – and it might not give you everything I hoped for either. Especially in the first few hours, until you’re lost in the madness of the world.

It’s been dubbed the “English Fallout“, and while Rebellion’s creation is indeed an attention-grabber, the analogy is a misnomer. The series from Bethesda and Black Isle Studios didn’t invent the apocalypse, but its approach, based on freedom, open world and wry humour, set a new standard – and Bethesda and Black Isle Studios‘s Bethesda series did set a new standard.i>Atomfall at first seems like a continuation of the New Vegas legacy. But in reality, it is much closer to another continent: Europe. More specifically, the STALKER series. The Atomfall plunges you into a less sterile, far more raw and immediate world, but it follows the same basic premise: to escape – or survive, if you can – an unknown, radioactive hell.

The basic concept of the game was inspired by a real, brutal historical event: the Windscale disaster, the fourth worst nuclear accident in human history. The tragedy caused more than 240 deaths and contaminated the environment with radioactive material for 300 kilometres. It is from this frightening, but thrilling, starting point that Atomfall asks: what if everything had gone wrong? And the British don’t hesitate to spice it up with a dose of national consciousness – with a quirky sense of humour, dialects and typical English slang that makes Atomfall stand out from any of its contemporaries. It’s a pity the gameplay couldn’t keep this particular tone…

Freedom or just abandonment?

The question is: “Okay, but what can you do in Atomfall?” If you thought – as I did – that this was another Fallout clone with an open-ended clear storyline, prepare to be surprised. After all, Rebellion didn’t set out to build a complex narrative – instead, they created a Ukrainian-inspired survival world, divided into zones, where the only goal is to get out. There’s no hand-holding, no endlessly layered story – and it can be sorely lacking in the first few hours. I frowned at the map several times before realising that the brits were playing with a different deck this time.

The concept is that we wake up in a bunker, amnesiac – and then we can go wherever we see. There are no mission markers, no destination scripts – just you, the world, and your curiosity. That system is interesting in itself, but Atomfall goes further: it replaces the traditional main thread with small story bits, personal fates, NPC clues. This approach is strongly reminiscent of the recently launched STALKER 2, where the drama of the survivors and their own investigation also becomes key – not the main narrative. This gameplay is clearly aimed at those who like to get lost in the details of a world, and for whom the story is not a set path but a map to be explored.

Of course there is one main goal: to get out of the exclusion zone. But this is coupled with a strange, almost metaphysical layer – a kind of dreamlike sci-fi plane that gradually unfolds depending on what you do in Windscale. You can think of Atomfall as a tree with a field: each branch represents a new clue, each direction opens up a new story. But not all of them lead to the trunk – some end in dead ends, others lead to conclusions that close off all other clues, cutting off the possibility of return.

Free, but not without purpose

That’s the real magic of Atomfall: it doesn’t lead you down a predetermined path, but lets you choose where you want to go. Rebellion knows that this project is not a monumental role-playing game or a complex investigative experience, but rather a stripped-down, streamlined version of those – and for that reason it doesn’t overcomplicate the investigation. A few hand-scribbled notes, a few voice messages or hints from village NPCs are all it takes to drift you from one scene to the next – and if you give in to the game’s peculiar madness, you’ll probably want to look behind every bush.

While Atomfall is clearly not an RPG – it makes this clear from the first minute – its dialogue system does give some leeway. You can choose to be emphatic, aggressive or even evasive, but there are no “this NPC will remember” type mechanics, nor are there percentage persuasion chances. The whole system works because it’s logical and simple – the English haven’t overcomplicated it, they’ve put it together sensibly.

The structure of the dialogue is similar to the game’s clue system: like a Jenga tower. Since there are no different trait values – such as charisma or empathy – and the existing skill tree focuses only on survival and combat, Atomfall doesn’t encourage you to flip through every dialogue. For example, if you need to find out from a soldier where a key nuclear battery is located, it’s not worth rushing to find it – because once it locks up, you can’t get anything out of it. Instead, you need to think about which response style can open up further clues and help you move on.

It also helps that Atomfall is not really a classic open world. Despite what the marketing has tried to make us believe – and the official materials have suggested – it’s much more like the zoned world of Dragon Age or Avowed than the total openness of Fallout or STALKER. The world is made up of a series of smaller and larger locations separated by tunnels, bunkers and tiny loading screens. This is not a drawback, however – in fact, it makes the tracking more transparent, as each region can be managed separately, effectively directing the player’s attention to the important points. Once you get the hang of what Atomfall is all about, the system works smoothly – even if the basic concept itself isn’t mind-blowing.

Good base, wobbly design

Honestly? At the beginning I completely misunderstood what Atomfall was about. Perhaps I sat down with too high expectations – I thought that if this was the biggest project from the developers of Sniper Elite, then at the very least we’d get a hefty, fast-paced action-adventure where the order to fire would be a joy. Instead, I found myself with a bunch of half-baked ideas, especially around the combat system.

The narrative simplicity has seeped into the gameplay, and Atomfall has become the student on the STALKER bench – not excellent, but at least enthusiastic. It has survival elements: there’s no health regeneration, you have to power up bandages and gear, and weapons amortize (though they don’t jam like in STALKER, but they do degrade when they wear out). This makes it an exciting but tough survival game. Even on “normal” difficulty, you can still get taken out with two bullets, and ammo is as scarce as a good word in YouTube comments – so you have to be careful.

Fighting breaks down into two main styles: one is fair, the “kill what you see” school, the other is brutally disappointing – stealth. And that’s the problem: the team behind Sniper Elite is a team you’d rightly expect to have some punchy stealth mechanics, but what you get here is in the “just be in it” category. No distractions, no throwing rocks, no whistling – you just lie low, hope, and if you’re lucky, take out the opposition with a neck-breaker. In principle you can point a gun at them, which might make them back down – as in I Am Alive – but nothing works consistently. It’s only when you get the bow that the experience starts to improve – a well-aimed headshot and you quietly take care of the problem. No hernia.

Not pretty, but stable

But speaking of combat, classic shooting works much better. The Rebellion doesn’t go for all the blood and gore, instead focusing on pace and tactics. Fighting is affected by stamina – if you run too much, you’re harder to aim, you’re noisier. The back-and-forth nature of the fights is pleasantly old school: you seek cover, flank, reposition, and attack again. No bullet time, no exploding limbs, but the shooting is still enjoyable. The problem is when you run out of ammo and have to switch to melee – because that’s a misery. There’s no dodging, no defending – just two people punching each other until one of them goes down.

And although I didn’t know where else to put it: at least the technical side of it is not a headache. The Rebellion isn’t at the cutting edge of graphics, but they know the Asura Engine like the back of their hand. Not Unreal Engine 5 – and that’s good news. On PS5, where I tested it, the game runs at a stable 60 FPS. There’s no separate performance or quality mode – as with Far Cry 6 – just a single 4K setting, which while not top-notch graphics, at least delivers the performance you’d expect. Sometimes it stalls for a moment or two, but overall it’s stability that takes it all.

At the end of the day, Atomfall is by no means a bad game – even the wildest imagination wouldn’t describe it as such. I wish you could have seen inside my head during the first few days I played it – you might have seen how I became more and more aware of the detachment from the negatives as I allowed myself to be drawn into the game’s unique narrative approach. At the same time, where it slips from world-building needs improvement in many ways – and some parts could do with a complete rethink, such as the stealth. Atomfall isn’t bad, but it could have been much better.

-Gergely Herpai „BadSector”-

Publisher: Rebellion

Developer: Rebellion

Style: action-adventure

Release date: March 24, 2025