Atomfall – PS5 Review 2

Atomfall then. The lazy back of the fag packet description could well be Fallout in the Lake District. Only unlike Bethesda’s bloated behemoth that’s currently in GAAS purgatory with Fallout 76, Atomfall is unashamedly British coming from Oxford-based dev and publisher Rebellion. Given their previous with the Sniper Elite games, we have to confess, we were surprised that this wasn’t just cobbled together with assets from the most recent games. Perhaps parts were. But what we’ve actually got is a labour of love several years in the making with this new IP.

Using the real-life Windscale nuclear disaster in 1957 as a jumping off point, Atomfall first relocates the plant now known as Sellafield inland from its actual location of Seascale on the Irish Sea. Instead, it is now located in the Lake District, with the fictional village of Wyndham; named for the prolific sci-fi writer; being directly across the lake from the nuclear facility. Given the title, you might expect the prime hazard here to be the power of the atom.

Well, yes and no. Radiation is front and centre in the title, but is really only one of the environmental hazards you’ll face as you explore what is ostensibly an open world, but what is more like a World of Warcraft-style instanced areas around a central hub that is eventually accessible from each of the four areas. We did envisage a Windscale-em-up with a sepia toned filter if we’re honest, think Metro 2033 mixed with Stalker but what we got was rather more individual.

Though for people of my generation, Windscale doesn’t really mean much as it was rebranded by British Nuclear Fuels Ltd aka BNFL as Sellafield in the popular UK consciousness. Though the 1978 Richard Burton film The Medusa Touch kept the name alive for those who caught it on TV as he named Windscale as his next telekinetic target…

Unlike Tube Alloys’ aim of the real life Windscale, that being to produce plutonium for the UK’s post-Manhattan Project atomic bomb ambitions, the Windscale here was built above the plot device at the centre of the story here. It’s endearingly daft, though more than a little baffling. It’s the convenient deus-ex-machina that allows for the advanced tech to be explained away as opposed to being an anachronism given the dateline. Also rather than BNFL, the government agency in charge is penned BARD, a backronym of British Atomic Research Division.

We suspect that a lot of the work carried out at the actual Windscale is probably still classified in perpetuity under the auspices of the Official Secrets Act and the actual organisation probably can’t be mentioned, just like the fact that you weren’t able to specify the location of the Post Office Tower in that Lunnun due to its strategic significance.

Your mute protagonist; think Gordon Freeman but embodied just as a pair of leather clad strangler gloves; wakes up in a bunker in Slatten Dale with a wounded scientist asking for your help. You’re given the recipe to craft a bandage for him and if you’re feeling charitable, encouraged to return having found the necessary ingredients, to help him out. You’ll soon encounter the first set of antagonists you’ll encounter in the quarantine zone around the plant.

Rather than simply be airlifted out, the anomaly at the heart of the Windscale plant has led to a disruption field that stops helicopters and aircraft reliably getting into the zone. So it’s down to you to escape by aligning yourself with one of the six factions at the centre of the story here. Whether it be the disembodied voice calling from the remarkably pristine red telephone boxes that are scattered around the landscape, the paganistic druid types who want a return to simpler ways, the stiff upper lipped Captain Sims in command of the garrisoned Protocol troops or a handful of scientific types with vaguely sketchy motivations. The idea is that you align with one and see out the story, but you’ll soon realise that with a little save scumming, you can keep everyone sweet by finding out what their requirements are and then getting their respective endings in turn.

The disembodied voice on the phone simply says ‘Oberon Must Die’ repeatedly. Quite what Oberon is, isn’t exactly clear, but your first objective is to find your way into the mysterious Interchange. Oberon is at the heart of this facility, your initial aim being to activate the control centre and then activate all four data stores. The aim is to eventually get into Windscale itself, Oberon being the aforementioned deus-ex-machina.

The only faction that doesn’t have an agenda other than being hostile to you on sight, is the outlaws. In effect, they’re a doomsday cult who swan around the place being a general pain in the arse and attacking you if you wield a weapon, whether it be with intent or not. In the early stages of your playthrough, they’re your main source of weapons and also your main threat, so your best bet is to go with the stealthy approach rather than go in punching faces in. If you go with the latter approach, you’ll likely be quickly overwhelmed.

Only unlike, say Sniper Elite: Resistance, the stealth and combat evident here is somewhat rudimentary. If you’re kneeling down in waist high grass, that’s sufficient for an enemy to immediately lose sight of you. You can sneak up on enemies, dispatching them rather abruptly with a takedown via , or you can sneak past in the hope they don’t clock you and alert their pals.

You can be exploring merrily and a little contextual music cue will indicate an as yet unseen enemy is closing in on you, it’s a handy little bit of sound design to tip you off along with the visual cues of a threat indicator. To begin with, you’ll get a little white line showing that a potential antagonist is aware of you. Then as their intent becomes more malevolent, it’ll go from yellow through to red if you’re close enough to them. Practically, you can skirt an aggro cone and get out of their threat radius before they actually attack.

In the early stages, weapons are rather thin on the ground as is the associated ammunition, so you’ll stick with melee weapons and thrown weapons. The latter usually see off standard enemies in one hit, but if you miss, you’re left unarmed except for your fists. Firearms are limited to basic pistols to start with and a single round shotgun, though we did laugh when we realised that the latter was named the Eastleigh rather than the Winchester, being eight miles down the road in Hampshire.

There’s plenty of other fun easter eggs scattered throughout Atomfall, both pop culture references and daft little things like guards complaining about their posting in the zone saying that living in Swindon was preferable. Additionally, given Rebellion’s ownership of Fleetway’s library and hence 2000AD, there’s collectible lunchboxes to find with your metal detector as well as the slightly more elusive comics, all comics that this reviewer’s dad would’ve read when he was a kid in the late 1950s. We just wish that the comics were a bit more than just a couple of pages at a time, it’d be ace to be able to actually read them from cover to cover in-game. Though you can read them on the game’s website as PDFs here.

As well as the stealth mechanics being rudimentary, combat isn’t particularly amazing. Apart from some of the more robust enemies, most can be dispatched by a well-placed headshot. You’ll learn that some enemies are better dealt with by melee weapons as they’re damage sponges that you’re better off not wasting ammunition on, especially during your foray into the Medical wing of the interchange. You just need to time your swipes with a quick melee weapon right, or you’ll find yourself on the back foot or very much dead if you’re cornered.  One thing we really liked was the ability to shimmy through gaps that would otherwise be inaccessible in any other game.

Thankfully Atomfall autosaves fairly frequently, particularly when you go in and out of a sub-area through a door and hence a short load. So even if you succumb, it won’t be long until you’re back into it. Some might bemoan the lack of a fast travel system, but the world is relatively compact so you’ll not spend a massively long time going from one place to the other. Even when you do, you’ll always find something to do or someone to interact with. Each of the four main areas is roughly the size of a medium sized Sniper Elite level, so it’s not too onerous.

We could write loads more about Atomfall as we really enjoyed it despite the simplistic combat and rudimentary stealth. The voice acting and branching storylines due to your alignment are well done. You even get a nice little synopsis of your progress upon completing the storyline for each of the six endings and the open-endedness of at least some of the conclusions, leaves scope for perhaps a sequel if this proves commercially successful enough. Spoiler: we left a trail of corpses in our wake in all of our endings, though unlike the recent Sniper Elite: Resistance, there’s no way to knock someone out. It’s death or avoidance.

In conclusion, Atomfall is an unashamedly British adventure peppered with a nice line in local swearwords. We had a ton of fun playing it, however the combat system and stealth implementation aren’t strong points. The Oberon anomaly is a nice MacGuffin to explain away the advanced for the period technology, even if the atomic aspect isn’t given the same prevalence as it would’ve been at the time in the real world given the actual events that led to the surface atom bomb ban treaty. It’s a lot of fun and we look forward to a speed run to complete the campaign in under five hours for what we suspect is going to be our final trophy.