"Atomfall": Impressions.

[F-ZeroOne]

"Atomfall". You've probably seen the previews - its the "British Fallout"! [1]

And yes, I would say. Thats true. Just not in the way you might think.

You likely know the setup - in the Future Year of 195X something has Gone Dreadfully Wrong at an experimental Atomic Power Station, and a region of Northern England has been sealed off by the military as a result. Theres nothing to worry about, say the newsreels in their chirpy Received Pronunciation voice. Well, there has been some bother in that virtually no-one can now get into the affected area, and no-one at all is getting out, but... in others news, banana rationing has finally ended! Enjoy this footage of cheeky street urchins gawping at this exotic bendy fruit bounty! [2]

You the player wake up in a bunker, and haven't even had time to process the fact that theres hasn't been half an hour of deciding how high your nose should be when a wounded person in a NBC suit wonders in, begging for help and imploring you to find out What Is Really Going On. So you set out through a largely deserted underground Vaul... complex in search of an exit, which when you eventually find it leads to an outside world made strange by THE POWER OF THE ATOM!

So far, so "Fallout," you might be thinking. You are about to learn otherwise.

On the surface, "Atomfall" will feel very familiar. You have an inventory, and theres some light crafting elements, and you can learn new skills, and theres a large open world to explore full of things to find.

When you get murdered by cricket bat wielding Morris Dancers in around five minutes time, you will begin to understand that you're not in New Vegas any more.

In "Fallout", combat can be greatly aided by the "V.A.T.S" mechanic, which largely takes the fuss out of shooting things. In "Atomfall" you better damn well learn what sights are for. And what recoil is. In "Fallout", you can grab pretty much everything that isn't nailed down, and probably the nails themselves, and still sprint across the map. In "Atomfall" your backpack can hold roughly minus three items at a time. You better hope that you can staunch your bleeding with a grenade, because the choice between plasters and boom is one you'll be making often. In "Fallout", over time, your character will become more versatile than a Swiss Army knife made of Swiss Army knives just by finding locations and whacking mole rats over the head with a Vault-Tec lunch box. After several hours of "Atomfall", I have managed to acquire exactly one skill upgrade, which makes me kick things slightly better. In "Fallout", handheld atomic weapons may be going off all around you but everything stops to allow you to rummage through someones sock drawer. In "Atomfall" not only does exploring containers take time, you can be happily bludgeoned to death by people who took "The Wicker Man" a bit too seriously.

There is no fast travel.

In fact, "Atomfall" on its default settings is a bit of a shock. Combat is brutal and a lot of the helpful things the "Fallout" games do are disabled by default. If you're like me, an aging Mr Below Average gamer, you will probably want to adjust the settings to make gameplay a bit less intimidating.

Some of the similarities between "Atomfall" and "Fallout" are because, well, thats how videogames of a certain type have to work. Theres only so many ways in a first person view game you can handle aiming, picking up stuff, exploring etc. And I think thats where the "British Fallout" impression has come from; watch some preview videos and "Atomfall" looks a lot like "Fallout" just with British comic book lunch boxes [3] to collect instead of Wasteland Survival Guides.

Yet its not the gameplay - which really is not entirely what you expect - where "Atomfall" is a "British Fallout". No, what makes "Atomfall" a "British Fallout" is in the way it handles the Spectre of the Atom.

"Fallout", in general, comes from a specific genre tradition of post-nuclear settings. In "Fallout" you may start down and in trouble but you will gradually build yourself up to become an Unstoppable God of the Wasteland. Its a very American take on the subject - with enough grit and an assault rifle even Atomic Annihilation can be overcome!

"Atomfall" approaches things from a whole different genre tradition - that of the "Cosy Catastrophe", the post-disasters of "The Day of the Triffids", the "Tripods" and "Quatermass". Man Has Meddled, and now everythings the same, but also changed in some unsettling way. You are not Chuck Meatslab, Saviour of the Wastes but instead Ordinary Bloke (or Blokess), arrived in a world thats quietly familiar yet with a sinister shadow thrown over it. The world of "Atomfall" isn't the American post-nuclear world of endless dunes, glowing skies and mutants with inexplicably good car customisation skills, but instead the British one of Hammer with stone cottages, stinging nettles and babbling brooks. If I eventually meet Peter Cushing walking the other way down one of "Atomfalls" wooded lanes I wouldn't even blink.

British science fiction, even the seemingly friendly stuff like "Doctor Who", has always had a touch of darkness lurking in the background. A backgound of quiet menace, unsettling civil servants and keeping up appearances that are just that - appearances. And its this which "Atomfall" captures so well, and in which manner it is truly a "British Fallout" - not because of the way it plays, but because of the way it depicts its world; honouring and absorbing a very British outlook on a particular SF trope.

"Atomfall": Keep Calm and Carry... bugger, my backpack is full again...!

[1] Well, the other "British Fallout" after "Fallout: London". You know how it is, you wait ages for a "British: Fallout" and then two come along at once...

[2] Oh, the trouble those are going to cause in about another fifty years...

[3] I did manage to resist hurting my TV though when one of the lunch boxes had text describing Spitfires whilst the image clearly showed a Hurricane...

[Whiteball]

From everything I have read and seen so far, this is one game that really appeals to me and I will probably give it a go sometime in the future.

It definitely looks more like what I hoped games would be rather than the endless COD and COD-A-LIKES we seems to get all the time now.

[MattyP]

From everything I have read and seen so far, this is one game that really appeals to me and I will probably give it a go sometime in the future.

It definitely looks more like what I hoped games would be rather than the endless COD and COD-A-LIKES we seems to get all the time now.

Thanks for the impressions! I was wondering about this myself - however have a lot on the go gaming wise at the moment... still have to spend some time on I,Robot!

If you have GamePass I believe its on there so a good way of giving it a try! Think its currently a tenner a month or cheaper if you shop around (CDKeys etc).

[MattyP]

(duplicate post removed)

[Jonesey]

Tried it on Series X, enjoyed it for a while - brilliant visuals, sound, atmos, etc. but the limited inventory, sort of vague direction, crafting (argh!) and stealth (argh!) I mean I want to love it but sometimes playing some games becomes more of a pain in the arse than a fun experience.

I did enjoy killing a robot and taking its battery, though...the battery becoming another pain in the arse mission, unfortunately.

[Misfit]

You didn't actually say if you like it or are sticking with it?!

I'm tempted, but the words crafting and inventory management are real turnoffs to me.

Even when the price is just the time taken waiting for it to download!

[Jonesey]

Binned for the time being, sorry.

Focused on finishing South of Midnight (brill - like a huge nod to Alice - Madness Returns) and hoping my mates will join me on a quest or two on Towerborne.

[Misfit]

Binned for the time being, sorry.

Focused on finishing South of Midnight (brill - like a huge nod to Alice - Madness Returns) and hoping my mates will join me on a quest or two on Towerborne.

I meant F-ZeroOne, I think you were fairly clear!

Too much isn't fun these days, I think they forget that.

[rowan]

I was really intrigued by this title when I became aware of it a few weeks back. I do have a bit of a soft spot for Rebellion too.

Since then, however, I've seen a few reviews along the lines of "just about does enough to say it has what is on the tin".
Moved it down from "really interested" to "I'll get around to it".

[F-ZeroOne]

At the moment I'm quite enjoying it but sadly, as with so many things, I'm probably am not going to have time to explore it fully due to having another quite big game on the go and was using this when I needed a break and also because I was interested in the premise (having learned over the past few years more about the real Windscale incident than I ever wanted to know).

A couple of things I've learned: one, the bow seems almost overpowered at the stage I'm at, and as far as the inventory goes I think the trick is that rather than carrying everything you need all at once you make what you need in a given moment as you go and use it when required.

I've also recently met some rather aggressive vegetation. If you're at all familiar with British classic science-fiction, you can probably guess which ones.

Thanks as ever for the feedback!

[F-ZeroOne]

As expected, I haven't really had time to play much more than when I first wrote the above, but it seems "Atomfall" has been successful enough theres talk of a sequel:

https://www.eurogamer.net/the-frightful ... discussion

Quite which British nuclear disaster that might involve we'll probably not know for a while; maybe it will involve chicken warmed atomic landmines?

[F-ZeroOne]

I sadly never managed to get more into "Atomfall" than what I wrote about above, but it seems we may be getting our own very local take on Amazons "Fallout" TV adaptation:

https://www.eurogamer.net/atomfall-tv-show-revealed

I'd love it if they could do it in the style of all those nightmare-inducing BBC and ITV dramas from back in the day.