simply put, atomfall is,,, not fun. i sunk 16 hours into the game over the course of three days, and was only somewhat engaged for maybe 2 of those hours. i played it for free on gamepass and i still want a refund. in depth analysis below the cut, but it will be VERY long so continue at your own peril. spoiler warning also, duh.
Combat:
in a word: lackluster. the weapon variety is pitiful, the gunplay is floaty and unengaging, and melee combat has the substance of a pillow fight between children. we'll start off my detailed list of combat grievances with weapon variety and progression.
there's a pathetically small pool of firearms to choose from. three shotguns (single shot, double barrel, five round semi-automatic) three pistols (1911, fictional 9mm, break-action revolver) three rifles (bolt-action .22, enfield, automatic bullpup w/ scope) and three submachine guns ("peerless" smg, grease gun, sten). honorable mention goes to the bow in its own standalone catagory, which hits with about the same power as a wet napkin and shoots unretrievable and uncraftable arrows.
the two semi-automatic handguns are useless for anything other than headshots against unarmored human enemies like outlaws and druids, and while the revolver has a little more stopping power it's also hideously inaccurate at anything more than 4 meters. the shotguns have decent power, but enemies will always seem to chunk your health with them at a much further range than you can ever hope to. the two bolt action rifles have a terrible fire rate without the damage to compensate, and the automatic bullpup drinks ammunition like your alcoholic uncle drinks wine during family gatherings (that is to say, much too fast and it usually causes problems). the submachine guns are just... mid. low power, slow reloads, and the same ammo-guzzling problem as the bullpup.
you may think to yourself: how does the progression work? maybe you find better weapons as you advance through the story and encounter different enemies? find them in hard to reach areas? nope. different enemy factions all have a set weapon pool, and they will carry those weapons from the start of the game all the way until the end. you ""upgrade"" weapons by unlocking the gunsmith perk (and i'll be going over how much perks suck later, don't you worry), which allows you to combine two identical weapons of the same rank to make an upgraded version which has slightly better stats (rusty -> stock -> pristine)
onto melee! you'd think that maybe since the gunplay is ass and ammunition is so limited, the developers were trying to entice you into saving your ammo for tougher encounters and would have a robust and engaging melee system, yeah? that would be the smart way to build your combat loop? well apparently the developers didn't get the memo, because melee is a practically impossible playstyle. no block or parry, no dodge, and as mentioned previously all your weapons have the same amount of oomph as a flaccid cock.
if you try to engage enemies in melee you will be taking unavoidable damage from enemies that stack debuff effects on you (which you will need to open your inventory to heal from, since the game has no quick heal button and instead decides that opening a menu that doesn't pause your game in the middle of combat and navigating over to your healing consumables is the correct course of action).
enemies also constantly respawn every time you load into a new cell, including the main quest location (the interchange), which adds yet another drain on your resources. on more than one occasion i've cleared out the exterior of an enemy encampment, entered and cleared the interior, then exited to another crowd of fresh enemies ready to eat up the last of my ammunition. sometimes you don't even need to load a cell for this to happen, you'll be in the middle of combat and fresh enemies will just pop into existence in the corner of your vision and start shooting.
final point before we wrap up the combat section: the enemy ai is terrible. ranged enemies fire with the accuracy of a T-1000 and pop in and out from behind available cover like that one target shooting carnival game. melee enemies skate around with practically zero friction, weaving past your shots even at point-blank range, and sometimes their pathfinding will fuck up and they'll stop and stare at you gormlessly while you reload your shotgun with menacing intent. on more than one occasion i've watched an outlaw at the back of a group pull out a molotov, try to throw it at me, light all his buddies on fire, run 2 meters away, pull out ANOTHER molotov, and light ANOTHER group of his buddies on fire. all while i stand and stare at them, the same expression on my face as a parent who just walked in on their toddler finishing a fecal recreation of Van Gogh's Starry Night on the living room wall.
Perk System:
there are no experience points or levels in Atomfall. as you explore, you'll find "training stims" in various B.A.R.D crates and small dungeons. these fill the role of perk points, and every perk costs a certain number of stims to unlock. you have 12 perks unlocked for purchase at the beginning of the game, with six skill magazines unlocking three more perks each, up to a total of 36.
the perks themselves are practically useless, out of the available 36 (six of which are locked behind an endgame location by the way), i only found maybe 4 actually useful. extra inventory space for resources and ammo, faster looting, faster crafting, and quiter footsteps. all the others grant practically unnoticable damage to weapons in very specific ways, or paltry resistances to one status effect or the other.
Inventory/Resource Management
i don't exactly know what the developers were going for, but the inventory is extremely limited. you have 12 small slots for consumables, small weapons such as handguns and knives, and all story-critical items. handgun ammo is the type you can carry the most of, so you'll probably have a pistol, bumping that number down to 11. and since most missions you'll be doing are fetch quests, you'll need a slot to carry whichever mcguffin you're being sent to collect, bumping that number down even further to a nice even 10. you have four large slots for rifles, shotguns, submachine guns, and large melee weapons like the cricket bat.
one of the worst things about this whole system is actually tied into a specific enemy which i saved the mention of for this segment: B.A.R.D robots. you cannot kill this enemy with damage alone. you need to damage it to the point it enters a cooldown animation, then you need to run up behind it and remove its battery to make it stay down. this battery is then added to your inventory. they made an enemy which REQUIRES an empty inventory slot to kill, you cannot use the contextual button prompt to remove the battery if your inventory is full. this is, by far, one of the most braindead decisions i have ever seen a developer make. they couldn't even bother to have the battery drop onto the ground if you have no space for it. if there's more than one of those robots? you either need more than one empty slot or you need to kill one, remove the battery, open your inventory and risk being killed in half a second by the other robot as you drop the first battery, and then kill the second robot. ridiculous and unintuitive.
your crafting resources are in constant flux between not having enough and not being able to carry any more. this is because every item you craft takes a substantial amount of resources, yet you can only carry a small amount. throughout 90% of the game i would enter a loot room and have to ignore most of the rewards because they were all crafting resources i was stocked up on. and then, once you craft three or four items, all of the sudden you're completely empty and you need to shove your head into every corner of the area you're in pathetically sniffing out bits of cloth and glass bottles.
an example: without the resource capacity perk, with max resources, you can craft a total of three bandages. bandages don't heal more than a quarter of your health unless you invest in the very high cost "consumables heal more" perk. with the resource capacity perk? that number goes up to five. and again, with your limited inventory slots, it stands to reason you won't even be able to carry five, and you'll have to crouch in a corner and hurriedly make a couple more in the middle of combat once you run out.
Storyline/Narrative
sadly, the story is just a poor recreation of S.T.A.L.K.E.R and that's all there is to it. 99% of the narrative is them aping a popular Ukrainian franchise but "ooh it's BRITISH this time" (which is honestly, very in-character for the UK. stealing something and claiming it's unique).
in S.T.A.L.K.E.R the Chernobyl nuclear power plant explodes but instead of the usual radiation hazards there's also spooky-wooky supernatural elements afoot and you need to explore The Zone and ally yourself with several factions, all with their own motivations, all the while contending with bandits and various monsters.
in Atomfall the Windscale nuclear power plant explodes but instead of the usual radiation hazards there's also spooky-wooky supernatural elements afoot and you need to explore The Zone and ally yourself with several factions, all with their own motivations, all the while contending with bandits and various monsters.
you see what i'm saying?
it doesn't help that not only is it a ripoff, it's also an objectively inferior ripoff. none of the factions are very fleshed-out or interesting, your decisions don't really effect the story in any meaningful way, and despite there being six endings none of them really feel very different. it tries to evoke this air of mystery and intrigue, tries to engage you in the story of the quarantine and uncovering its secrets, but if you have any semblance of a developed brain you'll intuitively figure everything out within the first couple hours and spend the rest of the time in a disinterested haze as the game jingles keys in front of your face.
Final Thoughts
to put a fine point on it, don't waste your time with Atomfall. there's nothing fresh or interesting about it, unless you want to take a couple screenshots of the passably pretty environment to use as a computer wallpaper or something. if you paid money for this game, i pity you. it's not even worth downloading for free through gamepass or piracy, unless you REALLY need a game to tide you over for a few hours while waiting for something better to release. if you need any evidence for how much ass juice this game sucks straight from the poopchute: it blows so bad it inspired me to write my first ever game review. i have been trying and failing for a couple months to find motivation and continue writing my novel, and with just a few hours of this slop i've been compelled to vomit quite a few paragraphs onto tumblr. i guess if all else fails, you could use it to deal with a writers block? i'm not convinced it's worth it, though.
in conclusion: Atom-fail can tonguepunch my balloon knot, and i hope the developers get their Christmas bonuses slashed.
