There’s long been a desire for a truly official British Fallout.

The closest we’ve had up to now is the unofficial mod, Fallout London, which finally dropped on GOG last year, and even had Doctor Who legends – Sylvester McCoy and Colin Baker.

But as solid and well made as it is, a large scale British Sci-Fi Open World Adventure still seems to have eluded us. Until now.

Atomfall – coming from the wizards at Rebellion who are more recently renowned for the Sniper Elite series – is finally that game. Sure, it doesn’t have the official Fallout branding, but it has Vaults (B.A.R.D), it has demons, possessed outlands, robots and there are warring factions scattered throughout.

It’s even set in 1960s England with red phoneboxes, cottages, countrysides and masts. Everyone’s got an accent, and there’s this lovely bantery dialogue that just grounds you in this world. Like a villager who goes around saying he’s ‘ard enough’ to take the giant hulking robot stomping around. Brilliant!

Atomfall completely and utterly nails its tone through its aesthetic. This game is quintessentially British right down to the chief commander giving you commands with a pompous gruff and announcements over the tannoy with a tongue in cheek vibe.

But the thing with Atomfall is this isn’t a British Fallout clone. Sure, the similarities are there to see as you venture into these B.A.R.Ds with big wide metal doors, opened from a keycard, then you enter to find lots of hidden secrets and treasures, and dnagerous creatures. But this is also a survival game, taking cues from games like Rust and DayZ.

You scavenge resources, craft items from a recipe list from items you gather and need to watch out for infections, diseases, poisons from the things you encounter and meet in the game.

Atomfall’s initial onboarding is a bit rough. Enemies overwhelm you in a few hits, you’ll find yourself getting overwhelmed with little leads to lead you to your objectives, and you’ll constantly find yourself stumbling into unwelcome territory. It feels like you’re constantly trespassing and aimlessly looking around the map, unsure of where to go.

But once you get to grips with your notebook and investigation system, picking up findings and working out how to get around and what you’re supposed to be doing, you’ll soon find bouncing between one objective to the next and having a pretty enjoyable time while doing it.

It takes a moment to adjust to Atomfall as nothing is ever really spelled out for you directly. You’ll get random phone calls at the red boxes with cryptic messages. Find notes that elude to a point of interest and loot dead bodies to gather clues. These create leads which you can track and follow to compass points on the map in order to find a path forward. Some of these leads will need to be revisited later, others can take you to the next phase of the story.

That’s one of Atomfall’s strengths. You just start out with a guard over you, half dead, refusing to kill you but offering you that first lead  that then leads you to find atomic batteries, visit central processing in the interchange and eventually leading towards prisons and even reporting on villagers for ‘the Protocol’.

It’s a smart game, eventually leading you to discover rumour landmarks and locations, using the evidence you have to gradually piece this world together and learn more about it in the process. It’s a smart way to get you to look at every inch of this world, something a lot of these vast, open world games really struggle at.

But it also has a great sense of humour that genuinely makes you chuckle and want to stick around to listen to conversations to hear what people are talking about and what’s going on in this world where buildings are condemned and outlanders look like they’ve come straight out of We Happy Few!

The game sort of feels like a detective mystery in some ways, having you piece things together in order to lead you to your eventual location, and in some ways, it’s as simple as that, the mechanics not really stretching too far beyond that, with the storytelling acting in much the same way.

Combat definitely feels like a bit of a weakspot for the game, though, with enemies generally in large numbers and overwhelming, especially on Atomfall’s recomended difficulty. Melee doesn’t feel especially impactful and gunfire can take a surprising amount of shots to take an enemy down. There’s something about it that feels quite janky and underwhelming, a shame perhaps considering how satisfying Sniper Elite’s is in comparison. And something you’ll often find is you get overwhelmed by hordes of rats or wasps, and kick at them – which feels completely useless and like it barely touches your enemies.

Even the stealth doesn’t quite hit the mark, though it follows the likes of Far Cry where you can hide in tall grass and dive on top of your enemies when they saunter past. Though their perception and awareness of you, with incredibly heightened senses, is surprisingly difficult to avoid and generally feels a tad imbalanced.

It also feels like you just wander sometimes through all the back-tracking and pedalling, going back and forth between places and often just not sure where to find the particular spot you’re looking for as climbing hills and getting to higher vantages doesn’t always easily present itself.

The cool thing about Atomfall is it certainly feels like there’s depth here, between various ending types and routes to take in order to reach your conclusion. In that regard, there’s some good writing here to make the characters feel unique and interesting. The world-building also gives this world surprising depth and detail.

For the most part, Atomfall is a fun, interesting take on a sci-fi, post apocalyptic world. The strong British theme carries this game heavily with fun humour, great writing and while the mechanics feel bare bones in some regards, they manage well enough to keep the game being entertaining. Though it does suffer from some imbalance and jankiness that doesn’t quite allow the game to enter the top tier of all-time great sci-fi classics. Still, very much a worthwhile play!

Verdict

Atomfall’s lead system makes for a surprising detective mystery in a post-apocalyptic British world and offers an interesting way of storytelling through investigations, allowing players to investigate rather than being told where to go and exactly what to do. It does suffer from some imbalanced combat and stealth, and the world traversal is not always entirely satisfying, but the game’s writing, aesthetic, music and survival mechanics keep this feeling distinct and interesting enough to make it well worth  a play!

Pros

---

Atomfall is out on PC, PS,  and Xbox Game Pass beginning March 24 in Advanced Access

Played on PlayStation 5

Code Kindly Provided by Rebellion for review purposes