Got T Go FastAtomfall review: a seriously swift survivalist scramble through a scenic section of Sadness IslandYou might be done with it a lot quicker than you'd anticipate, but while its got you, Atomfall is a decently good time.Image credit: VG247 Review by Mark Warren Senior Staff Writer Published on March 21, 2025 When I played a few hours of Atomfall at a preview earlier this month, the main question Rebellion's action-survival game left me with (aside from 'wheres the nearest place I can buy a vegetarian pasty to eat for tea?') was just how interesting would the bits that lay beyond what Id played be?How deep would the intrigue go, once youd really started to crack open the razor-blade covered pastry of this rough and rugged trip to a Cumbrian quarantine zone set up after a fictional variant of the real life Windscale fire?To see this content please enable targeting cookies. As it turns out, the answer is perhaps a little less deep than I would have liked. But heres the thing: I think it depends a lot on exactly who you are whether this lack of depth will be a positive or a negative. To properly rip the hastily-crafted bandage off, heres the situation. I reached the ending to my first playthrough of Atomfall after just 11 hours. That was with me pursuing a few of the main quest threads that each offer a different way to attack the ending, but not quite all of them.I was on the recommended Survivor difficulty (the second toughest the game offers), so I wasnt doing anything that might artificially shorten my run-up by potentially mismatching the general hardness of things to my already not uber-MLG abilities. I didnt have any special pre-order bonus gear or anything to help out either. Atomfalls just a game that, if youre not planning on taking many prolonged breaks from pursuing whichever main story leads youre prioritising to turn over every stone and comb through every location in the zone, doesnt have that long a runtime. If you follow the signs straight through the main objectives, you might not be in Cumberland that long. | Image credit: RebellionThats not to say that what is in the game isnt regularly intriguing, charming, or satisfying. Nor will you come out of whichever ending you opt for feeling that youve been short-changed. But this truncated runtime makes the game an interesting one to grade.Given a chance to properly settle into a build and crafting setup, I gravitated towards a general strategy of moving everywhere stealthily, then taking out most foes by sprinting up to them, dodging any shots or swings as best I could, and bonking my enemies to death with a trusty cricket bat.Once I took a perk to boost my characters melee damage, I found I could finish off most human enemies with two or three hits, and as long as I kept a steady stockpile of alcohol and cloth to craft bandages I could use whenever food and first aid kits werent plentiful, I could easily recover from most damage this strategy exposed me to.In scenarios when I didnt want to risk charging in, I used guns and a bow from a distance, with the latter and a bolt-action sniper rifle serving to whittle down enemies with a decent chunk of health from range. Meanwhile, my fourth large weapon slot held an SMG that I could save for the most brown trousers-time encounters in order not to burn through its relatively scarce and easily burned-through ammo.Towards the end, I started using one of my smaller backpack slots for a pistol I could whip out in close-quarters fights against weaker foes if I fancied. The toughest foes - giant BARD robots with flamethrowers and machine guns - I just snuck or ran like hell past, as the game very much seems to intend. On the other end of the scale, you can kick or slap swarms of rats, bats, pigeons, and leeches to death. Which is fun. I also loved getting up to a bit of metal detectoring - who wouldn't dig unearthing lunchboxes of goodies? | Image credit: RebellionThe majority of my perks, however, went into survival and conditioning. Stuff that helped toughen me up and better prepare me to fight the hostile environments you spend the vast majority of the game in. Three of these - Casterfell Woods, Skethermoor, and Slatten Dale - are open air regions of the games above-ground sandbox, and each is patrolled by its own enemy faction thatll shoot you on sight. Masked druids, rowdy-looking outlaws, and British army troops known as The Protocol, theyre all to be dealt with in whatever fashion you deem most practical as you explore each of these thematically-distinct areas that all boast a rugged beauty matching their dangerous atmospheres.Wyndham is the fourth bit of the puzzle, and its the largest of the rare safe havens that you can dip into when youre beaten down and in need of a quick reprieve from the kicking Atomfall gives you. That is, unless you mess with the Protocol soldiers whore occupying it, so its a bit less safe than you might first think. Theres some decent intrigue going on across all of these areas, a decent roster of friendly NPCs to chat to, leads to chase, and little mysteries to investigate.As you push towards the end game, however, youll find yourself spending a lot of time in The Interchange - the secretive underground bunker youll need to gradually bring back to life and gain access to different bits of in order to discover what happened at the games version of the Windscale plant to kick into effect the quarantine. Ill not delve too deeply into spoiler territory, but I will say that what you uncover feels like it pulls bits from video game apocalypses you may well have played through before. Casterfell's woodland nature enthusiasts are friendly folks. | Image credit: RebellionI was very much reminded of some elements from The Last of Us, along with Fallout: New Vegas - specifically the Dead Money DLC. None of thats an issue in a vacuum, Atomfall delivers its tale with just about enough unique flavour to keep you hooked, but I do feel like it only scratches the surface of the potential its premise exudes from a narrative perspective.The mechanic that delivers the story works well. Unless you opt for a lower difficulty that enables things like map markers and extra hints to aid exploration, Atomfalls detective-style lead system is a refreshingly stripped-back alternative to the UI-heavy quest and navigation systems youll find in most open-world games (you know the ones I mean).It meshes well with the narrative tone Rebellions gone for, which is very understated and keeps a lot of its cards close to its chest. That style of storytelling is very British, and is part of what makes Atomfall feel different from the likes of Fallout, with the latter often being more open - either in terms of just pulling back the curtain as to whats going on and why, or in acknowledging the philosophical discussion at play.In theory, both work just fine, but I do feel Atomfalls approach holds it back in places from delivering something more compelling or with a bit more depth. A lot of the lore - for lack of a better term - about The Interchange, the events of the quarantine, and the mysterious Oberon lying at the centre of it all, is delivered via notes or short conversations that often feel like they stop short of really captivating you and delivering a proper whiff of the interesting tale Atomfalls constantly teasing that its got brewing away. Yes, the Queen (RIP) is in it. | Image credit: Rebellion/VG247Ive seen four different endings to the game so far, and all of them felt a bit flat, like they were failing to or breaking off before they could conclude things in a properly satisfying fashion. There are times when Atomfalls mystery-weaving serves it well as its narrative progresses and you get some nice short-term choice in consequence, but it doesnt drop the curtain much, even when you reach the point when you feel like it should be, and the reveals you do get sometimes feel like theyre the least interestingly delivered outcome possible.It reminded me a lot of The Chinese Rooms Still Wakes the Deep in this way - well-crafted, unquestionably good fun, but with a story that feels like its probably the weakest part of the thing, either because its leaning a bit too heavily on genre tropes or holding back from actually committing to delivering on the elements that could go beyond that.Theres still a good chance youll still love it. The gameplay loop is satisfying, the environments are fun to explore, and the short runtime makes it an ideal Game Pass thing you can give a go without having to fork over 60 hours that could well get a bit stale by the end. However, I think Rebellions left what could have made Atomfall a great game rather than just a good or ok one on the table here.Its closer to puddle deep when it could be a lake or ocean given its cool premise. Or, to put it in a more Atomfall way, its a pasty that doesnt quite deliver a filling that matches how tasty the pastry looks.Atomfall launches on March 27 for PC, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, PS5, and PS4. It'll come to Xbox Game Pass on day one. This review was conducted on PC using a code provided by the publisher.