Atomfall plays like a S.T.A.L.K.E.R. with Scouse accents

We’ve apparently never written about Atomfall, an oversight I’m now all too happy to correct, having played a promising forty minutes or so at Gamescom 2024. In development at Sniper Elite makers Rebellion, it’s a "survival-action game inspired by real-life events" – specifically the Windscale fire, which in 1957 coated much of northern England in radioactive fallout. Atomfall’s alternative history makes Britain’s worst nuclear disaster even more disastrous, plunging the realm into full-on post-apocalyptica and leaving your good amnesiac self to dodge death with nothing but a cricket bat and whatever you can scrounge out of sheds. I like it! Mostly.

Despite the Blighty setting and, let’s be honest, this preview’s proximity to Fallout: London, Atomfall more immediately evokes the compelling grimness of a S.T.A.L.K.E.R. game than the pulpier Fallout. And not just because Windscale was a mini-Chernobyl. While the few non-hostile NPCs I encountered were as chipper as they were Northern, life is hard round Atomfall’s parts. If I was lucky enough to pick a gun off a slain outlaw, it was invariably a rusted piece of shit, and I was only slightly more likely to get ammo for it than I was to find an open, functioning branch of Pret.

Much like S.T.A.L.K.E.R., the demo’s quarry town setting of Slatten Dale offered a blend of rural beauty and ravaged horrorscape. That said, this is no hardcore survival sim, and certainly not the kind where you’ll be chopping trees for twenty minutes before perishing to Turbo Dehydration. Atomfall does let you craft various tools and weapons from scavenged scrap, but the only vitals you’ll need to keep an eye on are your health and your heartrate. The latter rises when you sprint, kick, or swing your bat into a blighter’s head, and elevating it too much will darken the screen and muffle sounds. But! You’ll never drop dead because you haven’t eaten any berries for a while. This frees your attention to focus on Atomfall’s actual pleasures, which in my experience so far, range from the expertly unsettling atmosphere to some surprisingly thrilling rusted-piece-of-shit combat.

Bullets hurt: a single rifle round will drop a patrolling baddie, as will a well-placed shotgun blast, so while sneaking through bandit camps and snapping a series of necks is the most resource-efficient approach, aiming true can buy the chance to escape if you’re discovered. But it goes both ways: one wrong’un with a bolt-action can take a huge chunk off your health bar in an instant, while getting caught in the open by multiple shooters is likely a death sentence. The result is that gunfighting becomes a pacey yet deliberate mix of ambushes and hit-and-runs – whenever I could, I’d pick off a single foe before immediately darting back into cover and repositioning before their mates could return fire. Come to think of it, even S.T.A.L.K.E.R. might be a bit too conventionally shooter-y to be an apt comparison; it’s more like The Last of Us, where between the scarcity of ammo and the quiet-shattering fracas that ensues, a gun going off is almost always a big deal in itself.

It's a shame that the melee fighting feels weak by comparison. Terrible, in fact: swings are sluggish yet lack weight, and wonky hit detection means some attacks appear to harmlessly swish through the intended victim’s chest. You can kick as well as bludgeon, but this doesn’t quite click either. It doesn’t have the strength of a mighty Deathloop boot, but it does knock enemies back to just outside regular melee range, requiring an awkward shuffle forward for follow-up strikes to connect. Assuming they don’t simply choose not to. Atomfall isn’t due out until 2025, but all this needs fixing by then, given how much we’ll likely need to rely on brawling to avoid wasting those precious bullets.

I’m also hoping that its grim take on the Lake District – which is free-roamable but split into various zones and dungeons, including the spacious Slatten Dale – can feel like it has a little more going on. I couldn’t cover every piece of available ground in my forty minutes, but I was more likely to be passing through empty space than investigating a new point of interest. And although outlaws were a common threat, they rarely seemed to be guarding much: the vast majority of buildings are barren, with even the most basic resources make for a rare find.

Of course, the upside is that when you do find a single rifle bullet, or tin of delicious long-life meat, it’s like tearing open the wrapping of the biggest Christmas present under the tree. And, for all the world’s lack of liveliness, it is rich in atmosphere. Babbling streams present a serenity betrayed by the crackling radioactive fish, while idling highwaymen hum along to chintzy jingles that limp out of tinny, knackered radios. Even the booby traps have character – before fully settling into the sneaking approach, I carelessly set off a rudimentary alarm comprised of several empty cans tied to a pop-up signpost. As I triggered the mechanism, the scrawled words "PISS OFF" filled my screen, inducing both a gasp and a laugh. Hey, I said Atomfall doesn’t have Fallout’s goofiness, not that it couldn’t be funny.

This personality, and the high-stakes shooting, can take Atomfall a long way. I just hope that the dodgy up-close combat and certain practical elements of the world design don’t hold it back in turn. There’s definitely a good game in here, I reckon, even if those berks at Rock Paper Shotgun haven’t covered it until now.

For more of the latest news and previews from Gamescom 2024, head to our Gamescom 2024 hub.