Atomfall review for PC, PlayStation, Xbox

In a way, Atomfall feels like the most 2025 game imaginable. Even though it’s set in an alternate, irradiated version of 1950s England, it’s a game that runs almost entirely on a vaguely sense of unease and not a whole lot of direction. If that doesn’t describe our current moment in time, I don’t know what does.

You learn right off the bat that Atomfall isn’t really a game that tells you what it expects of you. Your character wakes up in a decrepit bunker, and a guy in a Hazmat suit stumbles in, bleeding profusely and begging for help. Where typically this kind of set-up will lead to a basic tutorial, Atomfall doesn’t work that way. You could help the injured man, of course – or you could kill him, loot his corpse, and go on your way.

What’s more, things don’t get any clearer from there. When you stumble outside into the open air, you’re greeted by a ringing telephone. Again, where most games would use a moment like this to set you on your way, in this case you’re given a cryptic clue – or a “lead”, in the game’s parlance – and then left to your own devices. You can rummage through abandoned buildings for more clues, you can scrounge scraps to help you survive, and you can you can talk to the survivors that populate the world to try and get more leads.

Or, alternatively, you can kill everyone that moves, and wander to your heart’s content. You can ignore all the clues, forgo any sense of trying to methodically solve Atomfall’s mysteries, and just see what kind of mischief you can cause.

While the latter probably isn’t quite the way Rebellion intended for people to play Atomfall, I wouldn’t say it’s entirely wrong, either. After all, they give you the freedom to play the game your way – and I’m not going to lie, it’s the way I chose to play.

Even if my more chaotic approach meant I didn’t form attachments to people around me or learn about the different factions that populate Atomfall’s world, it still meant I had quite a bit of fun causing chaos. Armed with whatever weapons I could get my hands on, I left a trail of battered soldiers and hoodlums everywhere I went. I quickly learned that if you ran into a more populated area, you could always position yourself by a door with a trusty cricket bat or police truncheon, and deliver a few quick whacks to everyone as they lined up in an orderly fashion to investigate where all the other people had gone. At several points, I found myself surrounded by dead enemies (who, truth be told, the game may not have intended as enemies, but bad habits were hard to break), able to sustain myself and rebuild my health by looting their corpses for whatever foodstuffs they’d kept on their persons, and constantly equipped with new weapons as more and more foes kept entering the area and meeting their doom.

I’m sure that if you approach Atomfall in a more structured, traditional way, you’ll also find plenty here to enjoy. I mean, how could you not? Even though the game is set in a small British countryside town, there’s still lots to uncover. Despite my commitment to playing the game as an unstoppable killing machine, I still nonetheless uncovered all kinds of clues that pointed to a deeper mystery. There are plenty of other phone booths with cryptic callers, plenty of people who look at you in a friendly way and want to talk (before you bash them in the face with a cricket bat), and plenty of clues to pick up that will help you figure out the truth of what happened.

Regardless of how you want to approach Atomfall, you’re almost certain to appreciate its post-apocalyptic world. There’s a neat contrast between all the markers of a world where everyone has suddenly vanished – the abandoned cars, the rusty boxes, the crumbling buildings taken over by nature – and the markers of something deeper and more sinister, like the giant robots with flamethrowers for arms, and the murderous, face-painted cultists roaming the otherwise pastoral countryside.

All this means that if you want a traditional, linear experience with clear goals and objectives, Atomfall probably isn’t what you’re after. It’s very much a player-directed experience – for better and for worse, depending on your perspective. However, if you’re the type who wants a game to give you the freedom to play however you want, then you owe it to yourself to check out Atomfall.

Rebellion provided us with an Atomfall PC code for review purposes.

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