Atomfall's Nuclear Disaster Has a Toxic Element: Tedium

New York Times

27-03-2025

Atomfall, an open-world role-playing game set in the verdant English countryside of the mid-20th century, is hampered by questionable design choices that made me wonder if I'd fallen into a time warp and was playing a spiffy-looking game from 15 years ago. There are narrative tropes, flat characters and unimaginative enemies everywhere.
The latest game from Rebellion — an Oxford studio best known for the Sniper Elite series — spins an alternative history around the 1957 Windscale fire, the worst nuclear event in British annals.
The fire, which affected one of the two nuclear reactors in the Cumberland area of northwestern England, released radioactive material into the environment, but the disaster was downplayed by the British government. It's a small irony, then, that Atomfall opens with newsreel footage that depicts the British military cutting off contact between the area around the reactor and the outside world.
I can't say that Atomfall's opening inspires confidence. At the start, my unnamed character is roused from a cot inside a bunker by a scientist in a hazmat suit with a gaping wound to his side. In response to my character's obvious confusion, the scientist hastily sets the scene: 'You're trapped in the quarantine zone around the Windscale atom plant. That's where it all went wrong.'
In the mythology of the game, the Windscale incident followed a top-secret scientific discovery. But may we all agree that at this point in video game history, an amnesiac protagonist should be included only if there are a number of mind-melting payoffs queued up?
Soon after emerging from the bunker into the bright light of day, in the manner of the Fallout games, I encountered a group of outlaws who told me to back away lest there be trouble. Perhaps if they endeavored upon an actual conversation I wouldn't have resorted to the ol' ultra violence. But everything about them signaled that they were disposable, forgettable antagonists. I made my way to Wyndham Village, where military personnel patrol the streets while the locals tend to their affairs.
The nonplayer characters, who provide texture and memorable moments in stronger role-playing games, are here little more than tiny founts of information with a splash of personality to stretch them into one-dimensional beings.
At a country house, I encountered a doddering lady who asked me to find her missing servant. After I discovered and relayed the servant's fate, she told me that I could be a replacement. That ha-ha revelation and some generic loot gained from reaching a previously locked-off part of the estate's grounds was one of the game's ho-hum quests.
A bulk of Atomfall's main story line involves restoring power to a secret government facility called the Interchange. (Yet another overused plot device I could happily do without.) The first time I encountered one of the ferals — the blue zombielike enemies who lurk there — I groaned inside. They struck me as generic, not scary.
Moving deeper into the facility I encountered what looked to be possessed scientists in hazmat suits who were far more difficult to kill; they followed me through tight environments with a tenacity that reminded me of Mr. X in Resident Evil 2. I found them, in addition to some of the robot enemies that patrol the Interchange, marginally more interesting to spar with. That said, the artificial intelligence of enemies can be easily manipulated.
My favorite thing about Atomfall is its suite of accessibility options, which allow you to fine-tune your experience at any point. On the recommended setting, the player must rely on a compass to navigate; this can be tweaked so waypoints for objectives are shown on the map, the only way I avoided checking out earlier.
From its lackluster opening until the 25th hour, I held out hope that Atomfall would eventually satisfy — but to my dismay, it never did. I should have just stayed in the bunker.