When I finished my first playthrough of Atomfall for review last year, I felt like Rebellion’s pasty-littered survival game was just starting to properly get its hooks into me.
I’ve dug plenty of short games over the years – Return of the Obra Dinn and The Red Strings Club are a couple of examples – but with that brevity comes the challenge of delivering on the promise of your premise in a briefer window than longer games are afforded. The base version of Atomfall instead reached its destination just as it was truly getting into its stride. The fact that the destination was more mundane and forgettable than the game had built it up to be only marked out that feeling of wasted potential more starkly. It was a good game, but one I couldn’t recommend without considering adding the phrase ‘for what it is’.
It’s worth noting that James, who reviewed it here on the RPS side of the great Gamer Network quarantine zone while I was still roaming the woods with the other VG247 ferals, found Atomfall’s combat and stealth to be its weak points, feeling that it delivered from a narrative perspective by the time he rolled credits. RPS tradition demands I declare him wrong [Mark, can we have a word later – James], but honestly he came to Rebellion’s creation as a Stalker-loving bald man with a beard, while I’m a Fallout-pilled head hair haver [Seriously Mark, a word] who struggles to grow anything beyond thin chin pubes in three specific spots. So, we probably just represent different ends of the spectrum of folks who might dig some or all of what the game offers. He’s a pragmatic outlaw from Slatten Dale with well-honed killing instincts, I’m a druid from Casterfell who keeps trying to talk to soil. It’s nothing personal.
Having stopped chatting to dirt long enough to return for a second go, now that Atomfall’s a year old and has two expansions to flesh it out further, I’m glad to report that I’ve found it has more of what I want from games of its ilk. As a result, I’ve been able to truly appreciate its whole, not just the adrenaline rush of its minute-to-minute struggle for survival.
These two DLCs – Wicked Isle and The Red Strain – open up two new regions of the Cumbrian quarantine zone. Wicked Isle, quelle surprise, lets you take a boat across Lake Windermere to Midsummer Isle. It’s a moody patch of landscape dominated by a ruined abbey with a complicated past involving monks who managed to anger all of the major world religions by getting a bit too into worshipping what they refer to as a fallen angel. Their former home’s now inhabited by the same druids who patrol Casterfell Woods, with the only other faction being the lake bandits – a gang almost identical to Slatten Dale’s outlaws – who’ve moved into a chemical weapons testing bunker. There’s plenty of recycling of elements and enemies from the base game, but Rebellion have also added twists, like an aquatic variant of their snarling blue infected who resemble the Creature from the Black Lagoon.
Narratively, and a warning that I’m going to wander into mildly spoilery territory from here on, it’s not a million miles different from the base game’s subtle weaving of secrets – the kind that can occasionally leave something to be desired if, like me, you’re used to a more overstated American brand of armageddon. Though, it does take steps towards the wackier side I feel add a flavour you don’t get as much back on the main land. The main one is an old bloke asking you to fetch him some special mead made at the abbey, and ending up permanently possessed by a monk who’s been asleep in some collective consciousness for 350 years. Naturally, this robe-wearing body-snatcher has a way out of the zone to offer you, if you’re willing to fetch the severed head of the former abbot, who naturally also fancies a natter with you. A bit cartoony, sure, but certainly memorable and a nice contrast to scrabbling through grey bunkers for notes filled with scientific jargon-laced intrigue.
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On the other side of the Midsummer coin are Jean Hamer and her lake bandits. Jean’s nice enough, if you can sneak past the hostile members of her gang who’re patrolling beyond the confines of the bunker. She’s not bothered about telling them not to kill you even if you’re working with her, resulting in vibes not entirely dissimilar to a teacher who’s sent all of the most unruly kids out into the playground and is content to let them slide tackle each other to death as long as they’re not knocking over her bookcases. She’s also keen to offer you passage off the island, but in true mob boss style, will only deliver if you nick something valuable and whack someone she’s heard bad things about. I’ll be honest Jean, you just don’t have enough trippy hallucinations of old monks talking about where on the mainland they buried crypt keys to convince me to side with you.
Going around digging up these keys is an exercise that helped me really appreciate a free addition Rebellion made to Atomfall late last year. The rapid travel network is an underground BARD tram accessed via hatches in each region – including the two new ones – which once found, give you a means to quickly hop between areas you’ve already visited. It saves a tonne of late-game legwork which, though it could certainly add something to a playthrough for the seriously fast travel-averse, proves a drag for those of us who don’t want to be on forever. Plus, you’ve still got to hotfoot it to the one hatch in each region to use the tram, so it doesn’t cut out the entire commute.
By the time I went to start The Red Strain, which takes you to another new area called Stafell Crag, I’d amassed plenty of whatever the BARD tram equivalent of frequent flyer miles are. Then, I began to get my arse kicked. From the moment you pop out of the door of the train station that serves as the eventual entry point into Stafell, it’ll not take you long to discover the denizens of the nearby village aren’t to be underestimated. For one, they’ve all got bright red skin that forms a rather hilarious contrast to the fact they’re all dressed in outfits you might expect to find in the wardrobe of Wallace of ‘and Gromit’ fame. Beware of giggling too hard, though, as most of them have automatic weapons which can end even a hardened survivor in a quick burst if there’s no cover handy.
In line with that, breaking into Test Site Moriah, the sprawling scientific facility which takes up most of the Stafell region, is a bit like getting into the base game’s Interchange for the first time, but with the difficulty ramped up several notches. The outer wall’s dotted with turrets whose monitoring areas are fairly wide, you’ll quickly be wondering where you left your signal redirector, and then there’s the matter of the red stuff. You see, as its name suggests, this DLC concerns a different variant of the base game’s evil blue plant gunk, which has breached containment and turned a bunch of people into angry facsimiles of Fallout’s feral ghouls.
As such, the place is swarming with red versions of regular Atomfall’s infected enemies, including the hazmat-suited thralls who remind me of the ghost people from New Vegas’ Dead Money expansion, and a lockdown – that’s set hulking BARD bots, more turrets, and even small swarms of pesky shock bots loose – doesn’t help. I was glad to finally reach the relatively safe haven of the command centre. This is around the point that – sorry to bring up Fallout again – things started to remind me of New Vegas’ Old World Blues DLC. Principally because there are eccentric scientists who’ve become brains in jars, and they have plans involving many big words that they’d like you to help them act upon.
As you battle through to gather all these jarred brains up, unlocking the facility as you go, two new prospective endings for the game take shape. Well, they did outside of the many hours I ended up having to spend desperately scouring Site Moriah for the few bits of electronics I needed to upgrade my signal redirector. Once I had it, I faced a choice. Side with one brain who, seems a bit dictator-y, to blow up the entire zone in the name of the greater good – reminiscent of New Vegas’ Lonesome Road DLC’s nuke everything option – or help a gang of brains blast off into space on a big rocket à la the New Vegas quest with those religious ghouls.
I appreciate that at this point I’m very much venturing into ‘getting a lot of Boss Baby vibes from this’ territory with my New Vegas mentions, but overall I’d say there’s enough unique character to The Red Strain that even if you’re keenly spotting elements you’ve seen crop up in other apocalyptic media that it doesn’t feel too recycled. Each of brains – from the forgetful engineer, to the BARD staffer who ended up reluctantly jarred following an accident, to the posh ex-RAF colonel who keeps droning on about flying Hurricanes – ooze the kind of over-the-top personality that the base game often shirks in favour of staying more subtle and grounded outside of its mysterious telephone voice. That won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, but it is mine.
As much as both The Red Strain and Wicked Isle fall emphatically into the category of ‘more Atomfall’, rather than being radical departures from the base game, they’ve got enough narrative colour not to simply feel like a needless widening of a nimbly succinct survival jaunt. A year on from release and with its DLC grafted on, Atomfall feels a more complete being and one that’s lasted long enough for me to get properly into it the way I’d hoped to the first time around.
