This week on Fully Ramblomatic, Yahtzee reviewed Atomfall.
Prologue: Mortimer T-Shirt
We've got a new T-shirt on DFTBA.com celebrating my Adventure is Nigh character, Mortimer, and his wonderful tendency to roll natural 1s at awkward moments. Buy it now to show the world your own close relationship with failure!
Transcript
Hey, don't take this the wrong way, Rebellion Developments, but why the fuck are you still here? You've been around since 199-fucking-1; in a world where the developers of fucking Hi-Fi Rush and Shadow of Mordor are getting shut down, why is the developer of NeverDead, the Mummy tie-in game for PlayStation 1, and about fifteen million Sniper Elite games the only one with this kind of staying power? Those exploding slow-motion Nazi bollocks must be carrying a lot of weight. Maybe a midrange developer can either make good games or be really savvy at business, but never both, probably 'cos making good games requires a soul, the kind of soul that upon concocting the notion, "Boy, people seem to like Fallout and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games a lot; let's knock off a half-arsed version of that and set it in fucking Lancashire, of all places", might've immediately followed up that thought with something like, "No, actually, let's not do that; it's a stupid fucking idea. No one wants to creep around a nuclear disaster exclusion zone in a flat cap and braces, bopping outlaws on the head with a black pudding." "Sorry, Yahtz. Quick question: what was the right way we could've taken this?"
I'm talking about Atomfall, if that wasn't clear, Rebellion's new first-person action stealth open-world RPG thingummy-bumcake set in a retro-futurist northern England where exactly the same thing that happened in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. appears to have happened: a disastrous nuclear power plant has spread anomalies across the countryside, the government walled the whole area off, and we're some random passing milkman or chartered accountant who woke up in the exclusion zone with no adequate explanation for how we got there, except that it was necessary for a video game to happen. The goal is simple: get the fuck out and get home before the missus gives us hell for forgetting to tape Coronation Street, and the only way to do that is to learn the mystery at the heart of the anomalies and pick a faction to side with, and of course, it's going to be either the fascists or the nutters, even if that wasn't the standard model for RPG faction dichotomies. It's fucking northern England; fascists and nutters are the only people who live there. So either appease the evil military group who keep muttering about oppressing the cities in Welsh accents, or the redoubtable tree-hugging druid faction with bows and arrows who keep muttering about hearing voices in the soil in the exact same, identical Welsh accent.
First impressions of Atomballs weren't great; it seems to be lacking personality. It's not lacking NPCs, can't escape the motherfuckers; there just aren't many personalites to go 'round. You go to the one still functioning village, and there'll just be queues of bleary-eyed nondescript earth tone-wearing townspeople arranged around the place, broken up by the odd soldier talking about how the next civvie that gives them lip, they're going to top the bastard. The number of times I heard that one specific bark, I assumed I'd be ankle-deep in topped bastards by the end of the first hour.
The core gameplay loop consists of roaming the countryside trying to avoid hostiles, and that's not great, either, largely because the stealth sucks; enemies spot you instantly even if you're just peeking out from behind a wall, unless, of course, you're immersed in the one highly specific kind of vegetation that hides you. So you can be in the middle of dense gorse bushes and still be spotted quicker than a naked pervert in a children's playground with a police siren light taped to the end of their energetically windmilling penis, or go completely unnoticed because you're half-crouching in a patch of grass that just about comes up to your fucking knees.
And the combat's not that exciting either, 'cos both you and the enemy are stuck with shitty generic shotguns and rifles that have to be reloaded between every shot, so it's like playing a game of Battleship with someone on the far side of a noisy cafeteria. Fortunately, it's also possible to avoid conflict in the overworld, 'cos enemies are courteous enough to give verbal warnings if you encroach upon their boundaries, and will de-aggro if you back off. But if we're supposed to avoid combat, and the stealth sucks, and you can't talk to the dudes either or offer them flowers, what does that leave for primary gameplay loops? Nature hikes?
My opinion on the game improved when I got to the underground tech bunker that was the game's central hub, and there was a machine that was all like, "Feed me four magic batteries! I don't care where you get them; all the factions have at least one, and I'll unlock more rooms for each one you find", and I was like, "Jeez, you could buy me a drink first, tech bunker machine thing!" But then I thought about it and went, "Ooh, actually, a single understandable goal hanging over most of the game that drives exploration? That's pretty good game design." But my feelings graduated from "Ooh!" to "Ooh, me likey!" when I realized Atomfall has no objective markers; like, at all. And having been conditioned for years by games that stick two fingers up your nose and lead you around like a mischievous horse, it's kind of sad that a game can be refreshing and interesting just by asking you to pay attention and think about stuff.
And more often than not, it rewarded my thinking; I'm searching for a specific quest item and have to think things like, "Well, it's probably in that important-looking room that all the guards are worried about", and hey, there it was. Or a questgiver directs me to check on strange happenings at the village dildo shop, and I think, "Well, logically, it's probably opposite the lubricant farm", and that's how I find it. So I was liking the game around the midpoint; it's almost like when a game forces you to engage with its world and story, then it becomes more engaging. "Gosh, thanks for the searing insight, Yahtz! I'm gonna fucking embroider that one." Oh, shut up!
Sadly, Atomfall failed to stick the landing, and I went off it again by the end, so here comes the spoiler warning. SPOILER WARNING, SPOILER WARNING, HERE COME ALL THE SPOILS! IF YOU'D RATHER NOT HEAR THE SPOILERS, THEN PLEASE KICK ME IN THE BOILS! After unlocking the hub, you pass through a final area full of those very annoying to fight mutant enemies who drain all your health and give you a status ailment just from going jazz hands at you, and then you finally reach the center of the anomalies to learn the truth behind it all, and it is... a big glowing space rock. At which point, we put our hands on our hips, go, "Yep, figured it'd be something like that", then bugger off home. Well, it depends who you're sucking up to; some factions ask you to destroy it, some ask you to take a sample, some say destroy it and take a sample - not in that order, obviously - but it just changes what levers you have to pull. And that's it! No boss fights, besides some generic enemies to avoid, no last-minute twists where it turns out the meteor was your mum the whole time; just be off with you now.
Guess this is one of those "journey over the destination" situations, since the destination is just a slideshow and voiceover before the credits that gives us a very unsatisfying summary of what happened next and tries to go all Psycho Mantis on us and analyze our playstyle, not very well. "Ooh, you talk to people a lot!" Well, yeah, it's an RPG, where you have to listen to what people say to know where to go! What else could I have done? Stick black puddings in their gobs?
Addenda
- Ee by 'eck thar's a reet nice cuppa love: Yahtzee Croshaw
- Cornish pasties as the basic food item? In the north? I'd have gone with Eccles cakes myself