To preface, I cannot in good conscience recommend any game which implements Denuvo.
I only discovered it had Denuvo when I was unable to launch the game in offline mode. If I had discovered this within the refund window, I would have immediately refunded and waited until Denuvo is removed before rebuying the game.

Denuvo is a technology that does not significantly affect piracy past the first couple of weeks, but does significantly affect the experience of legitimate, paying customers.
The only practical use of Denuvo is to reduce piracy within a game's release window. This sounds great, but this has never been shown to significantly affect sales; those who aren't willing to buy the game aren't suddenly going to buy the game because they can't download it. They will wait until they can download it.

And this is why Denuvo is known as an "investor scam". The only actual function of this technology is to provide the publisher/publishing department with a 0 piracy rate to report to investors within the release window. These investors do not understand the context, they do not understand that this does not equate to increased sales and they do not care that it does equate to a reduced quality of the final product.

Go check out CD Projekt Red for a high-profile example of a company destroying their games to please investors if you want an example of why it is so important that we do not support these practices.

Unfortunately, when I encountered this issue, it completely soured my experience of the rest of the game. I was thoroughly enjoying my playthrough, but after this point I just couldn't get rid of the stark reminder that no matter how much love and effort went into development, no matter how old-school and enjoyable the game is, we can never escape the sickening rot infesting this industry.


The Actual Review
This is all very unfortunate, as the game on its own merits is excellent, if a little overpriced. At full price it is hard to say this is a good deal, but once the first 33% sale happens, it will be fully worth it - assuming that Denuvo has been removed by this point.

Is this Fallout?
No. Please do not buy this if you are expecting Fallout. Anyone comparing this to Fallout has not played Fallout and other than the game being set post-WW2 and involving nuclear themes, there is no further comparison to Fallout. The gameplay is entirely different, the story is different, other than the fact you have the ability to shoot guns in both examples, there is nothing you will find that is similar to Fallout.
It isn't even post-apocalyptic, the comparison has really baffled me and baffled me through my entire playthrough.

World Design
Easily my favourite aspect of Atomfall. The world is obviously stunning, but beyond that, the maps are designed with interconnectivity in mind which facilitates traversal gameplay which feels great. There are no fast travel points in this game, and this is one of the best aspects as this forces you to consider when you will travel and how you will travel.
This is something that a lot of modern games forget about in the name of "accessibility", but the world design that this creates reminds me of the glory age of the 7th generation consoles and it is absolutely brilliant. I want a sequel solely based on the world design.
The downside is that most dungeons are designed like Skyrim dungeons, with very linear routes through the vast majority of dungeons.

The Setting
The story is interesting, and the voice acting is great. There aren't really any new ideas in the story and it isn't told in a unique way, but it is the final culmination of the storytelling that is quite effective. The game does just enough to keep you wanting to find more answers and meet more people while staying within a concept that has been approached by many others in the past.
The game is, of course, aggressively British, which is definitely a massive thumbs-up from me. Thank Goodness You're Here was the first high-profile case I can remember of a game being outwardly British to this extent, and I hope the trend continues. Both games being heavily northern is a huge positive and definitely contributed a lot towards my enjoyment of being in this world.

The Combat:
The weapons and their animations all look great and the guns feel great to fire. As always, Rebellion has clearly put a lot of time and effort into faithfully recreating a suite of weapons common to the UK in the 60s, and the addition of freely available cricket bats is marvellous.

Unfortunately, the actual combat itself doesn't quite live up to to high quality bar set by the weapons. The enemy AI will duck out of the way when being aimed at or when you fire a shot, but beyond that they are completely braindead and refuse to use tactics against you. This is great for the non-human enemies, but the human enemies appear to have the exact same AI routines so they all feel like suicidal idiots.
This was fine at the beginning of the game as I was trying to conserve ammunition, so I was avoiding combat or trying to be smart with explosives/melee weapons and the invincible kick. This was until I found out that ammo is, in fact, not at all rare despite what many review claim. For more than half of the game I was freely spraying bullets all over the place and there was so much ammo to pick up that 2 entire areas still had the vast majority of pickups still in the world as my ammo and crafting inventories were full.
The only exception to this was the forest as this was the last area I completed and it has very few ammo pickups in the entire area, but this was immediately rectified once I started pushing towards the end game. Using the bow would also have conserved my ammo.

This ties directly in to the difficulty of the game, as there doesn't appear to be any. I wish I had played on the highest difficulty as the game felt too easy, and please note that I am not good at video games, especially not shooters.
If they halved the amount of available ammo and crafting ingredients, this would have been a much more enjoyable and rewarding experience. Instead, I felt like I was overprepared for almost every situation and I barely used the traders as I had a full ammo inventory and a dozens of healing items stored in my pneumatic tube for almost the entire game.


Overall, this is an excellent game. Very reminiscent of shooters from the late-2000s while retaining the technology of today, with its stunning visuals and excellent gunplay.
As their first attempt at a story-driven, first-person game, this is brilliant and I really look forward to seeing what Rebellion cooks up next.
I have played Sniper Elite since the very first game, but now they have shown that they can do more than just sniping, I hope that they continue to experiment with games like Atomfall.

But, of course, please do not buy this until Denuvo is removed. The more that company is supported, the worse this industry becomes.

A single player game that requires an internet connection to play, which isn't listed in the store page.

I actually went into this game with low expectations. I left knowing this will be one of the best games ill have played all year.

The game is optimized. so much so they didn't bother including Frame gen or up-scaling. while still looking as good as any AAA game ive seen in the last year. all while getting a solid 60 fps on the steam deck.

And the game just FEELS great. Like i was revisiting the golden Era of gaming from like 15 years ago. And i mean that in the best way.

This was a game made, first and foremost, for the love of the medium.

Feels like a slower paced Metro or Fallout. all-be-it abit smaller in scale.

The world size is about as big as id ever want an open world to be without a fast travel mechanic.

And the way mission progression was handled was refreshing. no 3d super imposed quest markers. just detailed, and concise, journal entries about whats happened and what i should be doing next. assuming i wanted to just focus one a single objective, instead of simply wandering and exploring.

If i had a legitimate complaint about the game, its would be these two:

1. Ammo storage capacity. pistols felt like i could hold an excess of ammunition (75+a full magazine) while weapons like SMG's and Rifles felt lacking at just 120+magazine, and 45+magazine respectively. and while i would understand that a-bit if the pistol was generally weaker then the rifles, the actuality was the inverse. the Revolver (when pristine) had near the same damage as the hardest hitting rifle in the game (also pristine) with one more round available before reload, and rapid fire. You could get a stupidly overpowered pistol before the even leaving the first segmented world space. and it made it hard to want to use anything else.

I would as the Devs to maybe reduce the amount of pistol ammo one can carry and increase the amount of all other ammo types to bring things in line. Or better yet, give the player some system that lets them choose how much of what type of ammo to carry. for example: if i never plan to use an SMG, i can forsake the dedicated SMG storage for another ammo type like shotgun or rifle.

2. You would generally go through the entire game without ever getting to use afew of the weapons because they are only ever carried by the Protocol Faction. And to make an enemy of them seems counter productive adleast on a first play-through.

I would recommend some of the universal enemies and hidden bunkers be reworked to use/have these weapons like the Assault Rifle, Broadside shotgun, Browning pistol.