My first 3 hours in Atomfall feel playing Fallout 3 for the first time, and if you don't check it out I'm legally obliged to bash you with a cricket bat

Atomfall is one of very few post-apocalyptic games I'd risk a holiday in. I doubt anyone judges a shooter by its relaxation appeal, but nonetheless: find a way to throw me into developer Rebellion's nuclear-warped Lake District, and I'll be unfolding my camping chair before you can say blimey.

Ignore the sprouting corpses and druids with a penchant for sacrifice, and Atomfall is a picturesque slice of British countryside. Lush forests and fields sidle up to rippling lakes, grassy hills reach toward suspiciously blue skies. Even Windscale, the disastrous nuclear power plant responsible for the region's quarantine, radiates gorgeous purple… light? I don't actually know what that is yet, but it sure is pretty.

When it comes to aesthetics, Atomfall's doom-and-gloom looks closest to the floral flourishes of Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl and The Last of Us. It's odd, then, that it's reminding me of Fallout 3 – also known as the most beige game in existence.

Crawl out through the fallout

Confession: when I played Fallout 3 for the first time, I couldn't make heads nor tails of the Pip-Boy. As a result, I spent hours trying to escape Vault 101. Without access to my inventory, I had to fight through security guards and radroaches with just my fists – and with no means of healing (or so I thought), my last dregs of health had to be rationed to last the entire dash for freedom. Atomfall isn't quite as difficult, but that scrappiness is here too. The only guns I've found are single-shot and clumsy to reload, which means I'm once again relying on my fists (and later, a cricket bat) to keep bandits from picking over my corpse.

Mechanically, though, these similarities prompt just a flicker of recognition. The real familiarity is the giddy, catapulting manner in which both Atomfall and Fallout 3 careen you into their worlds. For Fallout 3, it's emerging from Vault 101 to a near-complete scene of destruction, your only goal being to find your dad. Some of us wandered into Springvale and got our asses kicked by raiders in the high school, but eventually, everyone arrived in Megaton to find a port in the storm.

In Megaton, you truly got stuck into life on the other side of the apocalypse – and who'd have thought it would be so lively? The scrapheap settlement is almost overwhelming in how much connection it offers: do you dig Sheriff Lucas Simms' no-nonsense vibe and help disarm the live nuclear bomb the town is built around? Alternately, do you set it to detonate because a well-dressed creep offered to pay more caps than you know what to do with? Nip into the general store and you'll be roped into helping write a book, while gossiping at Moriarty's Saloon will turn up vague hints as to where your missing dad has run off too.

Lost and found

There is so much to do in Megaton alone that all you can really do is let it wash over you before picking a direction, your priorities based almost entirely on vibes. My experience in Atomfall has largely mirrored that. Northern England's equivalent to Megaton is Wyndham Village, which is quainter and greener but just as dense. The village is under military occupation, and its residents are getting a little antsy. The vicar is keen to cover up a murder in his church, a note in a rat-infested basement implicates the local shopkeeper in a cult that claims to hear voices in the soil, and the baker has locked her husband upstairs because… well, he is hearing voices.

Even better: Atomfall forgoes a traditional main quest for leads. Follow up on a rumor and there's a decent chance you'll learn something that comes in handy further down the line. Freewheeling around Wyndham Village feels productive, purely because it's your first real opportunity to learn about the fresh green hell you've stumbled into – though working out what's hearsay and what's true is another matter entirely. The approach turns your own curiosity into a tantalizing hook – the same one that made the Capital Wasteland so enticing to explore in its early hours, and more recently, gave The Lands Between its magnetism in Elden Ring.

It's rare I feel so gleefully lost in a game, which means I'm clinging to Atomfall (see: my cricket bat) with both hands. These last few months have seen a staggering amount of brilliant releases, and if you're anything like me – preferring to be dunked into games rather than guided into them – Atomfall sits alongside the very best of them. Proper good stuff, it is.

With Atomfall now released, check out our new games 2025 list to restock your wishlist