I love the Fallout games, but as a genuine, original, one-of-a-kind British person, I’ve always explored the United States-based wastelands wondering what’s going down across the Atlantic. I can get an idea, albeit unofficial, thanks to the Fallout: London mod for Fallout 4, but what about elsewhere in these fine isles? Most of the United Kingdom is countryside, after all. That’s what Atomfall, the 2025 post-apocalyptic action game from Rebellion Developments, imagines. And if you’re a Game Pass member, it’s worth playing before it leaves the platform for good this month.
Atomfall is the best Fallout replacement in years
Atomfall is set in the Lake District, a jaw-droppingly beautiful region of northern England, and a prime example of how British people from the south of the country are so, so wrong when they utter the oft-repeated cliché “it’s grim up north.”
In 1957, the Windscale fire was the worst nuclear accident the UK has ever seen. Its severity was downplayed by the British government at the time, but in reality, the radioactive materials released into the atmosphere spread across the UK and Europe. Atomfall takes this incident and rewrites history by making the disaster even worse and introducing sci-fi elements. It also moves the Windscale site much closer to the classically picturesque Lake Windermere, rather than its real location near Gosforth.
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Atomfall’s scale doesn’t quite compare to the modern Fallout games, nor is it as much of an RPG as it doesn’t feature leveling or experience points, but that doesn’t hold it back. It’s closest to Fallout: New Vegas in that it’s an experience led by player choice, and it doesn’t have expanses of land with little to find. Instead, its open-world zones are densely packed, with interesting characters to find everywhere you look.
Where Atomfall also stands out is that it’s partly a detective game. Numerous characters have their own dilemmas, and you can discover clues and leads, all of which are tracked in your journal. Exploration is encouraged, and by default, there aren’t any quest or waypoint markers, although you can enable them if you wish.
Everybody can be killed, if you like… or you can try not to kill anyone at all. Who you help will dictate which of the six different endings you get, and the vibe often gets quite creepy, even outright terrifying at times, in the same way a feral ghoul leaping at you from the depths of a tunnel in Fallout will make you jump out of your skin.
Most importantly, though, Atomfall is quintessentially English. Sure, it plays up the stereotypes — there’s an achievement for drinking tea, then eating both a Cornish pasty cake within 30 seconds, for example — but as someone who has visited Lake Windermere a number of times, it never enters the cringe-worthy realm that British-set, American-targeted media often can. Atomfall is on Game Pass for both Xbox and PC through Sept. 30, and you should rush to play it before it leaves.
