With Atlas Fallen, Deck13 Interactive brings another action RPG with its own twist. With, say, The Surge and the first Lords of the Fallen, it already showed that it can make decent games, but it never really succeeded in delivering a topper. Who knows, maybe this time it will work with the gritty Atlas Fallen.
Atlas Fallen takes place in a world where man has managed to collect Essence from the sand that can be found in the world. As a player you then get a special gauntlet pushed into your hand, which gives you the option to manipulate that sand in combat and during the exploration of the world. The story revolves around two gods, who each view humanity in their own way. One is a bit friendlier than the other and as a player you will naturally find yourself in the middle of it. It’s all a bit cliché, but okay.
The world of Atlas Fallen is quite large and there is also a lot of lore for players who like to explore every corner. Thanks to a special sand gliding technique, you can also cover a lot of distances, especially if you also use some fast travel from time to time.
Deck13 Interactive is also smart enough to divide the open world into separate segments here and there. Very occasionally you will encounter a loading screen, but that is really negligible. Those loading screens were surprisingly long on PS5, even when we died and had to reload the game, for example. We are really not used to having to wait ten seconds before we can get back to work.
So there is a lot to experience in the world, because in addition to the main missions you also have a lot of side missions, collectibles and small things that you can do to collect extra essence. You then need that essence to perform all kinds of upgrades.
Those who have already seen some images of Atlas Fallen may expect that the combat in the game is fast and fluid, but those people will come home from a bare journey. The combat is rather unwieldy and slow. However, the game wants to encourage you to play offensively, because you build momentum so that you deal more damage and can also use more abilities.
After all, you can equip various upgrades that become available as you build up more momentum. Your momentum bar is divided into three parts, so you can release more offensive or defensive powers step by step. Some of them work passively, while others can be activated by the player. As you build up more momentum, your weapons also change in appearance and so you have to attack a little differently.
Enemies also usually have weak spots that you have to attack to take them down, but that system is also shaky. If you break such a weak point, it means nothing for the attack power of enemies. They just keep doing the same thing. For example, you have a kind of giant scorpion, where the tail is of course a weak point. If you attack it fully and break the weak point, it can still attack with that tail.
So the weaknesses seem more like a way to artificially lengthen battles. What is also extra annoying is that it can often only cause damage at those points. If the tail of that scorpion, which hangs high in the air, is the only point that can hit you, then you have to perform breakneck tricks to reach it, while you are also extra vulnerable. And to complete the picture, big enemies tend to summon flying monsters to make your life even more miserable.
It is of course always possible that we are just bad at combat, but all together we have the feeling that a lot of fluidity is missing to make this Atlas Fallen a really fun game within the combat.
Finally, our biggest frustration with the combat. More than once there were times when the game just wouldn’t respond when we pressed a button. There you are, in the middle of an attack just doing nothing. Since the combat is also quite punishing, you can usually just forget about it.
Visually, Atlas Fallen doesn’t look bad, but the game suffers a lot from pop-ins and textures that load late. That is quite a shame, because all together the game really has a nice visual style. The sandy landscapes are impressive and the various settlements and cities also exude just enough atmosphere. But that is all somewhat negated by the performance of the game.
2023-08-09 18:00:00
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