Atlas Fallen Review - These sands are definitely worth surfing

Deck 13’s newest motion RPG Atlas Fallen throws you right into a world of a ruined empire amidst solar soaked sand, of blindly religious folks worshipping a corrupt god, classicism, slavery and loads of monsters roaming the wild.

Years after a protracted conflict and a short-lived revolt decimated the as soon as lovely world of Atlas, you tackle the position of an Unnamed, one stripped of every little thing together with a reputation and whose job it’s to do no matter you’re instructed. You’re nothing greater than a slave with no rights, working to serve the Queen and the corrupt Solar god Thelos. Thelos has enslaved and blinded humanity, demanding a tribute of a substance referred to as Essence – the lifeblood of the planet – as a present of devotion. The mining of Essence is slowly stripping the world of life, abandoning huge oceans of sand and lifeless deserts.

In a bid to get your folks extra rights, you’re thrust right into a battle between Thelos and one other god, Nyaal, who has been stripped from historical past. As the one one able to wielding Nyaal’s energy by an historical gauntlet, you haven’t any selection however to convey down the Queen and Thelos earlier than it’s too late.

Set throughout 4 massive places, Atlas Fallen embraces the open world style and all of its trappings. There are facet quests to interact in, collectibles to seek out, places to find and hidden lore shedding mild on the world and its inhabitants. The sport doesn’t do something totally different with the standard open world guidelines of actions. As a substitute it chooses to put money into a enjoyable and pretty ingenious fight and motion system that makes navigating the big world and exploring oodles of enjoyable.

Courtesy of Nyaal’s gauntlet, which supplies you management over sand powers, you acquire the power to double soar, air sprint and, most significantly, surf the sandy dunes. Sand browsing is as cool because it appears, letting you zip throughout the panorama shortly, leaving trails of sand in your wake. Combining your transfer set with sand browsing enables you to discover the surprisingly vertical setting with ease and elegance.

And that setting is completely beautiful. Deck 13 have managed to make the sandy wastes look completely beautiful with environments that tower in scale, flipping between sun-blasted ruins, wild outposts of life, historical citadels and chasms galore. Coupled with the picture mode, Atlas Fallen has loads of screenshot worthy moments as many of the environments look as if the idea artwork was translated 100% faithfully into 3D.

Much less profitable are the character fashions and animation which take a look at least a era behind the beautiful setting design, replete with animations that don’t at all times sync absolutely with the voice strains. It’s a small blemish on what’s, in any other case, a visually beautiful sport.

Fight is the opposite a part of Atlas Fallen’s magic trick. It’s enjoyable, fluid and difficult all on the identical time, that includes beautiful animations and a system that requires you to mess around with its many choices to seek out your finest play model. Whilst you solely have three weapons, your means record of passive and energetic abilities, together with the Momentum meter, decide how efficient you’ll be in fight. You may swop talents out and in as you please, when you’ve crafted them and unlocked additional sections of the Momentum metre.

As you assault with out taking harm, the Momentum meter grows, enhancing your assault energy, and the dimensions of your weapons, whereas dropping protection. The meter is damaged up into three gauges, with every gauge activating the skills you’ve positioned in that part of the meter. As soon as the meter is full sufficient, you’ll have entry to an AOE tremendous that freezes the enemies in its radius whereas allotting huge harm. In the event you use it although, it makes use of up all your momentum.

There’s a danger/reward standing then. Do you utilize your shatter assault or maintain onto the momentum to maintain you smaller talents in play?

Pulling from their earlier sport, The Surge, enemies have a number of physique elements that you may goal and break off. Whereas it doesn’t reward you with particular gadgets, it provides to the complexity of fight as this too brings a heavy factor of hazard to the fights. When you break an enemy’s physique half, they turn out to be enraged and their harm output will increase. However it’s a necessity to do if you wish to defeat the bigger enemies and executives.

There’s an enormous factor of air fight in Atlas Fallen as nicely due to the airborne enemies and the way massive some bosses are. In the event you play your playing cards proper, together with enhancing your sprint, you may virtually fly all through complete encounters as you sprint between enemies.

Fight has one caveat in that the digicam typically struggles to maintain up with what’s occurring onscreen as the sport tends to throw a number of enemy varieties at you without delay. And enemies are very aggressive and difficult even on medium issue. And typically the lock-on doesn’t at all times goal the creature you need, particularly when the bigger, screen-filling enemies are blocking your view.

Your talents may also be upgraded, courtesy of the gadgets you’ll scavenge within the wilds, whether or not it’s ore or vegetation, they’ve their use. Fortunately, I by no means wanted to grind to achieve the gadgets I wanted. Regular play threw sufficient of them at me to verify I by no means felt in need when a brand new means I needed to jack up got here my means.

Character levelling isn’t dealt with within the conventional method both, which I loved. Finishing quests and defeating enemies offers you Essence to make use of. And you utilize that to improve the assorted armours you’ll decide up. Every set of armour may be upgraded thrice, which accounts for all you stats and your character stage. I discovered it to be a extra attention-grabbing and easy system than the standard RPG levelling methodology.

Atlas Fallen takes its story very severely as nicely. Whereas I didn’t discover the writing or vocal performances to be as sturdy as I’d hoped, I nonetheless discovered the story participating and entertaining even when it was much less of a hook than the fight. Whereas I want there have been greater than passive screens of you watching a dialog or sometimes making a selection, I nonetheless loved the story that Atlas Fallen was telling.

Atlas Fallen could not function the strongest or most unique story, however it does make up for that with lovely, spectacular visuals, a beautiful sense of exploration that holds a bit little bit of a Darksiders really feel to it, and a few beautiful and difficult fight that may maintain you in your toes. These sands are undoubtedly price browsing.