I’m always stoked when a game quietly sneaks up on us. You know the type, usually something from the AA industry that had a cool cinematic trailer some time ago but has since faded from our collective minds, only jolted back when someone mentions it got a release date. Atlas Fallen is one of those games. Serving as both game developers and publishers under Focus Entertainment, Deck13 Interactive has been quietly churning out bangers for the last five years. Makers of the criminally underrated The Surge series, which took Soulslike combat and planted it into a sci-fi dystopia, Deck13 are no strangers to rock-solid action experiences.
With Atlas Fallen, the Frankfurt-based studio is riffing on a whole other flavour of action title, the heady-hack’n’slash. I’m not sure if that’s an official designation for anybody else but for me it calls to mind the original God of War trilogy and buried Xbox 360 era gems like Darksiders – games that deliver fast-paced, button-slamming combat but also reward deliberate, methodical mashing for those willing to engage at a deeper level. With a shiny new May 16th release date locked in, this third-person action RPG is starting to show the pedigree we’ve come to expect from this team. After spending a few hours in a preview build of the game, I’m left weary of its setting but absolutely enamoured by its systems.
But first the broad strokes, and in the case of Atlas Fallen they are definitely rather wide. The preview was light on details, dropping me into the game’s modest open-world without much fanfare around the plot and settings but from what I gleaned, we’re in for a trope-y fantasy tale. You’ll be playing as a customisable character who is thrust into an age-old war that has torn apart the world of Atlas as a ruling class of magic wielders do the bidding of an almighty god. There’s a litany of proper nouns thrown at you in quick succession by a talking gauntlet (the third of the year, if you’re counting) and while none of it really stuck with me, the looming stone god in the sky is certainly a striking image.
With the fantasy exposition dutifully doled out for now, I was let loose into the game’s open world with the task of gathering up fragments of my almighty glove so that it may allow me to effectively fly. Atlas Fallen’s entire ecosystem revolves around this device, using its magic for traversal, combat and narrative structure. The latter has potential, hinting that the being trapped in the glove, Nyall, has more of a role to play in the war than first imagined (shocker), but the raw gameplay is undeniably a blast. Moving through the world is fast and loose; I’m hesitant to call it floaty because of the connotations but it truly is to the benefit of the player. Your character can propel themselves across any sandy surface, gliding along the fine particles regardless of incline, turning even basic exploration into a satisfying, quasi-skiing experience. Better yet you can transition from this glide into a substantial double jump that has some very generous gap correction, magnetising you to surfaces you should (by all rights) have missed. Unless it wants to gate you from an area, at which point this little boost will turn off in mildly frustrating ways.
These great movement options seamlessly fold into Atlas Fallen’s combat, an easy to grasp but layered system that shows great potential. Fights are frenetic balancing acts that require a shifting combination of dodging, parrying and aggressive play to be successful. Alongside your gauntlet you’ve also got an Idol that is charged up by continuous, successful blows against foes. It allows for three healing charges, infinitely refillable provided you can stay on the offensive, as well as three additional super attacks that can be crafted and equipped in the game’s extensive Essence Stone system. These special skills are tiered, with progressively stronger moves gated behind a Momentum meter that, like the healing flask, fills up with repeated attacks. I started the game with a sick hammer throw, not too unlike Kratos’ axe as it magically flew into enemies, but eventually crafted a summonable tornado that would unleash a solid DPS blow to whatever I was targeting.
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All of those traversal tricks still apply during enemy encounters too, with stages often designed to utilise free flowing movement and a variety of engagement methods. Weapons have two base attacks as your standard light and heavy moves can be altered by holding down the face button instead of tapping. For instance, my whip-blade-thingo could quickly swipe from afar but if I allowed time for a long hold, it would lodge into an enemy for extra damage and crowd control. Likewise the basic axe weapon could be turned into a hefty, downward hammer slam that would have environmental impact as well as raw damage. Momentum, in addition to unlocking skills, also allows your weapons to Ascend, unlocking beast mode versions of them that deal far more damage through flashier animations but likewise make you more prone to damage in turn. Atlas Fallen is smart enough to not lock you into this state though, as Momentum can be spent by holding down both triggers to unleash a massive blow.
Atlas Fallen’s menagerie of corrupted creatures, called Wraiths, are likewise worthy foes for your arsenal of tricks and tools. I have some minor reservations around repeated enemy designs; the short trailer at the end of the preview build showing off mostly the same rotation of Wraiths I had already grown a little tired of, but this is mostly concerning the smaller foes. Atlas Fallen’s bigger, nastier Wraiths are a delight; towering creatures with targetable body parts and naturally forming armour, these fights pushed the game’s systems to new limits. Scattered throughout the world, and typically found defending quest points, these Wraiths call Monster Hunter to mind but with the pacing of a God of War encounter. One instance saw me doing battle with a sand serpent whose head was its only vulnerable point and would frequently hide underground while summoning adds, forcing me to ground slam to trick it back onto the surface.
While most of my time with the game was centred around these fantastic, interlocking combat tools, there seems to be a whole RPG ecosystem ticking away in the background. Caladrias, the area I was able to partially explore, had this beautiful (if a little dry) aesthetic of a collapsed kingdom, taken back by the sand. The world is littered with NPCs who will happily give you quests big and small, often rewarding you with crafting materials and the game’s experience currency, Essence Dust. Which, while we’re on the topic, isn’t lost upon death, the game explicitly telling you that it won’t punish you for messing up as it wants players to experiment with different systems to find their preferred method of play.
It speaks to the overall tone I took away from Atlas Fallen, a borderline nostalgic action romp that presents a simple, good time while inviting deeper player exploration so that the experience might ascend like its signature weapons before it. I’m still not completely sold on its fantasy world but a stellar combat system, effortlessly cool exploration and decent array of foes make this a tale worth keeping earmarked for May.
