‘Atlas Fallen’ Review: Nothing to Shrug At

As its title intimates, the world of Atlas Fallen is in shambles, its once verdant ecosystem turned to desert, with monstrous Wraiths terrorizing the few human settlements that remain. Your character, an Unnamed worker under the yoke of the Thousand-Year Queen, travels with a military caravan, collecting Essence for tribute to the world’s one god, Thelos. You soon stumble upon a powerful magic in the form of a talking gauntlet named Nyaal, and are able to conjure magical weapons out of the sand, striking back at the oppressive regime. And to succeed, players must draw upon the relics of the past to forge a new future.

Turns out, the developers at the German-based Deck13 Interactive set out to do something similar in the way they build off the bones of its predecessors. Yes, the game’s air-dashing mechanics can be traced to Forspoken, its giant monsters (and their individually targetable body parts) to the Horizon series, and its combo-based combat system to God of War. But the fusion of these and other elements is so clever, seamless, and inspired across the approximately 16-hour adventure that it becomes hard to regard Atlas Fallen as a knockoff.

The game’s creativity is most apparent in its inventive Momentum system, an on-screen gauge that fills when your character lands hits in combat and drains when you take damage or flee foes. At the lowest of the gauge’s three tiers, your Knuckledust (fist), Sandwhip (whip), and Dunecleaver (hammer/sword) are normal-sized gear that barely cuts it against the most colossal Wraiths, like the burrowing, snake-like Diver or the relentless and four-legged bestial Marauder. At the highest, you’ll be able to cast all three of your active spells and can execute big combos, literally and figuratively given the increasing size of your weapons.

It’s a great concept that falls short only because Atlas Fallen isn’t very difficult, at least on normal. The risk of ascending to the highest tier is supposed to be the increased damage that you’ll take, but so long as you’re upgrading your armor and wisely equipping Essence stones that complement your level of aggression, you can pretty much just hammer through.

And you’ll want to stay at a high tier because your passives and spells are only active once they can be slotted into your sufficiently built-up Momentum level; those abilities and buffs make it largely unnecessary to burn off your excess Momentum with a supercharged shatter attack. Monsters also have very clearly telegraphed attack patterns, so parrying them with your damage-negating sandskin or simply dodging with your very mobile air dash can keep you out of harm’s way. You might struggle a bit during your first encounter with each of the game’s 16 Wraiths. Then again, you’ll see most of them a lot, and they’re less menacing each time.

But combat is only a small part of Atlas Fallen. Indeed, you’ll spend the majority of the campaign exploring the three vibrant regions of the game’s world, helping out locals, following cryptic maps to hidden treasures, racing between totems that must be realigned and before they sink back into the earth, and destroying altars to Thelos. That may sound like the checklist-y grind of open-world games, but the activities are more about finding novel ways in which to reach each objective as opposed to repeating the same actions at each.

Atlas Fallen only falters when it feels as if it’s slowing down its flow, as with an ill-considered sidequest that requires you to carefully follow wildlife to their buried treasures. The faster the game moves, the better it plays, whether that’s in combat or as you traverse a sunken city, occupied swamp, or desert ruin. Stick around past the sluggish first act and both the gameplay and plot get the hint, speeding ahead with the most enjoyable kind of recklessness.

This game was reviewed with code provided by Sandbox Strategies.