With Atomfall out now in Early Access form, we’re starting to see footage of the game crop up online – and of course, the team at Digital Foundry has taken a closer look at the game on current-gen consoles and PC.
However, despite the team’s tech review focusing on Xbox Series X|S and PS5 in terms of consoles, DF actually goes as far as saying that Atomfall looks “distractingly last-gen” on any platform that it’s running on. Here’s a little bit of context for that bold claim:
Texture quality falls flat on current-gen systems, for a start, with low resolution assets used for a great many surfaces. Screen space reflections (SSR) are also a distraction, where the technique used on console has large water bodies flicker with player movement. And finally, image quality is lacking, due to the game’s anti-aliasing method struggling to address the flicker and noise during any camera movement.
The matter of image quality is where Atomfall still disappoints, no matter which platform you pick.
The analysis goes on to say the Xbox Series S version is “hard to recommend” due to the game’s 30FPS target, with this performance level adding “a noticeable increase to input latency” over playing at higher frame rates on other systems.
To be fair to developer Rebellion, the fact that Atomfall may look ‘last-gen’ can in-part be attributed to the fact the game is actually a last-gen release too. Yep, this Game Pass RPG is also available on Xbox One as well as Xbox Series X|S – and if you want to find some footage of the last-gen version, you can check out a quick XB1 gameplay video from The Xbox Tester.
