Forget the number of hours it takes for a game to “get good” — how am I spending the first 15 minutes?

Call me impatient, but a game’s opening seconds, even those introductory moments as a character comes alive or a world opens up, are make-or-break for how far I am willing to soldier on into what could be 20, 30, or 100 hours of play. So what a relief it was to fire up Atomfall, the new stealth-driven survival adventure from Sniper Elite developer Rebellion now on PlayStation, PC, and Xbox (via Game Pass), and feel immediately dunked into its radioactive mystery.

Atomfall takes place in an alt-universe patch of northwestern England where a nuclear disaster has left buildings crumbled and society torn apart. There are paramilitaries operating walled-off towns and pagan cults stalking the open fields. A dash of retrofuture machinery gives the backdrop a Fallout flavor (intentional), while the mannerisms and encounters are delightfully British (“press X to pour tea”). There’s lots to discover, and enough jank to the physics to build an aura of danger — in “the zone,” you’re in the wild.

None of this is spelled out when your first-person avatar wakes up confused, underground, and faced with a decision to help or hurt an ailing doctor who dangles the first of the game’s many mysteries in front........

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