Alex challenged me to come up with a funny caption for this. I couldn't.

Review: Atlas Reactor

Describing Atlas Reactor (and why it’s all sorts of fantastic) is a tall order. It leads to a tumult of clumsy ‘…like x, but with a twist of y‘ equations that are never as helpful as they are clever, and lead to some pretty average approximations. The best I’ve managed is a supercilious ‘multiplayer turn-based strategy for the Overwatch generation‘. Thing is, it totally is. Now released, I can emphatically suggest it as strategy front runner for any serious GOTY discussion.

Here WEGO.

On intimate grids, two four-strong teams plot the movement and actions of their single character in twenty-second intervals. The actions — attacks, buffs and effects, circumstantial positioning and the like — fall into three discrete, sequential categories. After all players have selected their skills and destinations, the round detonates like American football.

Opening actions fall into the Prep phase. Skills in this section usually refer to buffs, debuffs and trap-setting. Support characters are often most active in Prep, arming and healing their comrades before the clashes in Dash and Blast.

Dash is a specialised movement phase that requires specific repositioning or attacks to be used. These are usually offensive skills that couple an attack with often short-range movement. My favourite character, Elle, can combat roll in the Dash phase, then fire immediately from her new position. When you begin to understand the benefits of reading and feinting, the Dash phase is crucial.

No funny caption for this one either. It’s Monday.

Blast is a regular attack phase, followed by the concluding round movement phase. Each attack made on an enemy feeds into a character’s energy tally. Once the meter hits one hundred, a hero’s ultimate action can be unleashed. Coupled with buffs and catalysts, these are either incredibly devastating to the opposing team, or a salvation to your own, depending on the class and skill.

The phase system isn’t complicated once you wrap your head around it. Characters take superficial turns in the Prep and Blast phases, but in truth, every hero’s actions and damage are calculated regardless. No player is robbed of doing damage prior to their death. It has been a source of befuddlement for many, including yours truly once upon a time, as to ‘who goes first?!’ and ‘what dictates order?!’, but if you make a hit, you’ll do your damage — regardless of whether you get sidelined for a respawn.

Heroes aren’t locked to their factory skill set, either. Through levelling and upgrading, each of the current twenty-three characters feature a highly customisable action load out. Every action has its inherent costs, such as usage cool-down. Actions can also be augmented and offset by selectable catalysts. These are single-use boosters like damage enhancement or teleport rip cords. Atlas Reactor also features a slew of costumes and other cosmetic elements to unlock through loot boxes. These form the reward structure for leveling characters and completing challenges.

The characters themselves are varied and pretty damn creative. It’s a tough ask to appear unique in a medium clawing for your allegiance, and while Atlas Reactor does have more elbow room beyond MOBAs and hero shooters, its cavalcade of snipers, robots, gunslingers and deities all feel distinct and wonderfully realised. Dr. Finn is a biomechanical eel, strutting about in a bipedal suit to compensate for his anguillian shortcomings. Oz, another droid, deploys a fresh doppleganger at every previous location, with his proclivity for lasers turning every attack into a two-part sting. You’ve got mutants, gods and soldiers of both genders, each touting combat proficiences that rarely overlap.

Something about Sauron…nope, can’t do it. We welcome caption suggestions in the comments.

Trion Worlds‘ simultaneous turn-based multiplayer game is a bit of an anomaly. A four-versus-four WEGO multiplayer game shouldn’t work this well. Parceling decision-making into twenty-second blocks, segmenting actions into four distinct rounds per turn, having three classes of character work cohesively; Atlas Reactor should be an utter mess, particularly in public matchmaking.

But in the short, explosive matches, everything feels highly tuned and impressively accommodating. Attacks ripple and shimmer, every action a curt, satisfying pyrotechnic showcase. Atlas Reactor is a success because it shucks the oft-glacial pace reserved for turn-based strategy without sacrificing the associated decision-making. Whether you’re happy just to churn about with the competent bots or take the fight online, Atlas Reactor is served equally well as a clipped one-off bedtime story or a heavy dawnward binge. If awarded solely on time spent this year, 2016 would belong to Atlas Reactor in this house. But that’s largely comprised of nightly non-negotiables; a snappy fight to settle the nerves and see the day off satisfied.

Atlas Reactor sounds great, but it plays even better. One of the year’s best.

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Notable Replies

  1. I quite enjoyed this during it’s early access, even more so than overwatch which I dropped a pretty penny for. If it wasn’t for this new job I’d probably have more time (and sanity) for games other than mobile.

  2. Dismissed this when I first heard about it, but after seeing this today, thinking of giving it a shot. thanks.

  3. Yeah, it’s a terrific game! There’s a Mac version supposedly being considered for down the line, but PC only at the moment.

    Love the fact matches only take about ten minutes. Couple before bed to complete the daily challenges and done.

    Maybe we could get a bit of a Stately Play friendly competition set up?

  4. Played for a few hours today. It’s pretty overwhelming at first. Doesn’t seem that way until you actually get into a match, but then…yikes. The fact that I was still figuring out some things with the UI and such didn’t help.

    This works way better than it has any right to, now I just have to figure out if I can get past the early growing pains and get decent at it. It feels surprisingly like Paladins or Battleborn in a turn-based format.

    Kind of hoping the packs will go on sale for Black Friday.

  5. It’s true, the game should be an utter mess, what with eight independent characters plotting, attacking and planning simultaneously, but it isn’t. What characters have you checked out?

    Big fan of Blackburn as a standard mid-range, bit Elle is totally my main in her class. The overcharge, coupled with a damage catalyst and her ult…and heck, if you can snag a damage amplifier in the field, it’s a thing of utter, brutal beauty.

  6. I’m playing in free mode for the moment and the rotation I was given wasn’t stellar (Titus for my FL, Orion for Support). I have better options at Firepower, including Lockwood, Nix, and Zuki.

    It really does all work beautifully, though I have had multiple occasions were I thought I issued a command and locked it in, but nothing happened. I think there are certain ways that the UI could do a better job of feeding info to the player, like conveying line of sight (these enemies are in my cone, why weren’t they hit?), especially given the time constraints.

    I tend to play very conservatively, meaning I leave myself in a position where my turn is largely wasted. I should probably spend more time playing Lockwood for that reason, but if you have other suggestions for someone that plays well from cover, I’m all ears.

    One last thing to mention: to me, the comparison to make for people isn’t X-Com (as I have seen in various places), it’s Frozen Synapse.

    I’m worried that there are very few people playing. But unlike, say, Battleborn, I don’t think they have really begun to push yet. Moreover, there’s nothing else like this on the market. I do worry, though, that the combination of things they have going (hero-shooter-thingy and turn-based) will keep away a large number of players that either have had their fill of or don’t play one or the other.

  7. Agreed that there’s room for confusion on confirming a turn, particularly when it’s related to another action. You go from a left to a right click, but in other cases, it might only require another left. Was worse prior, but could be a little bit more transparent.

    Titus is a bit of a tough one. Asana is the best FL, I reckon. Good reach, super robust, magnificent zoning skills etc.

    Hope you get to check out more characters soon. They’re all great…except Gremolitions, but that’s my own aesthetic dismay.

  8. Don’t like Gremo? The mines look pretty cool. But yeah, I’d love to try Asana, Helio, Su-Ren, and some others.

  9. Just played another 5 matches vs AI. Think I’m starting to come to grips with the flow of the game to the extent I can actually start to think about things slightly more strategically (like what abilities to use when). Pretty big learning curve, IMO, but unlike so many games, at least the bots are good for that.

  10. Yeah, bots are great for acclimatising to the systems. Good for comp-stomping with friends, too.

  11. I also appreciate you can complete dailys, season missions, etc. against bots. I presume advancement is slower, but at least you can do it.

  12. Just reinstalled and picked up the all freelancers package.

    I checked my playtime on steam for when it was in early access and I logged 16 hours, and that amount of entertainment deserves some money thrown at it.

    Now I’m just trying to remember how to play the characters I liked.

    Glyph tag is halfvoid#7916 if you want to add me as a friend on AR.

  13. Nice! I’ll add you. I’m AlexConnolly#5313, if anyone else is looking to add. Hopefully my timezone aligns with you guys at some point, but GMT+9 is always a bit of a hard one for folks outside of the Oceania/Asia bracket.

    I took a gamble on this game in the beginning. Dropped a twenty in Early Access without knowing too much beyond “I want a taste of this Hero Business that Overwatch was pushing, but in strategy form”. 80 hours later, turns out that wasn’t such a bad use of coin after all.

  14. I’ve done 24 bot matches now and have progressed from getting roflstomped on easy to winning 4 of 5 on medium today.

    Unlocked my first mods today, for Zuki. Being able to drop The Big One as a free action is good fun.

  15. Very fond of the new characters I’ve tried that have been added since early access, the martial arts healer lady and the warp assassin. My old favs are still favs too, the robo dog and stealth sniper. (I’m terrible at remembering their names so far.)

    Also I’m in the UK, so GMT+0 I think, and mostly only have time to play one or two games after work and plenty on the weekends.

  16. There’s a female frontliner coming up from Evos. They are supposed to be spilling more details during a livestream on the 29th.

  17. Great news!

    Yeah, big fan of Su-Ren. Really nice balance of offence and defence.

    Just building up Blackburn again after the full-release wipe. Spent some of that in-game currency on a bunch of abilities, so he’s back to his old tricks. His dash/blast repositioning is pretty awesome, and a buffed ult gunship is something to enjoy.

  18. Su-Ren looks awesome, but I haven’t been able to play her yet.

  19. Atlas Reactor is on sale for Black Friday. Base version is twenty bucks. The other packs are half-off. Great time to pick up an awesome game.

  20. All characters are unlocked for the free version, too!

  21. Crap, shoulda waited a couple days before I bought that.

  22. The cure for that ill is to buy a cheap copy for a friend :smiley:

  23. New update dropped today. A new character, new mode, and some festive skins.

  24. Pretty keen to see what this new mode is all about. Phaedra looks great, too!

  25. Phaedra is pretty fun. Extraction is cool too, and while in theory it should be pretty simple, things can get pretty wacky.

  26. For anyone that would be interested in learning more about Atlas Reactor or could use some help getting friends to give it a shot, I’ve created a microsite for it.

    Thanks to Alex for looking the site over for me.

  27. Awesome tip site. I know my win rate went up significantly a couple weeks ago when I discovered the “alt” button showed everyone’s cooldowns.

    Can’t believe I’d never figured that out before, unless that wasn’t a feature in early access.

  28. Yeah, I still don’t use it enough, but it’s the sort of thing that becomes more and more useful as you play more characters and learn what they can do.

  29. Avatar for Jules Jules says:

    Haven’t played this game yet.
    I know it’s a bump, but wondering if you guys still play and like this game?

  30. Yup. I usually still get in about 5 games or so a week.

  31. I’ve been swamped with all the fresh fare recently, so it’s been on the back burner. Looking forward to getting back in soon.

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