#Atlas Fallen: Reign of Sand

[kyndaris]

Chains of Oppression

By the time this blog post goes up, the US election will be done and dusted. The votes will have been tallied and we will know if the last great bastion for Western democracy will have fallen for the lies of a burgeoning billionaire autocrat or if the people will have chosen to forge a new path forward with Kamala Harris at the helm. Should it be the former, there will be many who fear the implementation of the so called Project 2025, which already looks like a page out of the communist playbook (when it comes to China and the USSR), and is certainly a manifesto for any would be dictator.

In Atlas Fallen: Reign of Sand, you play as one of the Unnamed - a lowly slave of the highly religious totalitarian regime that dominates the world of Atlas. Like manty before it, at least in the real world, there is a hierarchy. At the top sits Thelos, the God of the world, with the Enlightened - religious zealots (and who have the most power) sitting just below. Then come the nobles, the merchants, the farmers and finally the Unnamed. And much like the slaves of yesteryear, the Unnamed are considered disposable tools that none would care for if they were killed.

One day, as part of an Essence caravan, two of your fellow Unnamed go missing. Fearing for their lives, you volunteer to head out of camp to search for them. Despite the threats of wraiths in the area. These wraiths, it should be known, are creatures born out of sand and utterly vicious. They are also a means for Thelos to control the movement of humans in his rigid order based society.

It isn't long, however, before your character stumbles upon a powerful gauntlet. It bonds with you, granting the playable character the ability to double jump, dash through the air and summon forth sand weapons to do battle.

As the Gauntlet Bearer, the player character rises to become the saviour of the oppressed and downtrodden. Along the way, they also uncover the secrets of the artefact they now wield, as well as come to learn more about the mysterious entity tied to it: Nyaal.

From a story perspective, Atlas Fallen retreads old familiar ground with its focus on the dichotomy between order and chaos. Thelos, with his panopticon-esque Watcher floating in the background, represents order. Nyaal, on the other hand, represents chaos and freewill. Much like Assassin's Creed and many other games that have explored similar themes, the playable character must throw off the chains suppressing humanity. To do this, they must target the ones in power with the help of a handful of allies. In this case, it is the 1000 Year Queen, so named after becoming Thelos' puppet in ruling the humans. Throw in some God-slaying and you have Atlas Fallen in a nutshell.

What I liked about the Reign of Sand downloadable content (which was free), is that it added additional context to the world of Atlas. While Thelos is still the antagonist of the series, through the trek through the Forgotten Realms in Source, we also learn Nyaal also had a hand in shaping the Atlas we encounter - including providing humans with Essence stones and the creation of the Wraiths. And though Nyaal only wished the best for the fledgling human race, they were also blind to ramifications of their actions. Something in which they must reckon with as they do battle with their own shadow.

It just goes to show that while strict and total control is untenable, unfettered freedom can also bring out the worst in our kind. Just look at the state of the world now with the war in the Middle East. Nor should we forget how Russia invaded Ukraine.

Then, of course, there are the infamous Twitter wars as public outrage takes new form. People can be cancelled because of one comment from a decade ago, films and movies are labelled 'woke' because a woman is a main character, and online communities are split into various tribal entities. There is no longer any nuance in the world. A centrist is considered part of the problem. And even when you don't try to insert politics into your content, you will be decried as a grifter playing both sides of the political spectrum.

It's enough for this lowly blogger to want to hit reset on the entire human race. A sentiment which is shared by many of the Earth-Trisolaris Organisation in the science-fiction novel: The Three-Body Problem (a novel I'm reading right now at time of writing up this post).

Gameplay-wise, Atlas Fallen brings in a traversal system that felt fun and refreshing. It also helped speed up the slow slog of running from one part of the map to another like another game I could name.

Then, of course, there is the combat. The Gauntlet Bearer can mix and match three different styles of weapons: the axe/ hammer, dust whip and a pair of knuckledusters. While all are viable depending on playstyle, I favoured using the axe/hammer with the dust whip because of the range it allowed me. Slotting in the essence stones that helped maximise my attacks, I was near unstoppable in taking down the enemies that crossed my path.

What was a little bit different, I found, was how player character level was tied to the armour one found. The game only has a maximum level of 11, which can only be reached by upgrading the armour one receives through the use of Essence. Additionally, by upgrading armour, one receives perks to put into passive upgrades including the ability to get more tribute (the currency within the game), essence, or having more momentum to pull off special attacks. These all blended quite well with each other although I didn't feel much need to experiment once I'd found my favourites.

Atlas Fallen: Reign of Sand from developer Deck 13 is not a triple-A title. The controls are a little floaty and the story isn't something I would write home to. And yet, I did find myself enjoying the time I spent skimming across the sands and fighting off huge sand monsters. So many games coming out in the last few years have focused on being bigger than ever with little to no experimentation. But I have found the ones that stick in my mind are those trying to break the mould by telling their own fun little story. What's more, they don't try to follow trends by trying to have a huge sprawling open world or have huge budgets that can only be sustained through excessive monetisation of in-game items.

So, here's to more experimental AA games!

After all, when major game developers (and by extension, publishers) begin to crumble, they'll be the ones picking up the slack with fresh ideas and new IP. And maybe we can return to a time when games weren't politically weaponised. Or are seen by big corporations as a means to pad out their bottom line.

Time will tell who will win out when it comes to free will or oppression; anarchy and security.

[dragaorpg]

Atlas Fallen é totalmente reformulado com atualização Reign of Sand

Prepare-se para redescobrir Atlas Fallen com Reign of Sand, uma atualização massiva e gratuita que aprimora sua experiência nesse RPG cheio de ação em que você controla o poder da areia. Repleto de novos conteúdos e recursos, Reign of Sand é a versão definitiva de Atlas Fallen e promete elevar sua aventura solo ou cooperativa com uma série de melhorias, perfeitas tanto para os jogadores que estão…

[twohitgames]

Atlas Fallen recibe el contenido gratuito Reign of Sand

Prepárate para redescubrir Atlas Fallen con Reign of Sand, una actualización gratuita y masiva que perfecciona tu experiencia en este juego de rol lleno de acción en el que controlas el poder de la arena. Reign of Sand, repleto de contenido y características nuevas, es la versión definitiva de Atlas Fallen y promete elevar tu aventura en solitario o cooperativa con una gran cantidad de mejoras,…

[atomskdluffy]

I finished Atlas Fallen tonight! I really enjoyed it! It's a relatively short, open-ish world action adventure RPG with a focus on exploration, that feels both simple and detailed at the same time. The combat is a bit clunky if only because it can't seem to react as fast as my fingers can, but otherwise it's solid and really lets you really feel like you're doing damage. The environments are beautiful, and not as spread out as they might seem since all the methods of traversal the game gives you make travel anything but boring. The story is straight-forward, but you'll miss a lot if you skip the collectable lore and only stick to the main story as all of the side stories flesh out the world in a way that really makes it feel full! Also, small tidbit, more games should let you transmog and recolor your outfits the way this game does! You can recolor up to 5 different categories of material in each armor set, using collectable dyes! As someone who loves customizing the character I play this makes me unreasonably happy! All-in-all, I highly recommend this game!

[chilledpixl]

Atlas Fallen: Reign of Sand (2023)

I finally picked up Atlas Fallen the other day! It was something I was originally excited for but completely went under my radar when it was released. Looking forward to giving it a try!

[imperotenebre]

Atlas Fallen Reign of Sand PS5 gameplay 4K - prime impressioni

Proviamolo

[gebo4482]

Atlas Fallen Reign of Sand - Launch Trailer

Website / Steam

[nekasu]

Nekasu's Christmas Humble Bundle Giveaway!

I have Humble Bundle's subscription service, and it often results in games I don't really want to play. I have a lot saved up, so if any games interest you, leave a reply with which games you want. There's no explicit limit, but please only list a game if you want to actually play it. I'll decide the winners randomly within a week to give people a chance to join. They're all free, so don't think you have to give me money for them! The only caveat is that you be willing to give me your Steam ID so I can give out the games. Oh, and preference will be given to mutuals.

The games:

December

Bomb Rush Cyberfunk

Old World

Atlas Fallen: Reign of Sand

Crime Boss: Rockay City

The Invincible

Moonstone Island

Inkulinati

Venba

Monster Prom 3: Monster Roadtrip

November

Warhammer 40k Darktide

Persona 4 Golden

Lamplighters League

Cassette Beats

The Bookwalker: Thief of Tales

Karmazoo

Hexarchy

Garden Life

October

Remnant

Persona 5 Strikers

Jusant

Dome Keeper

Jack Move

Station to Station

Remnant Records

McPixel 3

September

Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy

Stranded: Alien Dawn

Coral Island

Spongebob Squarepants: The Cosmic Shake

Lost Eidolons

Astrea: Six-Sided Oracles

Infraspace

You Suck at Parking - Complete Edition

August

Sifu

High on Life

Gotham Knights

Blacktail

Astral Ascent

Diluvian Ultra

Universe for Sale

This Means Warp

July

A Plague Tale: Requiem

Ghostrunner 2

Starship Troopers: Terran Command

Sticky Business

Zoeti

Figment 2: Creed Valley

Heretic's Fork

Hyperviolent

June

Knights of Honor II: Sovereign

Lego 2K Drive Awesome Edition

Warhammer 40k: Battlesector

Miasma Chronicles

Stray Gods

A Guidebook of Babel

Empyrion - Galactic Survival

May

Yakuza: Like a Dragon

Steelrising

Hi-Fi Rush

Loddlenaut

King of the Castle

Bravery and Greed

Amanda the Adventurer

Mediterranea Inferno

April

Victoria 3

The Callisto Protocol

Humankind Definitive Edition

Fashion Police Squad

Terraformers

Symphony of War: The Nephilim Saga

Coromon

The Excavation of Hob's Barrow

March

Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Realms of Ruin

Nioh 2 - The Complete Edition

Saints Row

Citizen Sleeper

Black Skylands

Soulstice

Afterimage

Destroyer: The U-Boat Hunter

February

Life is Strange: True Colors

Scorn

Destroy All Humans 2! Reprobed

Beacon Pines

There is No Light: Enhancecd Edition

Children of Silentown

Oaken

Snowtopia: Ski Resort Builder

January

Marvel's Midnight Suns

Two Point Campus

Aragami 2

Otxo

Roguebook

The Red Lantern

Hell Pie

Twin Mirror

[swampfrogcentral]

some free steam codes

I've got a ton of unused steam game codes from my humble subscription. These are games that I either already owned or just aren't for me, so I decided to give them away.

DM me with the game(s) you want and I'll send you the steam code.

♥ i added a heart to all my faves

·       Aliens Dark Descent

·       Amanda the Adventurer

·       Amnesia: The Bunker

·       Aragami 2

·       Astral Ascent

·       Atlas Fallen: Reign of Sand

·       Beneath Oresa

·       Black Skylands

·       BLACKTAIL

·       Bravery and Greed

·       Cassette Beasts ♥

·       Coral Island ♥

·       Coromon

·       Corpse Keeper

·       Crime Boss: Rockay City - First Month Edition

·       Dark Pictures Anthology: House of Ashes

·       Destroyer: The U-Boat Hunter

·       Diluvian Ultra

·       Diplomacy is Not an Option

·       Distant Worlds 2

·       Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes

·       ELEX II

·       Empyrion - Galactic Survival

·       Evil West

·       Expeditions: Rome

·       Fashion Police Squad

·       Fort Solis

·       From Space

·       Garden Life

·       Ghostrunner 2

·       Gotham Knights

·       Gravity Circuit ♥

·       Hardspace: Shipbreaker

·       Hell Pie

·       Hexarchy

·       High On Life

·       Homeworld 3

·       HUMANKIND Definitive Edition

·       HYPERVIOLENT

·       InfraSpace

·       Inkulinati

·       Jack Move

·       Jagged Alliance 3

·       Jusant ♥

·       King Of The Castle ♥

·       Knights of Honor II: Sovereign

·       Lamplighters League

·       LEGO® 2K Drive Awesome Edition

·       Loddlenaut ♥

·       Lords and Villeins

·       Lost Eidolons

·       Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy

·       Marvel's Midnight Suns Digital+ Edition and Midnight Suns - Doctor Strange Defenders Skin

·       McPixel 3

·       Metal Hellsinger ♥

·       Miasma Chronicles

·       Monster Prom 3: Monster Roadtrip ♥

·       Moonstone Island ♥

·       Mr. Prepper

·       My Little Universe

·       Naheulbeuk's Dungeon Master

·       Nioh 2 - The Complete Edition

·       Nomad Survival

·       Old World

·       Pacific Drive

·       Patch Quest ♥

·       Persona 4 Golden ♥

·       Persona 5 Strikers ♥

·       Prodeus

·       Racine

·       Rebel Inc: Escalation

·       REMNANT II®

·       Remnant Records

·       Risk of Rain 2 ♥

·       Roguebook

·       Saints Row

·       SCP: Secret Files

·       Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew

·       Sifu ♥

·       Sir Whoopass™: Immortal Death

·       Souldiers

·       Soulstice

·       Spirit of the Island

·       STAR WARS: Bounty Hunter

·       Starship Troopers: Terran Command

·       Station to Station

·       Steelrising

·       Stranded: Alien Dawn

·       Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical ♥

·       Symphony of War: The Nephilim Saga

·       Tales & Tactics

·       Terraformers

·       The Callisto Protocol

·       The Gunk

·       The Invincible

·       The Pegasus Expedition

·       The Legend of Tianding ♥

·       The Red Lantern ♥

·       This Means Warp

·      The Thaumaturge - Deluxe Edition

·       Tomb Raider 1-3 Remastered

·       Total War: PHARAOH DYNASTIES

·       WWE 2K23

·       Trepang2

·       Twin Mirror

·       Two Point Campus

·       Victoria 3

·       Warhammer 40,000 Darktide

·       Warhammer 40,000: Battlesector

·       Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Realms of Ruin – Ultimate Edition

·       Yakuza: Like a Dragon ♥

·       Zoeti

[izolyn]

Streaming Atlas Fallen: Reign of Sand at 8:30pm EST!

Picked this up a little while back because it seemed cool. Let's see if it is!

[boxkeith]

Video Games I Played in October 2024

October was a rather hellish month, but I didn’t pull the trigger on playing any idle games so I’m not completely a lost cause. It doesn’t help that my game consumption this month was mostly putting 20+ hours into five different games (finishing up Wukong and Zelda, and three I started this month). A smidge more variety might be in order, which for me usually means snagging a random shitty metroidvania and doing that for 8-15 hours. So it goes. This review also puts me over 110k words in my game diary for the year, which is daunting.

Kryptic – I do not know how I feel about puzzle games. Sometimes I want deeply invested puzzles that require a pen and paper, genuine cleverness and creativity, and iterative problem solving to unwrap a larger riddle. Sometimes I come to a new screen and realize my only reward for puzzles will be more puzzles and then desperately need to do literally anything else with my life. Kryptic was the former until it was the latter, not helped by the puzzles varying WILDLY in quality and complexity in ways that made overthinking a near-certainty. Shoutouts to including all the cyphers natively at least.

Dome Keeper – One could be forgiven for confusing this with Wall World, though Motherload has been out for a hot minute and it’s not like we’ve gone exceptionally far since Dig Dug. It has the classic roguelike issue of a slow start that’s boring to repeat alongside an overly quick endgame where either your upgrades trivialize everything you encounter or you die before getting a chance to play with your fun toys. For a second it makes me wish for a game like this that had more permanent progression, but I have played Steamworld Dig 2 and good lord that game has problems. I dunno. Maybe I just don’t yearn for the mines.

Throne and Liberty – The CIA is continuing its MK ULTRA research, and in this instantiation they are attempting to see if I can quite literally be paid to care about an MMO. Turns out the answer is no. I got a solid 45 minutes into the tutorial before I realized I’d played the tutorial previously as part of a beta test, and if that doesn’t say something about generic action RPG starts and how there’s only so many ways to render a realistic wooden barrel in a cave, I don’t know what does.

Super Fancy Pants Adventure – Unlike most people my age I don’t have an overabundance of nostalgia for flash games. I think I transitioned to PC gaming just a hair too late to really get in on that zeitgeist, though I did certainly play more than my share of popcap games and random shit on newgrounds. Coming at this having barely played the originals, I respect it but also don’t have the patience, reaction time, or dearth of other pursuits required to play this style of platformer. It’s not so much fiddly as it is exacting and particular, but I don’t want to spend ten minutes trying to figure out exactly the pattern of keystrokes that’ll make a little guy do an overly precise jump. I don’t have math homework to procrastinate on anymore.

Atlas Fallen: Reign of Sand – I fucking love terrible video games. Can’t get enough of them. The Surge 2 is better than Dark Souls, and so when I learned those lads were making a game that was 100% fucking about I was completely on board. Not on board enough to pay for the game rather than waiting for it on gamepass (which is also how I played The Surge 2, to be fair), and also not on board enough to fail to confuse it with Immortals of Aevuem when asked for what game I wanted from a list that may or may not have had both of them on it, but nevertheless completely on board. It feels fucking good to punch things in this game and they have the whipfist from Prototype, but instead of hijacking helicopters you’re tethering onto monster hunter knockoffs trying to wallop them. The partbreaking system is pretty inconsistent and the lock-on is still just as dogshit as The Surge 2, but overall the game feels smooth and graphically it has a love for sand on par with Mirror’s Edge’s obsession with concrete. I especially like the momentum system’s attempted risk/reward of combos increasing the damage you deal and the damage you take, and the added wrinkle that your passive and active abilities are socketed in along the momentum bar so you have to weigh getting access to attacks early with slotting in abilities that help you build momentum. The story and lore are whatever, the game is like five hours too long, and they make the baffling choice of having a solid 80% of the setting revolve around a slave underclass that are Unnamed but at no point do the rebels just… start giving them names. You’re just “Gauntlet Bearer” i.e. one of the good ones. That being said Asterigos did an even worse job of having any of its characters object to chattel slavery and in that game they were being ground into food so … I dunno. The bar’s low I guess.

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess – As someone who has been an ardent Zelda fan for about as long as I can remember playing video games, Twilight Princess is a fascinating entry in the series. Its aesthetics and tone aren’t really approached in any other Zelda game. Structurally it takes a huge amount from Ocarina of Time, but it goes out of its way to flesh out a large number of NPCs and tries to have an actual story and setting that doesn’t revolve around Link. Zelda barely has a role even as a mcguffin, and in many ways Midna is the main character. It’s deliberately quite linear, with the tears of light sections serving to drag you through each area top to bottom before letting you explore it properly once you’re oriented. As an actual game I’d say it’s… functional? At worst it has some pacing issues and there was clearly cut content in the lategame, but it’s hard to point to any one facet and say “this could be better” because there’s such a robustly holistic vision of the type of game it was trying to be. It’s hard to step back from my childhood fondness for the game and the love grown over 5+ complete playthroughs, but I’m also not trying to step back from that. If anything I’ll probably reread the manga once I’m done with the game.

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice – Sekiro had been pitched to me in a variety of ways over the years; ‘the most unique/difficult/interesting Fromsoft game’, ‘the best parrying has felt in a video game’, ‘the only good media named after its main character other than Columbo’. None of these spoke to me, and I had not so much avoided the game as been disinterested. Even after playing Nine Sols and gaining a grimaced tolerance of parrying, I wasn’t convinced. Steam Family Sharing dropped a copy in my lap though, and I needed to hit buttons in something after Atlas Fallen. The game’s fine. It’s merely fine. Bloodborne had interesting things to say about the Dark Souls formula and said them through its mechanics and its level design in ways that enhanced its own identity and actively punished playing as though it was Dark Souls. Sekiro isn’t as transformative, because the emphasis on parrying means that positioning isn’t rewarded – you NEED to get attacked and react appropriately in order to be proactive. Nine Sols had this same stilted cadence, but in 2D your relative position with an enemy is much clearer and the game not only had a variety of defensive options but also rewarded you with resources for parrying that could then be spent proactively. In Sekiro your reward for parrying is gradually staggering the enemy, and although chip damage accrues and slows the rate of stagger degradation it’s still a much different cadence. I do not hate the game. I do not even dislike the game. I expect to finish the game, or at the very least get to what I feel is a reasonable stopping point and deliberately cease playing rather than merely falling away. But I do not see myself loving the game. When I first started playing, I told a friend in jest “Everything I wanted from Sekiro I got from Ghost of Tsushima”. I don’t think that’s true, and I didn’t think so at the time. I just also don’t know what it is I actually want from Sekiro.

[tecnobinaria]

Catálogo de juegos de PlayStation Plus para enero: God of War Ragnarök, Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings y mucho más

Catálogo de juegos de PlayStation Plus para enero: God of War Ragnarök, Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings y mucho más

Explora los míticos paisajes nevados de God of War Ragnarök, el vivo submundo de Osaka en Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name, las vastas extensiones de arena de Atlas Fallen: Reign Of Sand y los futuristas campos de batalla con robots gigantes de SD Gundam Battle Alliance. Estos juegos y más conforman la selección del catálogo de juegos de PlayStation Plus de enero* y estarán…

[twohitgames]

Atlas Fallen recibe la actualización gratuita Reign of Sand

Prepárate para redescubrir Atlas Fallen con Reign of Sand, una actualización masiva y gratuita que mejora tu experiencia en este RPG lleno de acción en el que controlas el poder de la arena. Repleto de nuevas características, Reign of Sand es la versión definitiva de Atlas Fallen y promete elevar tu aventura en solitario o cooperativa con una gran cantidad de mejoras, perfectas tanto para los…

[atomskdluffy]

I'll be online soon with my final Atlas Fallen stream! We've got some map cleanup to do, then we're off to the final boss!

[inews24]

Here are your PlayStation Plus Extra and Premium games for January

God of War Ragnarök! Citizen Sleeper! More! Image credit: Sony Santa Monica Sony has announced its January PlayStation Plus line up for those of us on its Extra and Premium tiers. Subscribers will soon be able to get their paws on the following games: God of War Ragnarök (PS4, PS5) Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name (PS4, PS5) Atlas Fallen: Reign Of Sand (PS5) SD Gundam Battle…