Atlas Fallen Preview – Sand surfing and monster battling in this co-op action RPG

thesixthaxis.com:

After spending a good long time with the Souls-like genre with the original Lords of the Fallen and sci-fi The Surge games, Deck13 are moving on to something that feels thoroughly different in Atlas Fallen. That said, between the sandy fantasy setting and faster-paced combat, there’s plenty of challenge with higher difficulty levels and some familiar gameplay ideas from Deck13’s recent games.

There’s a fantastic sense of scale to the open world of Atlas that’s only enhanced by your ability to very rapidly get around it by surfing across the sandy dunes. It’s not just shifting sand dunes, with mountains, rocky outcroppings, villages, ruins and plenty more giving this world an engaging visual style. You can’t surf across everything, but Deck13 are generally quite forgiving in when and where you can do so – even stone paths with a relatively light dusting can be skated across with ease. Add to that an air dash and you’re given plenty of speed and agility to explore.

Naturally this style of traversal and control over the sands is then brought into the heart of open world in a variety of ways. As you explore there are various points that you can pull ruins up out of the sand to explore them and potentially open up new paths and areas of the world to you. There’s also challenges, tasking you with going point to point through the environment, really putting your skills to the test.

Of course, a big part of any action RPG is going to be the combat, and Atlas Fallen features and exciting and enticing blend of ideas. Your custom character comes into possession of a magical gauntlet, lending them the ability to control the sands and attack with shape-shifting weapons. It’s fluid and dynamic with up two weapons to switch between on the