Fallout Shelter Review

Fallout Shelter

Developer: Besthesda Game Studio's

Publisher: Bethesda Softworks

Genre: Management Simulation

Release: IOS- 6/14/15, Android- 8/13/15

Modes: Single-player

Platforms: Android and IOS

Price: Free

Disclaimer:

-I like management simulations

-I'm harsh and picky.

-I'm not a professional journalist.

-I try to 100% games unless it's pointless or tediously stupid.

-Todd Howard did not bribe me with his body.

-I'm not big into mobile games.

Graphics:

       Technically, the 3D visuals are low resolution, blurry crap that you would see if you play a game at the lowest visual setting. It sticks out like a sore thumb despite not being needed. They are not detailed or use lots of colors so there is no need for them to be blurry. You will notice this when you zoom into a room. As for the 2D visuals, they are fine at any screen size due to there paper look. They are nothing to write home about, but are okay. Characters are based on a modified version pip boy character.

Game-play:

       Fallout Shelter is a management simulation that has you looking after a vault. You build and upgrade rooms, manage resources, assign jobs for your dwellers, train them and send them off to search for stuff. At first, you will only have a small amount of dwellers and rooms to works with. You gain dwellers, through birth or by finding them in the wasteland that will unlock new rooms to place. You can also send dwellers into the wasteland to scavenge weapons, armor, and money.

       There are over 18 rooms that you can build for your shelter that have different functions. Each room is based on a certain stat that is used by that dweller. The higher the stat your dweller has, the better suited for the job and the faster they do it. Rooms of the same type and upgrade level increase the amount of dwellers that can work and how much you gain from the room. You gain money trough leveling up characters, selling equipment, overproduce resources, find money in the wasteland, or by using the rush mode in a room.

These rooms have a rush function that acts as a gamble for speeding up resource gathering. The more you rush a room, the higher rewards you can get, but you are also more likely to fail. If you fail, fires and monster attacks can occur that steels your resources, and hurts your dweller's health and morale. Low heath means they will die while low morale means they don't work as hard. There are also raider's that can attack your vault where you need to fend them off or lose your supplies.

       The meat of the game is made up of random objectives you get. You can only get three at a time and can only refuse one a day. These objectives vary from produce a certain amount of a resource to increasing dweller's stats. The rewards for your completing your objectives is ether a moderate amount of bottle caps, or a lunchbox. Lunchboxes are like capsule toys where you are give 4 random rewards. This can be money, resources, equipment, or rare characters. You can also get lunchboxes, once a week for your daily morale ratings.

       Despite how it may seam like a lot, it is actually not a complicated game. You can easily understand, master, and experienced almost all the game mechanics within two hours. Once you got the flow down, the game almost plays it's self. This is biggest fault with the game as there is no end goal, so there is no point to keep playing. It nether get's easier or harder, but stays the same. The game-play is not deep or challenging to keep a person going unless they have an addiction problem. It's a shame as the game mechanics have a potential to be deep and captivating, but they aren't. Games like Sim Tower are better game-play wise. The good news is that while it is free to play, you don't have to buy anything to get the most out of the game.

Audio:

       The audio is forgettable. There is no music and there are very little sound effects. You are going to want to just turn the sound off and listen to some other music.

Thoughts:

       Fallout Shelter has a lot of potential, but squanders it. The game-play is simple to the point of easily experiencing it all in a few hours. There is no long term goal or challenge to keep a player invested in playing the game for a long time. There are better management simulations out there with more content and depth, but not expense. Ultimately the game is mediocre that you won't play for long and I can't recommend it.

Note: I played this on the Android emulator, Blue Stacks.