Fallout Shelter Review

Developer: Bethesda Game Studios

Platform: Android and iOS

Release date: 14^th  June

Price: free (may include micro-transactions in game)

The game that dethroned Candy Crush (for 2 days at least), Bethesda released Fallout Shelter in the middle of the E3/Fallout 4 storm of hype which was perfect and fans have been loving it since. My experience of the game began after a few loading screens and a brief introduction of the story which is pretty straightforward, a nuclear war has erupted and you are tasked with looking after and sheltering the survivors in the fallout of the event (pun completely intended). The tutorial got you up to speed with how the basics of the shelter ran and after a few minutes I thought I had a clue what I was doing, sadly I was mistaken.

 My residences were hard to please and soon become unhappy, then resources began to run low. In order to gain resources you have to place shelter occupants into working rooms and connect them via elevators. The resources in question are earned in two ways, either wait for the resources to be produced or force the workers to rush (between gaining these resources I felt there really wasn’t much to do and found myself yawning waiting for the countdown to reach zero), this is of course a risk/reward system, you could get the resources faster if successful or if you fail the room can light on fire or come under attack from mutant pests. Of course my rush failed which resulted in a room on fire and residents becoming even more unhappy, at this point I was contemplating restarting in a new game, however I stuck to it and took advantage of the rewards you can get midgame by completing certain challenges (you can however buy these using real money). A few hours later and things were starting to turn in my favour, I noticed certain dwellers worked more efficiently in specific rooms and took advantage of this.

As upgrades and extension of the underground rooms began I started sending dwellers out into the wilderness to search for materials/weapons etc this is yet another risk/reward system, I found this to be one of the more exciting parts of the game. In the meantime my vault was attacked by raiders and I faced a few other in fault challenges such as dweller births and buying new rooms. The more I played the more I noticed it was becoming slightly addictive, a pretty simple control scheme and a great overview of the fault, I did however sometimes find it annoying as you would sometimes be trying to find a specific room or drag a character across only to fall in wrong room or be interrupted. I also did experience a few crashes when the screen was particularly ‘busy’, however these were far in-between and didn’t deter from the experience to much.

 

The music and scenery really hit the Fallout vibe, which I was most worried about, everything from the weapons to the little characters were accurate. Overall I found the game to be fun and well detailed with a few bugs and questionable design choices, but the game has and is serving its purpose: a hype ramp into Fallout 4, which is just what the fans wanted and needed.

7/10