Name: Fallout Shelter
Platform: Varies (Played it on the PlayStation 4)
Style: City Building
Publisher(s): Bethesda Softworks
Developer(s): Bethesda Game Studios & Behavior Interactive
Release Date: June 10, 2018 (for PS4)
Date of Completion: November 4, 2018
City Building video game genre is a guilty pleasure of mine. They’re relaxing, easily accessible and the criminally simple to comprehend. Plus, the replay value is invaluable and infinite compared to any other genre. So far, Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King is the only city building game that I dubbed with playing to its entirety because they had enough content and lore to keep me engaged. Now I can add one more to my list: Fallout Shelter.
Serving as a spinoff to the Fallout franchise, this game started off a mobile game but I didn’t really touch it since I’m not one for using my phone for the game. That being said, when it comes to consoles, I took this game on with full force.
As I said, Fallout Shelter is a relatively simple game with a basic premise. Basically, you’re the Overseer of a Vault that is randomly assigned. Your job to fill it up with survivors/dwellers and assign them to a room that you also have to build. Trust me…there’s a lot of thinking and strategy involved when you have to take their stats into consideration. And, as icing on the cake, you have train dwellers in a certain stat by assigning to a particular room to level up. Sound easy, right, yeah…well…here’s where things get interesting.
Now, right off the bat, you’ll see three crucial resources that you have to balance throughout the game: Water, Food, and Power. Each one can be acquired from a room (or two) and must be on a regular basis or your dwellers are going to suffer – a lot. This is why it’s important to place the right dwellers in the right room. Furthermore, it’s important to understand that if you put the wrong dweller in a room, it will actually hinder the other ones in that room and you’ll be doing more harm than good.
Finally, exploration via solo and group missions are something to marvel at. Fallout Shelter, in fact, has a storyline attached to it in the form of quests with lucrative rewards upon completion. Granted you speed the process of EVERYTHING in the game by utilizing microtransactions but it’s not really necessary. Trustfully, you can engage in random encounters – both in and out of the Vault – to pass the time…or just turn off the game (time will still pass even when inactive).
Oh, right! The game does have microtransactions but, as it should be, it’s not a necessity. The game doesn’t have a “pay to win” mentality as everything you can get via money can be obtained through quests. This game deserves a 10 out of 10.
