Falllout Shelter: Why you should be running away from this app

Fallout is huge. Fans from all over the world waited eagerly for the GamesCon releases and for that, they have the Pip boy and some mobile app that debut on the iOS platform and later Android. 

At first, you might think that you could have played this game as a teaser to its bigger release but it wasn't. It is a standalone freemium game for mobile. 

Freemium. This ugly term is the buzzword of the mobile gaming industry. Free to play but pay to play. 

There has been heaps of success factors for this type of gaming. It is social and friends can help you. Unfortunately Fallout Shelter isn't the case. It is, a freemium game that has no social element and this is why it is going to burn and crash. 

I played this religiously for 10 days, and boy did I waste my time.

First, the game isn't as exciting as it should be. For one you have to play the part of Immortan Joe, where you decide who to keep and who to send out into the vast wasteland while protecting your valuable food and water resources. You need Cap credits to build underground shelters to house your minions and each room or shelter has a function. 

Energy generation is one, the other is food. The last one is food, which is kinda stupid because you operate a diner instead of an underground farm house. You can only have two dwellers in a room and for procreation, you need a living quarters too. The living quarters will also determine how many residents you may have in the shelter. 

Now putting a man and woman together in the living quarters will beget you a kid, who in the radiation age, takes 6 hours to grow from a child to an adult. As a child, you cannot assign any duties to it, that means you have a parasite at best. When it grows up, you could sire another child with it depending on who is expendable. This sort of makes you understand why Immortan Joe of Mad Max always kept a harem of women to sire genetically capable children. Unfortunately, any kid born in the shelter is a dufus and has to be upgraded in terms of experience points. Who they fuck matters too as the kid will exhibit qualities of the parents. Not everything will be passed down to the kid. 

To make things exciting, you have raiders who break into your shelter to steal stuff and when you send your guys to defend it, they have to be armed. Now how to get weapons? Only by picking them up from the wasteland, and that means sending out your best dwellers to get them. Each dweller has a complicated talent tree. You have strength, charisma, etc, etc and the clothes you wear will give you an additional advantage of each task you assign to them. 

Oh, your dwellers can die in the wasteland and there is no action which takes place which you are a party of, you get a status report on how they died and it is up to you to revive them with those Cap credits, which you earn while increasing the experience points of your fellow dwellers. Each time they get an upgrade in experience points, you get rewarded with Cap points as well. So the more people you have at any time, the more Cap points you get to earn and keep. Those points can later go into upgrading the shelter or for reviving dead dwellers from your shelter. Each dweller has a health bar and a radiation bar to watch out for. If the two are weak, any simple disaster can kill them.

I know it sounds boring and it is. I cannot for the life of me understand why they created this game as it just doesn't work. So to summarise the experience.....

#1 Social Element is Lacking

There is no buddy who plays along with you, sends you credits or exchange weapons. You are there with just your dwellers and there will be outsiders who will from time to time come to join you from the wasteland but that is hardly an inducement from a social perspective. The game is solitary, just you and the computer which spits out random problems for you to solve. To keep everything running smoothly, some have said that you need to have 52 dwellers. Then everyone will be happy. It would be more exciting if you could send out your dwellers to raider another's dweller's patch, perhaps steal from them. That would be more fun but nada....it is boring. 

#2 Raiders will find a way in regardless of upgrading your Entrance 

Raiders will break through your front door no matter how hard you try to fortify it. 
There are two fighting scenarios, that is to fight the incoming marauders, and to fight the mutants that come to infest your shelter. Think of it as the only interactive experience which doesn't happen often. Most of the time you end up fighting mutant rats and roaches that infest your cookie trail. Is this exciting? Only if you like watching grass grow.

#3 Shelter disasters are Boring

Fire, fire and more fire. Each time you overwork a room shelter, there will be fire. And the fire can kill the residents if their health points are weak. The only way to avoid the fire is to place your resident in the entrance area which never catches fire. And for that, you are only allowed two to a room. Fires do not harm your resources, machine or for that matter, the store room where you stash all your ill gotten goodies.

#4 Weapons are all bullshit when fighting Mutants

Weapons can only be obtained from the wasteland. There is no other way. You can't buy weapons because if you did, the mutant roaches and marauders won't stand a chance against you. So that is why the fighting is all BS. You can have, for the sake of getting you to buy more cap points, mutant roaches that will kill perfectly healthy residents armed to the teeth. Picking up a good weapon is a lottery. It depends on your dweller's luck. 

What would Immorten Joe say about the Game?

Get out into the wasteland.... and bring me back some grub! And stop wasting time on that Fallout Shelter game!!

 Rating

 

Categories: Android, fallout, Freemium, ios, mobile

WAGS : Shadowrun Returns

A return to Fallout's Turn-Based Tactical Combat 

Currently on a Midweek Madness Sale on Steam is Shadowrun Returns for only RM7.75* (around USD 2.39. Normal price RM31 or USD 9.56)! Originally I was going to post a review for another game, but this mad deal took precedence. Honestly, the things I do for you people even though I'm not getting paid.

If you've missed turn-based tactical combat simulators like the original Fallout series, or the much less gritty Final Fantasy Tactics, Shadowrun Returns is, well, a return to form. Quite a simplified one too, as it turns out.

Graphics and Sound

Shadowrun Returns is clean and simple from top to bottom, except for the maps which are appropriately gritty and generally unclean - you are, after all, in a dystopian setting. Neon bright colours are the norm and clear iconography makes it pretty clear what each button does. 

It's like Vegas out there

In-game, the information you need is laid out clearly for you to find, and all else is found by pressing the giant power button on the top-left or pressing the Escape key. In it, you'll find your character screen, inventory, and menu functions.

The background music is pretty standard stuff. It sets the mood appropriately with an unobtrusive synth and fade of dark rock. Most times you won't even notice it, and even if you do you could do your laundry or cook a meal with it playing in the background. You might even be more attentive and wary while doing so and not miss the piece of paper in the back pocket of your jeans that will eventually get shredded by the washing machine.


Character Creation

The game is honest enough about the fact that what you choose isn't set in stone, with a "meh, I'll pick my own skills" option. Each class is really a low-level preset that you can override later in the game anyway.

Character creation is almost purely cosmetic (except for race that gives you a small perk for each), and you'll even be given an option as to what sort of demeanour you portray. Letting you choose between options such as academic, cop, or gang member does next-to-nothing to your dialogue choices except for specific instances where it might be useful (helpfully greyed out so that you'd just wish you had chosen to go at it like a cop. As far as I can tell there aren't any side quests or missions that become intensely tricky without the right attitude, so go ahead and choose something you'd likely find useful once or twice in the game.

My choice of character stems from my desire for a glorious beard

Abilities are a lot more useful, and don't fret at the amount of Karma you get at the beginning, Karma is quite generously given to you as the game progresses. Contrary to it's name you do not get (much) more Karma from being nice as far as I can tell, so go ahead and do feel free to be a dick to the few NPC's that you meet.

Gameplay

Perhaps referring Fallout and Final Fantasy Tactics at the beginning was a little misleading, because Shadowrun Returns is not an open-world for you to explore, it's a story that you play out. As such there is no back tracking to previous stages or places so that you can fully explore the place or complete side quests, not that there are many. It's quite a shame because the maps are decently sized and full of graphical detail.

One day I too will open a bar called Tail and Ale

It's rare that you will find open lockers or random rooms where you find extra cash or sellables to pick up and hawk to the merchants you'll find along the way. In fact there is no sell function at all. Bought something you regret and there's nothing you can do but let it rot in your stash where it'll live out it's unfulfilling life till you visit it again (probably 2 minutes after never). Thankfully your stash is infinite. Most of the pickups you'll find come from the handful of pick up points (helpfully highlighted with an icon so that you can't miss it) or from wearing out dialogue options in things you'd need to look through anyway.

Turn-based combat is almost exactly as you'd expect it to work, except in general most actions cost 1 AP and most turns you get 2-3 AP. So firing a rifle and smacking someone in the head costs the exact same amount of AP. As such, I haven't found a reasonable advantage of having a handgun except to save on reloads (which, admittedly, is actually great tactical advice).

Perk - ammo is unlimited. The downside is that melee combat is effectively advantageless. It costs the same amount of AP and there is no minimum range for ranged weapons so you can unload your clip into an enemy right in front of you and not worry about losing accuracy.

Narrative

The main story is a film-noir crime solvency with guns and magic, a recipe for potential disaster and nerd-gasms alike.  Thankfully, the people who wrote it knew to tread lightly.

Unlike Fallout, there is no false-pretense for sex, because there isn't any, period.

The writing of the franchise is solid, especially so for this game. If you're not the reading type this game may not be worth the full price of admission to you, but if you are be prepared to be immersed. Characters are believable and somewhat endearing as much as they are sometimes stereotypical, but the melting pot of cultures is quite something to behold. It's not an epic thriller, but it's engaging.

Plot wise, however, it's somewhat simplistic. While I'm not suggesting that it's weak, it isn't anywhere close to the bone-chilling revelations of Andrew Ryan. It's not terrible, just linear enough that your cries of "I totally saw that coming" will be met with "everybody else did". The reveal is also quite lack lustre, but at least the story is believable and entertaining in it's own right.

Replayability
That being said, re-playability is not necessarily an issue with a thriving online community of modders and writers. The Steam Workshop and shadowrunners at large create downloadable content that seem to be of pretty good quality. It obviously takes a bit of time and an eye for these sorts of things, but considering that most, if not all, of these additional stories are free, I'd say Shadowrun Returns is definitely a very replayable medium that storytellers can make use of.

"How could you not like a girl like that?"

Verdict
If you're a fan of narratives as I am, Shadowrun Returns is certainly something you could use to pass more time than you could possibly imagine. Despite certain gameplay quirks and a lack of any real trade I could see this being a worthwhile purchase even if you miss the Midweek Madness sale.

4 Stars

Vinsant Huang is every bit your hardcore gamer, or at least he was until corporate life tied it's bitter noose around his neck. His highest achievement is attaining Ambassador in World of Warcraft, and it involved countless hours of grinding and coffee. To be honest, he's not that proud he did it.

* Steam recently introduced pricing in Ringgit Malaysia, and I've not been able to figure out how to change it back to see if they round up or down. It doesn't matter either way. In general  USD 5 hovers around the regions of RM15, so a little give or take doesn't and shouldn't mean too much.

Categories: 2013, fallout, Shadowrun, turn based, Vinsant