Fallout Shelter

Genre: Management Simulation

Players: 1

Game Company Bad Behavior Profile Page: ZeniMax Media Inc

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Review:

WARNING: THIS GAME HEAVILY PUSHES MICROTRANSACTIONS AND WAIT MECHANICS

Fallout Shelter is a Free-to-Play Management Simulation that have players managing the building and population of their own nuclear fallout shelter, controlling which rooms are built and which residents are assigned to work in each location. This game was originally released to mobile devices in 2015, but in the time since it has been ported to numerous platforms.

The presentation for Fallout Shelter is pretty fantastic, combining 2D and 3D elements with the cartoony style the Fallout series’ Vault Boy character serving as the template for the character, while the rooms themselves are presented in 3D in a way that gives the otherwise 2D shelter a feeling of depth. This is paired with sound effects befitting the game’s retro alternate world time period and art style.

The gameplay here is fairly simple and straightforward, tasking you with keeping track of the various needs of your facility and its residents, and providing for those needs by ensuring that you’re building rooms suited to those needs and assigning residents to those rooms that are suited to the rooms themselves.

Unfortunately, that’s where this game starts to run into problems. There are seven different statistics that every resident has (S, P, E, C, I, A, L), as well as multiple other resources to keep track of. However, the game makes it a pain to check on each of these. Want to assign the right resident to a room, but forgot which statistic that room depends on? Don’t bother selecting the room itself, instead go into the build menu to check the resource it uses… then individually select and deselect every resident until you find the one with the statistic you’re looking for. Ugh.

It gets worse. This game’s controls using the controller are terrible, making it so difficult to select what you want that I’d say that the docked mode version of the game is damn near unplayable. Handheld mode fares a bit better, but has its own problems – namely, that you’re forced to either view the screen so zoomed in that you have a limited view of what’s going on, or so zoomed out that it’s difficult to properly select residents. What’s more, the touchscreen controls seem really finnicky about what you’re trying to do with the touchscreen, often resulting in you looking at the statistics of a resident when you mean to reassign them, for example.

It’s depressing that Fallout Shelter is, to date, the only game in the Fallout series to make the jump to the Switch. Even more depressing is how maddeningly difficult this game is to control. Honestly, I feel like you might be better off just going with the mobile version of the game – the Nintendo Switch version is a terrible mess that controls poorly no matter which way you decide to play it.

tl;dr – Fallout Shelter is a Free-to-Play Management Sim that has you building and assigning residents to your expanding nuclear fallout shelter. Unfortunately, this game is a nightmare to control, both in docked mode and in portable mode. Stick with other versions of the game, if you play it at all.

Grade: D-

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