A post-apocalyptic future, a proprietary S.P.E.C.I.A.L system and a familiar design are perhaps all that make the new Fallout Shelter game for smartphones and tablets related to the well-known and beloved Fallout universe. However, if you do not consider Shelter as a full-fledged game, albeit for smartphones, but look from a different position, as if we have a high-quality advertising booklet for the future Fallout 4, then the picture is not so sad. In this case, Shelter can even be adopted by installing and playing for a week or so.
In Fallout Shelter, you have to build and develop your own shelter, with people who survived after a nuclear war and force majeure situations that occur from time to time. It would seem that this is an excellent base for a serious game with many details and features, and if you also take into account the use of a well-developed and interesting Fallout universe – even more so. But no. Alas, Shelter is very simple, easy and 'relaxed', and this is the main problem of the game.
The whole gameplay boils down to two tasks. The first is to increase the number of residents of the shelter, because new buildings can only be built when a certain number of residents are reached. The second is keeping electricity, water and food at the required level, ideally at the maximum. Everything else revolves around these two tasks.
You can get new residents in the shelter in two ways – you can 'bring' a man and a woman in the same room, then after a few hours you will see the desired offspring, or by building a radio and putting there little men with a pumped-up 'charisma' parameter (C). In this case, the second method is useless. You spend caps, local currency to build a radio in the shelter, then improve it, spend the main resource (inhabitants) on it, and as a result, new survivors come to you with basic characteristics and the first level. Exactly the same people, the first level with zero characteristics, you will get from new children born in the shelter itself, so there is simply no point in wasting time and covers on the radio.
As for maintaining the level of food, water and electricity, everything is just as boring here – build the appropriate rooms and put residents with pumped up characteristics to work in them. All. Once every couple of minutes (depending on the level of the inhabitants) you need to tap on each room and collect resources or buy a robot in the store (donate, donate!) That will do it for you. At the same time, if you turned off your smartphone or tablet with the game, resources will cease to be collected (even by a robot), so Fallour Shelter implies a constant presence in the game, although there is nothing else to do here, except for 'tapping' around the rooms.
All buildings in the game are designed to solve two problems – pumping each of the characteristics of the S.P.E.C.I.A.L system and obtaining resources – food, water and electricity. There is also a warehouse, and, perhaps, everything.
From time to time, raiders or wild mutant animals will attack your shelter, but this happens very rarely, and you can repulse such an attack in a couple of minutes, simply by distributing weapons and armor to the inhabitants. As for the equipment, you cannot get it inside the shelter, for this you need to send the inhabitant to the wasteland, where he will try to survive and get new items. This is probably the most fun and interesting part of the game, although you don't influence it in any way. After sending the little man outside the vault, you can read his comments about the journey, which is funny.
Actually, this is all that you can do in the Fallout Shelter – tap around the rooms to collect resources and read the stories of the inhabitants sent to the wasteland for new equipment. After reaching a certain level of the population (one hundred people), you can build the final building, and the further game does not make sense at all. Yes, every building can be upgraded twice, and for the most expensive buildings this is a very expensive procedure, but there is no point in this. Even with basic rooms for the generation of water, food and energy, you can calmly develop and not face problems, so there is simply no reason to improve high-level buildings, and indeed in their creation, simply there.
By the way, for completing various mini-tasks (build ten rooms, improve three rooms, equip five inhabitants with weapons, and so on) you are given caps and sometimes a case with cards. Under the map there may be a new inhabitant with good characteristics, equipment or the same covers. Cases can be bought for rubles, but since nothing happens in the game, you don't have to do this, getting them slowly for completing tasks. So, from the point of view of 'donation' in Fallout Shelter, everything is very soft and good.
It is a pity that the gameplay was not 'brought' into the game and there is simply nothing to do here, except for reading the notes of the inhabitants sent to the wasteland and tapping around the rooms for the next collection of resources. As a simple game for a couple of days or a week, advertising the upcoming Fallout 4, Shelter looks good. As a full-fledged game in which you will find what to do for a long time, no.
