Release Date: 14/06/2015
Played On: iOS / Win
Available On: Droid / iOS / Win / XBO
Time Played: 122h
Progress: Hit max-everything.
Developer: Bethesda Game Studios / Behaviour Interactive
Publisher: Bethesda Softworks
One of the highlights of E3 2015 for me, was when Todd Howard announced on stage that Fallout 4 was only a few months away from being released. Then came the little tease of Fallout Shelter, which could be downloaded right away on your mobile device. Not only was there a brand new Fallout game on its way, we had the opportunity to build and control our own vault for free, right away.
I couldn't download it fast enough and quickly got up and running my iPad with my very own Fallout shelter. The art dripped of the retro-future that's so ubiquitous with the Fallout series, and the interface was unique and enticing. So many possibilities were ahead and the E3 hype felt real. At least for a little while.
It didn't take long to realise that Fallout Shelter amounted to little more than a very good looking clicker. Everything that happened in the vault was tied to a timer, which slowed progress to a crawl. To get new rooms in the vault, you needed caps; to get more caps, you needed to wait… and wait… and wait some more.
Never did we mind though, as this was a free game that was totally free and Todd Howard told us it was completely free. On one hand that's true, but no more so than the other countless free-to-play games available. It turned out that Fallout Shelter was completely free, so long as you were willing to wait for long periods of time to let timers tick over and for your vault dwellers to level up.
Then we found the little shop item that opened up a world of possibilities and ways to combat the dreaded timers that ultimately have no place in the game, other than to make you wait. How generous of Bethesda to offer us a way to spend real money on in-game currencies that would allow us to skip timers and fast-forward our progression. How unique and original, no?
I spent about a week picking up my iPad here and there to tap on rooms in my vault and collect resources. Sometimes I put vault dwellers in the same room so that they would get jiggy with it and make some babies, further populating the underground complex of time based resource production. It was a simple existence, but I didn't spend a cent, so I resigned myself to the fact that it's one of those games you just dip into for five minutes once a day.
As is the way with these games, I soon grew tired of the pointless tasks involved with opening up the app, tapping on some rooms, then closing it to wait for the timers to complete again. Everything becomes banal after a while, and Fallout Shelter was no different.
Fast forward to earlier this year when Bethesda decreed that Fallout Shelter would make its way to PC. Again, as a free-to-play game, I figured I'd have another crack and making my own vault, and find out if there had been any improvements.
Thankfully there were many changes to the original formula, so I happily clicked away to explore them all. Now we could send dwellers on quests, which amounts to them leaving the vault for a period of time. It even made a bit of sense for there to be a timer on how long it took for dwellers to reach their destination, after all that's kind of realistic in the grand scheme of things. The actual quests didn't amount to much though, and really consist of clicking on rooms to send those dwellers in to have a look around and fight whatever nasties were hanging out in wait. Questing became a simple system of rock-paper-scissors, with minimal interactivity involved as you can heal the dwellers as they fight. Essentially, even the quests were tied to the clicker gameplay as it becomes as simple as clicking on the icons when they appear.
Oh but there's more depth, with each dweller having a three inventory slots available to them. One to dress them in a myriad of discoverable and craft-able outfits; one for weapons in the same vain; and another for a pet that would provide additional stats for their master.
Questing and exploring the wasteland outside of the vault allows dwellers to find resources, like junk and parts to bring back and turn into items. There's an outfit crafting room, and one for weapons, where the parts are turned into their respective equip-able items. Each crafting recipe comes with a rarity, which requires similarly rare elements as base materials. However, the main difficulty is in the timer attached to each, as the rarer an item, the longer it takes to craft. Some of the more exotic items take weeks for a full team of dwellers to complete.
Never fear though, you can always purchase some Nuka Cola Quantums to speed up the process. I remember now, it's a free-to-play game, so there has to be some way to make money I suppose. Thankfully Todd Howard blessed us with the light that is Fallout Shelter and it's incredible ability to make money through micro-transactions.
I didn't mind though, as I took up the rhythm of doing what I had done on the iPad version; loading it up each day for a few minutes to click on the progress and reset the timers. It ended up being the first thing I did when I booted my PC every morning. It was enough to see my vault expand and take my dwellers through quests as they discovered loot and earned experience points. For a while there, it was a nice little distraction that added up to a whole lot of hours spent clicking and organising my vault and those that dwelled within.
Can I really complain about getting over a hundred hours' worth of time out of a game for free? Of course I can, but let's not forget that this is what we're dealing with. The only thing a free game can do wrong is waste someone's time, so is our time really wasted when it demands very little from us? I'm not sure.
I think I would have been happy to continue playing Fallout Shelter for a few minutes a day if it actually did something (anything) to make the process a little more interesting.
None of the dwellers have any personality; leading them to become simple avatars of statistics tied directly to resource production. Of course I'll put the dude that's talented at power production in the power plant, but even stats become obsolete measures of worth after a while.
Eventually I had built multiples of every room available and had a permanent rotation of max-level dwellers in super exotic power armour, out roaming the wasteland completing quests. I started building multiple training rooms to boost everyone's stats, and began populating the vault with new offspring. It was all rolling forward with ease, but came to a screeching halt when I realised that there's a cap on the number of dwellers you can house in your vault.
All I had left to do was max out the vault population and finish off some quests, as my training regime was a great success. Everyone in the vault was fully trained in all stats and was busy working their way to max-level in experience. They all carried top-tier weapons and wore clothing picked on aesthetics rather than statistics. After all, it didn't matter what boosts a level 50 dweller with maximum stats got from their clothing; nothing could defeat them either way. The vault became an ant farm of drones working away on resources, with little else to do than wait and level up now and then.
Even my quest rotation hit a wall, as I had three teams of three on the go, all with top power armour, weapons, and pets. Before too long I had ripped through all the available quests, leaving only the daily and weekly adventures available. Although, by that time I had no need for these repeatable quests, as I had more resources than I could store, and a team of max-skilled dwellers crafting anything I needed. I'd even run out of room underground to expand the vault for pointless rooms just because I could.
Again, I can't escape the fact that I spent a whole lot of hours on a game that cost me zero dollars to play. If time equals value, then Fallout Shelter has it wrapped up and the timers make it worth a mint. However, the novelty of running a vault only ever declined, with little to no reason for it to ever get interesting as I progressed.
Once the banality settled in, there was no way to get rid of it no matter how hard I tried, or how long I persisted. When the end-game consists of nothing more than hard limits being reached, there's not a lot that anyone can do to make it interesting, so the only choice is to stop playing. I can understand limiting a mobile release so that it doesn't go overboard on performance and crash every time its opened due to too many elements to keep track of. What puzzles me is why there are limits on a full PC release that can make use of all the good hardware we PC gamers put into our hobby. I mean, it's just a simple port, so there's the answer, but it's disappointing all the same.
As it happens, Fallout Shelter does not herald the second coming, and it's not a generous gift from the Fallout gods. It's just another free-to-play app that uses the grind of wasting players' time to incentivise spending money. I don't have a problem with the business model, as we're not forced to waste money to take part, but let's not suffer the illusion that there's anything altruistic about a company distributing a platform for customers to give them money.
I guess all products are little more than an exchange of goods and trade, but when there's little else of value in a game like Fallout Shelter, the cynic in me rolls their eyes. Of course it's free and there's nothing wrong with that, but I can't help feeling like I'd be happy to give them some money if Fallout Shelter had a little more depth. Instead, playing it feels like experiencing a shallow and transparent attempt to cash in on the hype and milk a little more from its customers.
Then again, I've never been a big supporter of companies twisting gameplay to push for sales. I enjoyed my time with Fallout Shelter well enough to reach the limit of its potential. It just feels dirty as every time a barrier comes up I can hear Todd Howard whispering in my ear that I could make life easier with a few premium Nuka Cola Quantums for just a few bucks.
Fuck micro-transactions.