Half-Life 1 is a First Person Shooter game in which your goal is to escape a scientific disaster while fighting your way through hordes of enemies. Released in November 1998, Half-Life 1 raised the standards for the whole game industry. Many of the design principles that are used today, almost two decades later, were set with this game.
For today standards, the game is mechanically very simple, you have about dozen different weapons and you have to beat, shoot, explode or disintegrate your enemies. What makes this game very interesting, even today, is that the whole plot happens as you play. Throughout the game you will face different forms of puzzle that will require different problem solving techniques to successfully reach the end, using no more than jumping, crouching, and one "interact" button.
Despite the simplicity, Half-Life 1 shows that is not the amount of different mechanics that makes an excellent game, but how the mechanics themselves can be weaved together to bring interesting interactions to life.
Final Score: 7 out of 10.
(Were we in 1998, this would easily be a 10.)
Fallout Shelter is a simulation game based on the post-nuclear world franchise with the same name, where your goal is to create a "perfect" thriving community, 2000 feet under the surface. It is a very simple game that can be played very casually.
Our vault after couple days...
The main challenge is having power, food and water, the resources to keep your vault running. Power is essential for rooms, the more rooms you have, more power you will need. Dwellers, the people in your vault, need food and water to stay alive. The lack of any resource will affect your vault. Shortage of power will shut down rooms, like the ones you produce food at. Scarcity of water or food will make dwellers loose health due to contaminated water and hunger. If in need, you can rush the production of a specific room in order to produce the resource immediately, but in case of failure you will have a disaster to handle.
Each dweller have a set of SPECIAL, attributes that will affect their performance and productivity in specific rooms. SPECIAL stands for Strength (power room), Perception (water room), Endurance (food and water rooms + health), Charisma (radio room), Intelligence (medical room), Agility (food room) and Luck (rushing). Each attribute also improves the odds of survival during wasteland exploring, when you send a dweller out of the vault to look for useful stuff, like weapons and outfits. Fortunately SPECIAL attributes can be trained in training rooms.
The game always provide three objectives that you can aim for. Every time you complete one, you will get a reward and a new objective. We have gathered some data regarding this system that we would like to share, hopefully it will help you decide if it is worth your time and effort.
Unfortunately some mechanics do not scale well later in the game. Sending too many explorers out will require you to spend most of your time clicking endlessly to sell normal items. Which could be solved by having a "sell all" button. Outside invaders gets diminished to the point where they are more of an annoyance than actual danger. And further expanding your vault will only require you to click more constantly to harvest resources, than giving any challenge with planning or management.
Mr. Handyman lines are the best! :)
Despite the limitations of the end-game content, it is the only mobile game to actually catch our attention in a long time. It is free to play and can provide you many hours of entertainment, specially if you give yourself crazy limitations like: All Male/Female Vault, No Weapons, No Training Rooms, No Food, etc. If you are a Fallout fan you should definitely try it out!
Final Score: 8 out of 10.
Data Collected: 126 Objectives Completed, 20 Lunchboxes awarded from Objectives, 42 Lunchboxes Opened, 8 Legendary Drops, 14 Lunchboxes "last card" were x500 CAPS. 9 Lunchboxes gave two rare rewards, 5 of which were x500 CAPS.
Statistics: 15,9% Chance for an objective reward to be a Lunchbox. 19% Chance for a Lunchbox to award a legendary item. 33% Chance of your rare "last card" to be x500 CAPS. 21% Chance for two rare drops per Lunchbox. 55% Chance of an extra rare drop to be x500 CAPS.
(For those wondering, all legendaries came from the last card, which is always rare or legendary, never from an extra rare reward.)
PS: In case you wonder if those 40 Lunchboxes deal for 20 bucks is worth your money, we NEVER got a Mr. Handy from a Lunchbox, despite people on the internet saying they did.
For today standards, the game is mechanically very simple, you have about dozen different weapons and you have to beat, shoot, explode or disintegrate your enemies. What makes this game very interesting, even today, is that the whole plot happens as you play. Throughout the game you will face different forms of puzzle that will require different problem solving techniques to successfully reach the end, using no more than jumping, crouching, and one "interact" button.
