Bioshock 1 Review

Bioshock is a First Person Shooter (FPS) game in which you find your way into an underwater city, Rapture, after a plain crash in the middle of the ocean. In this new and twisted place you will have to fight if you want to survive!

Plasmids and Tonics for sale.

Other than moving around and shooting things with 8 different weapons you will have access to a variety of special powers, the Plasmids! It is not magic my friends, it is genetic science. There are a wide variety of Plasmids, ranging from simply burning your foes, moving things with your mind to creating spectral decoys of yourself.  You can also find special serums called Tonics. They enhance your physical, combat and engineering skill. With that you will have plenty of choices for managing different play styles, but all of this power is not for free, you will need to gather Adam to pay for this.

An unprotected Little Sister.

Adam is a special currency that can only be gathered by interacting with the Little Sisters. They are the ones that can unleash your powers. Unfortunately they are not alone. Their protector, the Big Daddy, is there to prevent any wrong doing against them. And believe us, they are a force to be reckoned with! To help you break through them you will find weapon upgrades scattered into the city, giving your favorite weapons a much needed boost.

Hacking mini-game.

The singular thing about life in Rapture is that many of the challenges you face can be transformed into an advantage. All machines in the city can be hacked through a tile puzzle mini-game and forced to help you instead of the enemy. You can convince that Big Daddy to be your body guard. You will also find plenty of money laying around that you can use to restock in vending machines. One final interesting mechanic is discovering enemies weaknesses and gaining increased damage through repetitively photographing them.

Bioshock 1 has an amazing setting and great plot. A very unique art style and, despite being a little rough for today standards, a solid gameplay that marked the industry as one of a kind, not an easy feat considering all the shooter games out there! If you managed to get the remastered version you can watch some director commentary videos on two of the developers talking about the decisions behind the game and how their limitations, at that time, shaped the experience you have. If not, you can watch them on Youtube.

Fallout Shelter Update Review

Back in November 20th 2015 we reviewed Fallout Shelter for mobile devices. In March 29th 2017 it arrived on Steam. So free of our smaller devices processing limitations we decided to revisit the game and see what changed since then.

In summary, we have Nuka-Quantum bottles, pets, questing, crafting and customization. There are five new rooms: 

• Weapon Workshop: Where you craft weapons.
• Outfit Workshop: Where you craft clothing.
• Theme Workshop: Allows you to change Living Quarters and Diner appearance. 
• Barbershop: Used to customize a dwellers hair, beard and face.
• Overseer's Office: Needed to send teams on quests.

Automatic return and legendary junk.

With the addition of crafting you can no longer find legendary gear while exploring the wasteland (they still come in the lunchboxes). Instead you will find legendary materials that will be used to craft the gear you want. A good change, since now you do not need to rely on luck to get exactly what you want and you also have access to outfits that were only acquired through lunchboxes before. There are also a couple weapons and outfits that can only be crafted, like the new powerful Dragon's Maw. Consequently wasteland exploring also changed a bit: Now you can have only 25 dwellers exploring at the same time and they have a limit on how much stuff they can carry. Once they reach such limit they will automatically start returning to the vault.

Fighting your way through a quest.

Once you build your Overseer's Office you will be able to choose from a list of available quests to send teams of up to three dwellers. These are special missions with special rewards, raging from simple gear to lunchboxes, pets, Nuka-Quantum and Mr. Handyman! With this addition your wasteland explorer dwellers also have a chance to come by special locations and do a "mini quest". Which can also provide the same rewards! Hence the addition of Nuka-Quantum, the definite monetization for a casual game like Fallout Shelter. Instead of waiting for the game timers in order to reach objectives, have dwellers return or even to craft gear you can spend some Nuka-Quantum and reap those rewards instantaneously!

Pets.

And finally, pets are a new kind of "gear" that you can equip individual dwellers with. Each pet ranges from common to rare and legendary. They give varied bonuses like more damage, faster training, chances for twins/triplets, decreased crafting time, etc. And since they are very scarce you can buy them directly from the store.

We think the game improved a lot since it was first released, specially with the "sell all common loot" button for exploring dwellers! Too bad themes don't go beyond triple sized diner and living quarters. But we are super happy that now you can find plenty of Mr. Handyman in the wasteland! Clicking to gather resources stop being fun after you've done it for hundreds of times, so he is an welcome break. Furthermore the pets and Nuka-Quantum are a great addition that in no way feels like we are forced to purchase those goods, as we can gather plenty on our own and save it for when we really want to speed up something.