Fallout Shelter

Fallout Shelter

Since I'm talking mobile games, let's talk about one that I've been playing for about a year.

Fallout 4

I really enjoyed Fallout 4. I did a fairly quick play through once and then started another one. For me, that's a big deal since I usually want to retire a game once I have finished the plot.

So is Fallout Shelter like the Fallout series? No. Not at all, except superficially. The art style, the setting, and some sounds is just about it. Fallout Shelter is more like a resource allocation building game or a tap game.

Gameplay

There is a lot to like. You get to build your vault, acquire resources, train people, and do quests. For the most part the game is pretty slick and satisfying.

On the downside, it takes a long time to load and it crashes quite a bit on my phone. I have a hard time accurately selecting individual people. When disasters hit the vault, sometimes the location is not clear and I have to scroll around a lot to find it. I don't like the barely-3d look of the game any more than a 2d sprite based game and a 2d game would solve a lot of the annoyances.

The hardcore mode was appealing to me, but the difficult interface leads to occasional frustrating deaths, and in a hardcore game I know it would lead to rage quit, so I never tried it.

The game itself is free and I never saw a reason to spend money. You can get a good feel for the game without a large time investment. For that, I give Fallout Shelter a solid thumbs up.

Pathfinder Adventures

Pathfinder Adventures

I've been stuck for a week away from home with poor internet. Normally I lug my laptop around to get my gaming fix, but I thought I'd load up my phone instead. The main games I've been playing are Pathfinder Adventures, You Must Build a Boat, and Fallout Shelter. By far my time has been spent playing Pathfinder Adventures so that's what I'm here to talk about.

Long Time Coming

I'm big into board games, card games, and RPGs, especially Pathfinder, so I was excited to play Pathfinder Adventures card game when it was first release. However, my initial play of it left me lukewarm. It was too dry and I didn't understand the interesting interactions that I now know the game has. Perhaps instead of d4, d6, d8, d10, d12 they should use something more colorful and engaging like slight assistance, minor help, or massive boon.

What really sealed the nail in the Pathfinder coffin was when my gaming buddies played through the campaign. There was no way I would bother to look for another group to play with.

You Paid How Much?!?

Normally I'm a real cheapskate with IOS games. Of the hundreds of free games I've downloaded I doubt I've spent more than $5 on In App Purchases. I doubt I spend more than $10 per year on IOS games. So it was a big surprise that I was willing to shell out $25 for the Pathfinder Adventures campaign pack. Normally for this kind of game I would be happy to grind out free gold, but that puts me in a different mindset. I wanted to play the card game, not the grind game.

The Good

The game seems to be very faithful to the card game. The interface is mostly great (not an A+, but perhaps an A). Clicking on a card makes it large enough for me to read on my iPhone 6+. Often I find information that I need is buried under a few clicks but it is never onerous.

I have played 1, 2, 3, and 4 characters at a time and each combination has a unique feel. With a single character, you have plenty of time in the blessings deck. The limiting factor is more the character life deck. Characters that can self heal work well. With more characters in the game there is plenty of life to go around but the blessings deck becomes the problem. 

Best of all is the character progression. You keep items and followers that you find and you start to customize your deck to synergize with the other characters. You also gain more powers and abilities. All of this allows for a lot of flexibility and many different play experiences. For example, one game I decided that the sorcerer would be the "thief" of the group. She collected lockpick sets and I improved her dexterity. 

The Bad

Like any fairly complicated game, it takes a lot of time. This isn't your typical phone game where you can play for 5 minutes and put it down. Often I would have to spend some time clicking around to remember where everyone was and what they were doing.

Sadly there are a few bugs. For the most part it isn't bad but I did experience one bug that wouldn't allow me to continue a game and I had to resign it. I have also seen a bug that miscalculates the difficulty of completing a task.

Overall

This gets a thumbs up for me but I'm not sure whom to recommend this game to. If it were desktop I'd say it was worth $25. However I don't know a lot of people that want to play a brain burner on their phone for blocks of an hour at a time. It has a free to play mode so at least that's worth trying out, but I'm confident I would have given up on the game had I started in that mode.

Dream Quest

Let's Talk About Dream Quest

Dream Quest is a game written for mobile devices. I play on my iPhone. It's essentially a deck building game with crappy art and a some rpg exploration and leveling. 

Dream Quest is not a Blizzard Game

I love Blizzard games but there is plenty of quality entertainment in other corners of the world. I've played hundreds of mobile games since they fit into a certain type of time availability. 

Why is Dream Quest Great?

It's very much a Roguelike, one of my favorite genres. There are many classes to pick from and each dungeon is different. It's sort of like Nethack meets Desktop Dungeons with a little bit of Hearthstone or Magic the Gathering. 

Dream Quest is free or cheap and I've put in over 100 hours. I haven't beaten it with every class yet (missing Druid and Dragon). I'm generally a completionist but not when it comes to "achievements" and this game is no different.

Diablo 3 -- Seasonal is Fun

Like everyone else, I played a lot of Diablo 3 when it first came out. It didn't fully grab me and the auction house made the game too easy. I didn't like the play of the Witch Doctor so I rolled a Wizard. He also wasn't very satisfying, but the voice acting was so good I stuck with it. When I finished Diablo I shelved the game without much thought.

Then Reaper of Souls came out. By this time the auction house was gone and I played a barbarian. It was lots of fun. After hitting max level I started to play with friends and coworkers and it opened a new dimension of the game. By this time the endgame of Diablo 3 was very strong and I played a lot. Finally other games got my attention and I put down Diablo 3 again.

A year later, a friend wanted to start a seasonal character with me. Seasonal play is interesting because you are treated like a new player. You don't have paragon levels or access to items in your main stash. You get set item rewards for achievements which makes the grind faster and more satisfying.

Now I'm playing in season 7. I rolled a wizard to give it a second chance. At endgame, it is much more like the wizard I remember from Diablo 1. Teleporting, raining death, and a big force shield is the experience I was looking for. I'm sad that, for this season, top wizards don't compete with top monks and witch doctors, but I probably won't make it that far, especially with the World of Warcraft Legion expansion recently launched and the 20 hours per week of Overwatch I still play.