Mr. Prepper (Xbox One) Review

Mr. Prepper has a lot in common with Fallout Shelter but adds the collecting and crafting of most open world RPGs. There is a lot happening and the complicated UI doesn’t do the experience any favors.

It is never explained but you guide a bad ass looking rock star dude to build things within his house. For some reason he is under house arrest and needs to have his home inspected constantly by the government.  The player is tasked with converting everyday items into a fallout bunker beneath his first floor to survive a nuclear blast.  However, if the government official catches your craftiness, you get penalized.  And by penalized I mean game over. Nothing here makes any sense and actually causes confusing.  Why is this dude living in this super nice neighborhood but asked to stay inside?  How is he allowed to trade materials with his neighbors through standard mail and no shipping? If he is supposed to stay home, how is the player allowed to teleport to distant locations like the forest to collect wood to craft at home? Why does the government care his is renovating his own property?  Why is he preparing for nuclear war? How can he build a basement without busting up the first floor? So many questions!

Even if the gameplay coincided with the confusing story and premise, the player still needs to fumble through the complicated interface. You don’t directly control Mr. Prepper. Instead, you guide him by pointing a cursor at the screen and selecting things. It sounds simple but performing any tasks requires multi taps and complex menu navigation. The tutorial helps but never explains the exact details, leaving the player confused on what it is you should actually be doing.  If the narrative didn’t frustrate you, the cumbersome gameplay will.  On top of building things on your work bench, the player also needs to maintain Mr. Prepper’s hunger and sleep levels, you know, because micro managing a virtual man baby is super fun as he hides from the government.

After struggling through the long tutorial, I finally managed to build the first level basement in my house only to have the government agent find it the next day (which was just a few real world seconds later) and send me to jail. That was when I rage quit in mass confusion. If Mr. Prepper actually prepped his life, he wouldn’t be in these awkward situations, now would he?

Not As Good As: Fallout Shelter

Also Try: Neighbours Back From Hell (Switch)   

Not To be Confused With: Dr. Pepper  

By: Zachary Gasiorowski, Editor in Chief myGamer.com

Twitter: @ZackGaz

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