Plague Inc - Part 2

Once you start a game you move onto a map of the world. A small text box pops up explaining the main objective of the game and then proceeds to give you small instructions on how to get started. Unlike Pandemic 2 the player is given the opportunity to choose the country they wish to infect. As I always had trouble infecting Greenland in Pandemic 2 I decide to start my infection here. The disease starts out slow infecting a few people.  Slowly as the disease starts to infect more you are given more DNA points. These points can be used in three different categories – transmission, symptoms, and abilities. Transmission traits increase infectivity and chance of mutation. Each transmission vector is aimed towards certain countries and regions, for example evolving the insect transmission allows your disease to be infected through insects which in particular inhabit hot climates. Since animals aren’t restricted by the closing of ports and borders it allows you to infect countries even after they close down the country. Symptoms determines the symptoms that your disease gives infected people, some symptoms increases infectivity such as sneezing or coughing while symptoms such as total organ failure increases lethality. Abilities increases the strengths of your disease such as resistance to medical cures and climate changes. Each plague type also has a type specific ability trait that is core to winning the game. DNA points are given according to the amount of people infected. In Pandemic 2 this was the only way to get points but fortunately Plague Inc. has fixed this with new ways of getting extra points. At random times an orange bubble will appear over an infected country, this gives a small portion of extra DNA points. While Pandemic 2’s gameplay often became very static the introduction of popping bubbles ensures that the player is engaged and alert to what is happening while actually adding something to the gameplay. Red bubbles appear once a new country has been infected and they also give extra points. Since I started my disease in Greenland and the only thing connecting Greenland to the rest of the world is ships I decide to spend my first points in Water transmission as it supposedly increases the chance of my disease being carried along with ship travel. I spend my remaining points on the special bacteria ability – Bacterial Resilience as this gives protection against all climates. As Greenland is very cold I assume that this will speed up the transmission in Greenland while also boosting chances of infecting in hotter regions. Like in Pandemic 2 there is a neat speed up button which allows you skip ahead while waiting for DNA points or just waiting for you disease to spread to other countries. After a little while my disease is spread onto a ship, which lays port in Russia. With my extra DNA points I evolve my Air transmission which increases chances of infecting air plane passengers. Since Russia has many flights connecting to it I am hoping that evolving this particular transmission mode will allow my disease to spread to more countries. While waiting for this to happen a pop-up box explains that because Russia is a quite rich country their medicine is slowing down my disease. I decide to evolve Drug Resistance as this increases my effectiveness in wealthy countries. Soon after my disease is spotted in Norway, then China and starts to take off as it infects several countries one after another. But as more and more people are infected the global community becomes aware of my disease and soon they start researching for a cure. The closer I get to infecting every country the more money is aimed towards medical research and soon it’s a race against the clock. As in Pandemic 2 if you can see a country like Madagascar or Greenland hasn’t been infected you have pretty much lost the game. This makes the game overly irritating at times but also ensures that the difficulty of the game isn’t too easy.