Pandemic The Board Game: Part 4

As there is only one way for players to win while there is three ways to lose players feel a sense of urgency and importance when trying to avoid the three situations that would cause a loss. Unfortunately all four outcomes are extremely anti-climatic. When I first played I didn’t even notice that we had won. It just sort of happened once we had turned over four tiles that indicated we had discovered cures for all the diseases. The seven outbreaks is perhaps the most intense and interesting outcome out of the four. Yet, I felt very little when seven outbreaks did occur. I shrugged my shoulders and thought “Oh well, guess there where too many cubes.” and packed up the game. This is where I think the Internet version Pandemic 2 succeeds in a way Pandemic can’t, simply because of its medium. The Internet version has visuals in its favor. A screen indicates how many people are infected by diseases and how many have died. The colors of the countries change depending on how many people are dying and as soon as you see that several countries are turning from dark green to a crimson red, you know that the diseases are taking over. This is what Pandemic tries to do with its cubes. But it doesn’t compare.

While I would probably rather play the online Pandemic 2 than play the board game does not mean it doesn’t succeed. My personal preference aside, Matt Leacock definitely manages to set up game mechanics that are focused on his two main design values – cooperative play and strategy. For me it was also the first time playing a board game that was cooperative against the game itself and that is innovative by Leacock. He could most likely have created a game where two teams would fight each other, one as the people trying to cure the world while the other teams were the disease trying to infect it.

Some of the reviews that I have read also write about some of the points that I’ve made. For example that using cubes to represent diseases doesn’t really cut it and seems to be artistically poorly designed. Most of the reviews point out something that I haven’t had to the chance to try but that trying to win the game on medium is very difficult and rarely happens, especially due to the randomness factor of the game. Very few of these reviewers seem to be disappointed by this fact. Many praise Pandemic for being so unpredictable and hard to win.  

One reviewer mentioned the fact that the game can often be controlled by a single player who announces themselves as team captain and tells everybody what to do. I can attest to this and it may be my lack of love for teamwork that I personally didn’t enjoy this game much.

Matt Leacock tells in an interview for meepletown.com that he believes that because of the lack of aesthetics and “chrome”, as he puts it, it allows players to create their own stories together. This would appeal to the storyteller player type. He also addresses one of the issues that I mentioned which is that he believes he underdeveloped the resolution that follows the climax after discovering all four cures. Leacock tells to bygonebureau.com that he believes that the reason for the success of Pandemic is because of its cooperative play. Rather than pitching your family against each other it brings people together and help each other make the right decisions.

From the reviews I have read and heard it seems as if Pandemic is a huge success and a crowd pleaser. I haven’t been able to find many flaws with the game, and most of the ones I have described are nitpicking.

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Pandemic The Board Game: Part 3

While it is probably unfair to judge a game that I have only won once on introductory level and lost once on regular level, I believe there are some overall points to be made.

Firstly, the idea of a cooperative game is rather new, or for me it is. All the board games I have played over the years have been player vs. player and if there was any kind of cooperative play it was often team vs. team rather than players vs. game. It makes sense to develop games that use this form of play as it is seen more often in digital games such as MMORPGs where players fight the ‘environment’ or the CPU. Despite all this, the game form doesn’t appeal at all to me. Whether it’s a flawed game form or if it’s just personal preference I did not enjoy the experience much. It didn’t seem as if we were playing a game, rather just we were discussing actions and the best things to do, much like a form of Model-United Nations. Since we weren’t competing against each other there seemed to be nothing at stake. Why wouldn’t we cooperate with each other? For me personally, I’d like to see a feature where players have to decide whether to help the team as a whole or help themselves for personal gains. This would add more realism to the game in my opinion, as certain people might only be willing to help in return of a favor or exchange of goods. This would really push the main emphasis of the game – cooperation.

The second design value that Leacock seems to have designed his game after is the idea of strategy. Player must work together in a strategic way. They must choose the right actions, go to the right locations at specific moments or otherwise they may risk losing. Extra strategy is added through the use of player roles. Each player has strong points that must be used cooperatively in order to achieve the objectives of the game. This is a really strong point of Pandemic.

Although this has little to do with the mechanics of the game, but I would have liked to see the player pieces that are connected to the player role cards to have been more interesting. A green player piece doesn’t indicate that it’s the operations expert. Using player pieces like in Monopoly would have added to the artistic and emotionally experience of the game. Players start to see themselves as their roles through the role cards that feature small drawings of each role but it stops as soon as they see that their researcher in full scrubs is instead a brown player piece.

Even though the cubes aren’t really visually appealing or interesting in any way, they are practical and serve their purpose. It is easy to spot when a city has three cubes on it that it is on the edge of an outbreak or epidemic. I do believe though that the names of the disease are a bit too generic. How unoriginal is the name “blue disease”? 

Pandemic The Board Game: Part 2

The first game I played we were three players. As it was our first game we chose to play an introductory game, with slightly easier game play. I got the researcher role while the two other players got operations expert and scientist. At the start of the game we made sure to try to utilize our special roles to the best extent while also trying to use all four actions each turn. This was based of the fact that the game was branded as a cooperative game, and we deduced that if we were given special abilities and a certain number of actions that we should take full advantage of it. We started off in Atlanta and decided to try to spread out on the map in order to treat the few starting diseases that had occurred. As the game progressed we got unlucky with the disease cards and soon Europe was covered in blue cubes. The operations expert built a research center in Milano while I, as the research, shared knowledge with the scientist and we discovered a cure for blue. We decided to let one player focus on treating all the blue cubes while trying to get around to other diseases. After completely eradicating blue, I travelled to South America to take care of the Yellow disease while the operations expert and scientist focused on red. I managed to build a research station and discover a cure for yellow. We decided not to try and remove all the yellow cubes, as we believed we could find a cure for the black and red disease before any outbreaks would occur. Unfortunately, while in the closing stages of curing red, we drew an epidemic card that resulted in an outbreak in Southern America. We decided to fight through it and discovered a cure. I shared my knowledge with the scientist once again and went of to South America in the attempts at treating the worst cities and trying to avoid another outbreak or chain reaction. As before the operations expert set up a research station in Northern Africa while the scientist, using our combined cards discovered a cure for the black disease. We won without much trouble.

Pandemic The Board Game: Part 1

Pandemic is a board game created by game designer Matt Leacock that was published in 2008. The objective of the game is to, as a team, treat and cure four different diseases that are infecting the world. Players must work together in order to beat the game and win.

Pandemic is cooperative multiplayer against the game play format. Each player either wins or loses each game. The objectives are based on outwitting the game, coming up with a solution collectively and racing against the game before it’s too late.

The game is made for 2 to 4 players, each of which have a character role which gives them special skills. There are five roles but only a maximum of four can be played with at one time. The roles are dispatcher, medic, scientist, researcher and operations expert.

The dispatcher is the grand controller and planner of the game, a player with the dispatcher role can move other players around the board outside of their turn.

The medic can remove all cubes of disease when treating a city, only using one action, and can administer cures without any actions.

The scientist can discover cures using only four cards rather than the regular five needed.

The researcher can share any cards with another player without being in the city portrayed on the card given. Both players must be in the same city though.

The operations expert can build a research station anywhere using one action. The operations expert can also move to any city as long as he is at a research station and discards a card.

Each player is allowed four actions per turn. There are basic actions such as moving between cities either by car or by flying (though you must discard a card of that city in order to move). Other actions including giving cards to other players (known as sharing knowledge), treating one cube of disease or discovering a cure.

At the start of the game several disease cards a drawn and cubes are placed on the matching cities. At the end of every turn a certain number of disease cards are drawn again and more cubes are placed on the map. A player must draw two player cards, which can either be a city, a special event, or an epidemic card. The city cards are used for various things such as curing diseases, travelling and building research stations. The special event cards are certain scenarios and actions that can be played at anytime, such as an airlift that allows you to travel anywhere on the map at anytime. In the event of an epidemic cubes are placed on several cities and all the disease cards that were discarded are reshuffled into the deck of disease cards. If a city with three cubes is infected with one more cube an outbreak occurs.

The game ends if the players discover a cure for each disease, the only way in which the game is won by the players. Otherwise, if more than seven outbreaks occur, or there are no more cubes of a specific disease or there aren’t any cards to be drawn, the players lose. 

Madden NFL 08: Superstar Mode - Part 4

At the end of a season, players are selected to the Pro Bowl. If you have played exceptionally well throughout the season you might be selected to go to Hawaii and play in an All-Star game. Each season also features a voting for several prizes such as Most Valuable Player and Rookie of the Year. These honors and awards may increase your chance of going to the Hall of Fame once you retire. If you’ve had a really great year you might be selected to be the cover athlete of the Madden NFL game.

Once a season is over your agent will be signing you up for endorsements and sponsorships. If you get enough money from your promotional work as well as your base salary from your team you might move away from your small studio apartment to a bigger downtown loft. Once you’ve become a superstar and a millionaire you move into a mansion. This feature is terrific and so well done by EA Sports. Since your player never actually gets to spend any of their salary on anything, as you can’t buy anything it is really great to see them change your apartment out with something more expensive. And it feels great to move from your small apartment to a beautiful loft after a long season of hard work. Unfortunately this is a feature they have later removed, which is a real shame because it made you feel like you were actually living the life of a NFL athlete trying to get by.

Eventually your contract with your team will expire and you have a choice to sign an extension or become a free agent where any team can offer you a contract. You get a list of interested teams along with their offer of money and length of contract. While playing under a contract for a team you can demand a trade, although this will affect your ego negatively and you won’t have choice of where you are being traded off.

The Madden Superstar mode has so many great things going for it, specifically the feeling of being an actual player in the NFL. Unfortunately the game play becomes redundant; especially the practices and you never feel like you’re actually improving. Madden has fixed this in later installments but in Madden 08 you have to wait until your player is actually on the field which is very irritating. While the idea of having the camera angle focused only on what your player can see it just doesn’t fully work. The angle is often awkward and is too different from the rest of the game play. Superstar Mode has often been a mode that could be a great success but hasn’t found it’s stride yet. It’s a shame that EA Sports decided to remove the one great thing that Madden 08 had going in later installments, as I’m certain that they should have been able to figure it out by now.

Madden NFL 08: Superstar Mode - Part 3

The next step is the NFL Draft. You are asked whether you want to be chosen your favorite team or if you want to enter the draft and see where and when you are picked. This is a good feature because often you are only interested in playing with your favorite team rather than playing for a team you have no connection to. The Draft is rather anti-climatic as you are just informed of when you are picked and you have no real idea of why you were chosen in the third round. Once picked you receive an email from the owner or coach of your team informing you of their great expectations. The computer now features a page about your player and a general analysis of his abilities and skills. Throughout your career your agent will write too you as well as receiving personal messages from your mom. The calendar now shows Practice almost every single day except on game day. While having this high amount of practices is customary in the NFL and certainly realistic it adds very little to the experience and is more of an annoyance than anything. You can skip the practices but you won’t improve your overall rating or you can do the circa twice a day practices, five days a week and improve your overall rating. Except that very few people want to do 40 practice sessions per month.

 The real problem boils down to one attribute called Awareness. Practices boost your Awareness attribute. While attributes like Speed, Blocking and Strength are pretty self-explanatory but no definition for awareness is given. Oddly enough it’s what separates a player that is rated 85 overall from being a 95 overall.  These practices improve a player’s awareness and it is this attribute that boosts the ratings. It isn’t an increase in catching or blocking but quite simply an increase in this single attribute. The only explanation that users have been able to give is that it simply means that the player is more aware or more alert of what is going on. But this benefit has no effect on you when you’re controlling a player. What matters is your own reaction time and your own alertness. Despite this awareness remains one of the most important attributes in the Madden series.

One of the big features of both Superstar mode and Franchise mode is that several key players have been given certain Weapon Roles – a certain characteristic attribute that they have that makes them stand out. For example Drew Brees is known for being on the most accurate passers and therefore has the Accurate Passer Weapon Role, symbolized by a crosshair. Antonio Gates has some of the most secure hands in the NFL and therefore has the Possession Receiver Weapon Role, symbolized by a pair of gloves. Some players are considered so talented in many aspects that they are given a star symbol and are known as Feature Running Backs or Franchise Quarterbacks, this would for example be Ladainian Tomlinson and Peyton Manning. This feature is also available for your own superstar. It isn’t clear when or how you get the roles but at some point the coach will send you an email telling you that over the last season you have performed really well and that you have now become a special weapon on their team. You can select the role when your player is on the field and it allows you to modify skills and attributes of yourself, your teammates and your opponents. You might have the role of Speed receiver, which may allow you to increase your own acceleration ratings, decrease the opponents’ awareness rating and boost your quarterbacks arm strength. The more impact the player has on the game the more he or she can modify the skills of the players on the field. 

Madden NFL 08: Superstar Mode - Part 2

After creating your player you move into a new screen. This is where, in my opinion, EA Sports really succeeded and it’s a shame they changed the way they do Superstar Mode. Your player moves into a small studio apartment, with a couch, TV and a coffee table. You also have interactive objects such as your computer, map, calendar, playbook, phone and mirror. These objects make up the majority of your game play. The mirror allows you to change your look, such as your facemask or gloves. Through the map you can travel to a barbershop and get a haircut or go to your agent’s office and have a chat about your next career move. The computer holds information such as statistics and ratings. The key element is the calendar. By clicking on the calendar you are shown what events are coming up this month and it is through the calendar you navigate and progress in the game. While this really well done, it took me a week to figure how to get from one day to the next and it isn’t very obvious. But once you have understood this mechanic the game runs smoothly.

As a new rookie you are given three workouts with different teams and you are invited to the NFL Combine. When you first start you have to sign a player agent, but since you are an unproven rookie straight out of college there is only one agent who wants to sign you and he’s terrible. Luckily as you progress your player other more talented agents are willing to sign you.

The agent serves as a nice mechanism that isn’t vital to the game but definitely adds to the experience. Your agent provides you with endorsements and sponsorships as well as helps you get better contracts or helps you demand a trade from your team. In the workouts you can chose from a small variety of challenges that are specific to your position, a wide receiver will be able to either catch the ball or run routes. If a player scores enough points to get either a bronze, silver or gold trophy they are rewarded with one point increase in a key attribute. These workouts are nicely integrated into the game and reflect the reality of the real NFL, where prospects are invited to workout at interested teams.

Unfortunately you don’t get the feeling that the teams you are invited to are actually scouting you at all, instead it seems as if the teams are just randomly chosen.

In between the workouts several reporters ask you for interviews. The interviews determine whether your player has a positive and team friendly ego or a negative selfish ego. These egos determine which agents that want to sign you, how other teammates perceive you and if you are generally liked by the public. The ego also adds to something called an In-Game Influence meter that measures your performance. The NFL Combine is the last chance to add a valuable attribute point but once again this feature isn’t as complete as it could be. In the real NFL Combine, each participant must complete several drills so that scouts can evaluate them. This includes the 40-yard dash, long jump and weight lifting. Several participants can convince teams that what they might lack in football skills they make up for in agility and speed, while other highly project prospects might disappoint and are no longer thought to be Top 10 material but rather only worth a third round pick. The experience would greatly improve if players could go through these kinds of drills and get feedback from the media on what scouts are saying about them.