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.

Plague Inc. - Part 1

Plague Inc. by Ndemic Creations Games

Plague Inc. is a game by Ndemic Creations Games. The main objective is to infect the entire world with a disease that you control using points and eventually destroy mankind. But doesn’t that sound oddly familiar? Plague Inc. is to say it mildly, a copy of the online game Pandemic 2 which itself is inspired by the board game Pandemic by Matt Leacock. Plague Inc. has profited heavily on their app despite the fact that Dark Realm Studios (the developers of Pandemic 2) also released a mobile app version called Pandemic 2.5. Ndemic Creations claim that they game is unique and has nothing to do with Pandemic 2. Which is odd since the Pandemic series by Dark Realm Studios have been out for several years while Plague Inc. was released in May 2012. If you look past the heavy influences from Pandemic 2, Plague Inc. stands out as a quite satisfying game.

As stated above the objective of the game is to infect the world by spreading your disease and in order to win you must infect and kill every living soul in the world. When opening the game we are presented with a clear cut main menu that is well designed. There is a gear symbol in the top left corner which leads to the settings manual. In the middle of the screen is well placed How to Play sub-menu that is well detailed and explains almost every aspect of the game. The game also automatically saves high scores instead of having to log into various apps such as Gamecenter or Openfeint. Starting a new game directly prompts you to a menu asking you to chose a game difficulty. Each setting offers something different, with three different variables – washing hands, amount of time doctors work and how sick people are treated. Casual is the easiest and shortest game mode since no one washes their hands, doctors don’t work and sick people are given hugs. At normal difficulty 67.3% of people wash their hands, making it harder to infect, doctors work 3 days a week and sick people are ignored. On brutal everybody is a compulsive hand washer, doctors never go home and sick people are locked in prison. These three variables change the infection rate of your disease as well as how fast it is treated. Games won on Normal unlock new plague types and new genes, while games won on brutal unlock more genes. Much like Pandemic 2 there are different disease types, here they’re called plague types, and there are 7 main plague types. Each plague has different qualties that may affect what strategy a player should use and they all offer different game experiences. A new player can only play as the bacteria but will unlock the virus after winning a game. After selecting your plague type you must name your disease and then modify the genetic code (if you have any genes to add). These genes give your disease small boots such as easier transmission on land or increased chance of mutation.

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.