Game:

• Verdict: very nice!
• Fun Rating: Fun
• Players/Mode: 2-4 / Cooperative
• Game Duration: 45 minutes (ish)
• System: Board
• Developer: Matt Leacock
• Website: http://www.zmangames.com/boardgames/pandemic.htm


(from the game’s website)

“Four diseases have broken out in the world and it is up to a team of specialists in various fields to find cures for these diseases before mankind is wiped out.

Players must work together, playing to their characters’ strengths and planning their strategy of eradication before the diseases overwhelm the world with ever-increasing outbreaks. For example, the Operation Specialist can build research stations, which are needed to find cures for the diseases. The Scientist needs only 4 cards of a particular disease to cure it instead of the normal 5.”

Brain:

Spew:

What the game gets right

This is a co-op game which is a welcome break from the norm and this game does the co-op very well. Girls like co-op and any game that girls can enjoy as much as guys is like a breath of fresh air (because girls generally smell better).

The roles that players can assume are well balanced and, well, fun. Everyone is important in this game. Additionally, never having all 5 roles playing and having the roles change each game keeps things interesting as the group has to stay on its mental toes to adjust to the new constraints.

This game also manages to bring out a conscious level of anxiety that “if you don’t win the world is doomed!” To bring the players so deep into your game that they care about the outcome of the story is a great feat for any game. That this game pulls it off and is a board game is nothing short of outstanding.

What the game gets wrong

Let’s start with the box. As is the problem with the majority of board games, the box does not give you any real help to keep the pieces in order between games, let alone if you take the game somewhere and tump the box sideways in the car. The plastic bags to keep the infection blocks separated are a not so bad, but those are easily sorted anyway. I’m really talking about card organization. For the price of this game, you’d think they could have provided at least a thin plastic tray to keep stuff organized. (Depending on where you buy this game from, the plastic tray should maybe even be gold plated.)

UPDATE: According to the developer, the publisher will be modifying the box for the next production run. Let me know if the new box is acceptable.

Next is the rule book, which, overall is . . .sufficient. There are written and illustrated examples for most of the rules, a card for each player to remind them of what actions they can do, and even a little play order on the board. If nothing else, there is too much information. However, at the end of our second game we were perplexed as to how in the world we could clear the board with the 3 remaining player cards so we looked at the rules again and there, on page 6 of the rules on the last available space on the page, is how you win which we had achieved at the beginning of our last round. This is important information which should be, in my opinion, right next to the quick play order in the rules, on page 1.

And lastly, the board and game pieces are a little wanting. The player pieces are HUGE compared to the board making it difficult to put more than one player in any location. And, there’s a lot of board real estate that really could be used better by giving more space to place the pieces. We know that Greenland exists, but if it doesn’t serve any purpose in this game, why show it? Use the space so that the pieces can spread out or that the names of locations can be larger so that you can read it from, say, more than 1 foot away.

Sum it up

If there’s a suggestion to be given to the players for this game it will be shuffle very, very well the first few games out of the box. Having over 50% of one virus show up just during setup can lead to a short and extremely frustrating game, especially when you’re just trying to figure out how to play the game. (It took me two games to feel like I had a good handle on the rules and how to play the game.)

This is not a game for those that like to “whoop other players” unless, of course, you find some sort of evil satisfaction in berating other players in a game where everyone is supposed to be working together. This is, however, definitely a game for “family game night”, or any other game night for that matter, for those that can (or want to) get along with each other.

This is a difficult game because it plays differently than your standard game (i.e. no dice, no timer, no score, no global domination, no dancing around naked taunting the other players with remarks about your “mad skillz”) but the pay off is worth the effort to learn. If you like playing games with people, this is a game you should have readily available.

Other games you might like to read about:

• Forbidden Island

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This entry was posted on Monday, April 28th, 2008 at 1:20 pm and is filed under Board, Fun, Tabletop. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.