So I've seen the Pandemic box on the shelf at my FLGS for about 2 months now and I swear I picked it up and read the back at least once each time I've been in that store. So when I heard Josh say it was a cooperative game, I called to see if they had a demo, and they did.
I am one of the most competitive people I know, and I've been trying to break that habit for years. My own family won't play anything more complicated than UNO with me anymore because of how competitive I used to be. So I've been breaking that habit and playing cooperative games helps. Come to find out, I love them. (Didn't see that coming, did you
). So of course I figure Pandemic will be right up my alley, and it is.
Anyone that enjoys any amount of strategy in a game will enjoy Pandemic. It caters to the competitive streak and the cooperative streak at the same time, which is impressive to me. We ended up playing it twice, both on easy mode, but I, like Josh, desperately want to play it on a harder difficulty.
When I say it caters to all of those things, I'm not exaggerating. There are 5 roles you take in this game, each of which gives you a special ability. The game is set for 4 players, so you're always down 1 role, which adds a bit of challenge immediately. Each role is randomly assigned and has a vital aspect in the game. We played a game with no Medic (whose special ability is to treat more than one incident of a disease in a city) and had all of Asia chain-reaction outbreak in a plague in a matter of two turns. It was bad. So that's the first challenging aspect those of you who love strategy have to cover - how to deal with being down a research team member.
The game itself is pretty simple, you get your turn, which involves moving, treating, and possibly developing cures for a disease. You do this via a hand of cards. At the end of your turn, you draw cards to replenish your hand and then end your turn by playing "the infector." Unlike other relatively cooperative games like Last Night on Earth, no one person plays the enemy side. The infection is dictated by a set of rules where at the end of each turn 2-4 cities have an incident of a disease spread and if there's too much of a certain disease in a city, it'll outbreak and spread to other cities.
There's definitely a lot of strategy involved in the game, because you have to compensate for that missing role, treat diseases while trying to develop the cure (you don't want outbreaks - the game ends in defeat if 8 outbreaks occur), and help your teammates out with whatever role you've been assigned. It also feeds the competitive streak because the game is HARD. Even on easy mode, we came near annihilation in each game. Some of it's luck, but a lot of it is planning and odds. You have to look at what cities are highly infected and play the odds for which are most likely to get more incidents of the disease. There's a fair amount of planning, which is where the cooperative aspect comes in full force. You can't control your team mates. You can't see their cards (unless you're in easy mode) and you can't tell them your cards. There's a lot of trust that has to go on with helping them get to certain cities to help treat the disease. If you're trying to develop a plan, odds are they have their own and teamwork is essential in defeating the diseases.
Overall it's a great game and well worth the price. If you like competing against someone who won't get upset if you beat them, a game makes a great opponent. It's also nice if you have friends who don't like losing to you or who don't like playing with people who get overly competitive. I suppose that's a staple of cooperative games, but Pandemic does it incredibly well. The system is simple enough to understand but complex enough to require a lot of thought when playing.
Oh, and a note on the difficulties - There's a card that causes epidemics to break out around the world. In easy mode, that can ONLY happen 4 times in a game. In harder difficulties, it happens 5 or 6, which considering there's a limited number of cards, is a big increase. Plus more cities seem to get incidents of diseases more often. One of the biggest aspects is the reduced information you can share with your team, causing you to need more trust and cooperation among members. Josh, I'll play Pandemic on harder difficulties with you.