Reviews for Pandemic: EoM

[xXxSinxXx]

Bad.

The original was much better. The graphics in this one are good. The music is great. But the gameplay is severely lacking. It took me 5 days just to kill one person. Even after I had pooled all my points into upgrades, which is extremely hard due to the amount of points you are given each round. It takes up points just to do anything and even then when you have spent your points on an action it turns out to be a big waste. Then of course there is the part where the humans you infected just suddenly become cured. Even though none of the countries had developed even 1/5 of their cure and the effectiveness of my virus was pretty damn good. You can't even call this a "spin-off" it's more of a mockery. I could keep on stepping all over this thing but I think I'm gonna go play the original Pandemic to reassure myself that the original is much better.

[Athiel]

not bad

This wasn't a bad game. I liked the slightly different approach to this one, but I do think that you sacrificed some neat features you had in the first. So, for the record, here's a side by side comparison of the major differences (maybe this will also help get people to shut up about one being so much superior than the other, when the fact is, they're just different).

Pandemic 1:

Pros: The variety of traits and symptoms, the "visibility" stat, stats in general are easy to understand, the other countries mostly ignore you until they've been infected.

Cons: Public transportation/airports close without any notceable correlation, 8 regions, the points system is buggy (I often find that I never get more than the initial three points, or that depending on whether the disease is limited to humans or not can affect it), the game doesn't stop when no more progress can be made (if you clicked to continue after the first country closed its borders), West europe tends to be nearly impossible to infect, though if you do manage to get in there, you're basically garaunteed to win.

Pandemic 2:

Pros: The "resistance" feature and combatting cures, the airports and water systems can be targeted directly, more regions

Cons: The levels don't atually seem to correspond to anything, points build up very slowly, Greenland/Australia extremely hard to infect consistently, give us a control to shut off the music; its not bad, but does get annoying, most of the game seems pointlesly random.

Now, that all being said, I think both games are very solid in terms of general design and fairly intuitive, the concept alone is neat. I suppose my biggest complaint is that strategy seems mostly ineffective. On the one hand, I can see tht as being a bit more "true to life" but on the other, can lead to quite a deal of frustration. Like all games, trying to balance reality and playabilty can be tricky but I think you've found a fairly good balance, if one or two adjustments are made. Essentially, if you can bring back the features we liked from the first and cut back on the randomness, you'll have a solid 10.

[Blue-Buddha]

bug

Maybe it is my computer, but after the second/third round I couldn't click anything. This has happened to me several times. Might want to check it out.

[GothicAngel993]

not bad, but not good either

I liked the concept, but it wasnt even half as good as the first.

[I3lackEagle]

new some changes.....

I love the idea behing Pandemic, but some things are still unrealistic. First off,
the human AI is too quick to realize the existance of a the new virus, so they start developing a cure before ppl even start dying. It's also too hard to infect airports and water supplies. It also doesn't make sense to have a virus that has a lethality of 0, and yet ppl still die.
It's a great game and original premise, but there's still a lot of room for improvement. The biggest thing I would change for Pandemic 2 is create messages that at least give ppl an idea of what happened when they attempt to infect the airport or something...like reasons for failure and if it was really close to succeding or not at all, just so it's not like u click it and nothing happens, leaving u wondering.