Pandemic 2.5 Review – Eradicate mankind with your engineered disease
App Type: Uncategorized
Our rating:
By: Dark Realm Studios
Version #: 1.01
Date Released: 2012-05-09
Developer: Dark Realm Studios
Price: 0.99
User Rating:Pandemic is a game I used to play a lot (well, more than 2 hours) in the Flash games era, a long long time ago. Your goal was to design (in real time) a disease that spreads through the world and kills all human habitants. Sounds kind of fun, don’t you think?
Pandemic 2.5 is the iOS port (universal app, working both in iPads and iPhones) of this game, with some improvements and tweaks for touch screens. I have played it quite a lot… And if you buy (why shouldn’t you?) you’ll play also quite a lot.
In Pandemic you start by choosing the kind of disease (parasitic, bacterial or viric,) and then earn evolution points as more people get infected. With these points you can add traits to your disease, like sneezing (to improve contagion rate, at the expense of greater visibility) or heart stroke (to improve lethality at the expense of greater visibility.)
Since your ultimate goal in Pandemic is to infect all continents, you have to gauge very carefully how visible and how contagious is your disease: there are a few countries that as soon as they close ports are impossible to infect (Madagascar, New Zealand, Greenland and Iceland are the most prominent.)
So Pandemic has a quite deep strategy scheme, but no tactics. Just beware of what you spend and cross your fingers for lucky infections in those countries, then activate the killing traits to clean mankind from the face of Earth.
In short: This was quite a Flash game blockbuster, and the iOS port of Pandemic is a great game on its own.
Quick Take
Value:High
Would I Buy Again:Yes
Learning Curve:High
Who Is It For:Wannabe villains
What I Like:Gameplay and concept
What I Don't Like:So hard to clean Madagascar!
Final Statement:A great little game!
- Select from dozens of symptoms, resistances and unlocked traits when customizing your viral, parasitic or bacterial classed disease.
- Adapt to government strategies as countries fight the spread of your disease by researching vaccines, grounding air travel, establishing quarantines, declaring martial law and much more.
- Show off the brilliance of your disease to friends with highscores and achievements courtesy of Game Center.
Screenshots
Article By ruben
Ruben Berenguel is finishing his PhD in Mathematics while writing in mostlymaths.net about being a 'geek of all trades'. He also happens to be the senior editor in the What's on iPhone network: any complaints go to him!
ruben has written 174 awesome app reviews.