Greetings readers and welcome to the belated return of the Short Short Review. As a refresher for new readers, I attempt to review a short film, story, or in this week’s case, game, in a really short number of words. In the spirit of the “plague” that caused the delay in the column, I will be reviewing the game Pandemic and all of its various spin-offs in 340 words because I can.
Before getting to the merits of the game, time to cover some background information on its origins. Pandemic first existed as a lowly flash game whose premise was to evolve a disease, virus, or parasite to kill every single person on the planet. I know it sounds morbid but the game focuses on a balance between propagation (coughing, vomiting, etc.) and death (aneurisms, internal bleeding etc.). The original game has spawned many clones on almost every platform but the original game is a good start.
Moving on to the actual review (Just under 200 words left), I’ll start with gameplay. The gameplay is easy to learn and yet hard to master and as a result it is extremely enjoyable but frustrating. There are times where you will get to a point in the game where it is impossible to win. On the other hand, the reverse can very easily happen too.
Unlike the gameplay, the graphics are a bit underwhelming, but expected for a flash game. The main screen consists of a map of the world with little icons representing hospitals, airports, and hubs. The upgrade view is pretty straightforward as well with various upgrade paths presented in a linear manner. The sounds in the game are also extremely minimal with a repetitive loop track running in the background. Furthermore, there are no sound effects, which makes things underwhelming.
To wrap things up this week, Pandemic and its clones are little bundles of joy and plague. Therefore, the game gets 4 deathly ill people out of 5. Next week we will be returning to your regularly scheduled and normal column. Stay tuned!
Leave a Reply