Guys, Pandemic is great. If you like getting around with a few friends to play a game that lasts about an hour, has everyone work together, and immerses you in a setting with little colored blocks and a map of the world, then you like gaming. If you don't like those things, you're a subhuman lizard and should be banished to the depths of Earth.
In Pandemic, you and your cohorts (one to three of them, according to the official rules) are specialists from the Center for Disease Control racing the clock to beat four deadly diseases which threaten the whole globe. Each of you has a specific skill (represented by role cards) and specialized knowledge (represented by cards) to help you treat and cure those diseases and save the world.
Pros:
Immersion - Using just tiny blocks, cards, and rules, Pandemic gives you that feeling that you're gathering important information on a disease and watching infection spread around the globe. When you arrange to meet up with another guy in Madrid so you can hand him the last piece of data he needs to cure the Blue/Star Disease, it feels like you're jet-setting specialists meeting where the rain falls mainly on the plain.
Variety - Because it uses cards, gameplay is radically different from game to game. I've had games where curing two diseases gets you in the clear because those made up most of the cards that had been pulled from (and subsequently recycled back on top of) the infection pile. I've had others where every disease was spreading around the globe and when we had to triage which cities we could keep from outbreaking on the next turn and which we couldn't, we ended up one step behind the cards. The game also allows you to step up the difficulty with more epidemic cards. It's barely possible for me and mine to win with the four that are in the easy mode, but the thought that it's even vaguely possible to win with six is exciting. Yes, it is random, but the best part about cooperative games is that you don’t really need to beat them; the goal to have a good time with friends is even more apparent than it normally is.
Cooperation – The ability to sit down with friends and have a fun time without someone mentioning how they could have won or how the winner just got lucky, or any of the bitter, sore-loser behavior that happens when people just play games wrong doesn’t apply so much in games like Pandemic. Sure, you do have overbearing people who want to run the whole game because they think they know what’s best, even if it means other people aren’t interacting, but instead just going through the motions the stronger characters in the game proscribe. Those people do exist and they will always exist and they will always suck, regardless. It’s like political systems; no system is going to eliminate dickheads, but some are better at eliminating dickheads than others.
Cons:
Personalities – But it still happens. The fact that Pandemic doesn’t give you recourse to smash the know-it-all’s face in via conflict is something I do miss. The best retaliation, in-game, is to just do whatever the hell you want and fuck the rest of the team. Maybe you’ll be lucky enough to cure something single handedly, but odds are pretty good you’re tanking the rest of the game. Not just for the know-it-all, but for everyone else as well.
Too Tight – Over half of the Pandemic games I’ve played have either won or lost by less than three turns. It’s to be commended for tight play, but at the harder difficulties, it seems like play choices would have to be so strictly regimented that there aren’t play options at all. Either that, or the effect of randomness is so high that decision-making is no longer a significant factor in victories. The easy level sometimes allows some players to make their own decisions and learn to play the game by making mistakes. Sometimes, it gives some free space to players who aren’t quite as committed; they can have a few wasted actions/turns without screwing up the game for everyone else. Sometimes. The rest of the times, if you give a new and/or partially engaged player free reign to do as they wish, your game is tanked. No big deal, but losing doesn’t always encourage those players to come back again.
Board Design – You know I’m scraping the bottom of the barrel when I mention that the board is kind of small. While the percentage of my peer group which owns a kitchen table increases steadily with time, most still do not have one, and the rest usually have it covered with crap (or babies, and my opinion on babies is well-known). We can use a smaller table, but it’s hard to fit all the blocks on the board, as many people like to do. Furthermore, the circles for the cities aren’t always on top of the cities they represent. Often, they’re offset with an indication of where the actual city is on the globe. This is understandable because it spreads out the cities that are still clumped confusingly close together (especially for players who aren’t paying that much attention). Again, it’s more of a nitpick with a legitimate design issue than a criticism, but Pandemic leaves so few flaws that it’s hard to really knock it on anything.
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