Developed by Dark Realm Studios, Pandemic 2 is the sequel to the morbidly fun original Pandemic, a game in which your goal is to eradicate the human race with the perfect disease. While the original game didn't go on to become hugely popular, Pandemic 2 is more an improvement upon its predecessor than a sequel, with an improved interface and more features. Judging by the game's growing success, the developers offered gamers a better package this time around; a sort of real-time strategy/simulation game in which you get to play God (or the Devil?), concocting the ultimate virus, bacteria or parasite to kill every last person on the planet.
In Pandemic 2, you're given the choice to create one of the three aforementioned diseases, each having its own inherent strengths and weaknesses. For example, a virus can evolve the fastest, has a bonus to infectivity, but can be most negatively affected by its environment. A parasite, on the other hand, evolves the slowest, but is least affected by the environment and has the lowest visibility. These are the three main traits of your disease; lethality, infectivity and visibility. The higher the lethality, the easier and faster it will claim victims. Infectivity represents its contagiousness, dependent on factors like how it's transmitted (rodents, insects, airborne, waterborne) and also symptoms like sneezing, coughing and more. Lastly, your disease's visibility should be as low as possible to prevent people from taking notice (and then taking action to contain it). Ingeniously, many of the same symptoms that help spread your disease like sneezing and coughing will also increase its visibility, as will other symptoms like dementia, vomiting and depression. Too much visibility and you'll be met with closed borders, grounded airplanes and even vaccines being developed, all of which are the enemy of any respectable disease.
Your interface is simple and effective. A map of the world is laid out before you, with a mini-map in the upper-left corner for quick navigation. Below the mini-map is a news feed, keeping you up-to-date on breaking world news. The world map represents the two dozen or so major world countries and areas that Pandemic 2 recognizes, with various symbols within them representing hospitals, airports, shipyards and water plants. Below the map are menu functions to access the main menu, world info, disease info and adjustable game speed (which can also be paused). Controls rely solely on mouse clicks. Also below the map you'll see your "evolution points," the currency of the game used to upgrade your disease. Evolution points are earned by both infecting and killing people, a number which accurately corresponds to real-world global and national populations.
Gameplay is rather simple once you get acquainted with user interface and game system, although it can all be a bit overwhelming if you try to just jump into it without watching the tutorials here or reading the handy game guide here. You'll want to at least watch the first video tutorial to get you on the right track. In a nutshell though, gameplay boils down choosing your disease and molding that disease into a fast-spreading, killing machine. Speed really is the key, because the goal of the game is to wipe out every last person on earth. The problem is that once your disease jumps from resembling a common cold to something more sinister, nations of the world begin taking steps to avoid infection. They close down airports and shipyards, close their borders and eventually begin enforcing marshal law and burning infected corpses. Essentially, it's a race against humanity to sneak in under the radar, infect every nation on the planet, and then become lethal enough to wipe everyone out.
Analysis: Although there have been similar "doomsday" sim games over the years, Pandemic 2 stands out as one of the best. The solid algorithms beneath the hood, as well as the entertaining-yet-realistic steps humanity takes to survive makes for an intriguing game concept. For example, one of humanity's lines of defense will be trying to develop a vaccine after a certain point, in which the clock will start to count down. Depending on various factors (like how many hospitals are still functioning, or how many points you've spent in making your disease resistant to drugs), your disease might meet its demise after X amount of days. On the other hand, humanity's vaccine might be unsuccessful, buying you time to beef up your lethality while it searches for another cure. You'll enjoy being the bad guy, while at the same time, empathizing with humanity as they desperately try to avert Armageddon.
Without question, the most enjoyable aspect of Pandemic 2 happens to be the only thing you can control; the disease itself. The evolution points you earn allow you to give your disease resistances, infecting methods and symptoms, the latter of which offers a morbid array of everything from sneezing to kidney failure to internal hemorrhaging. You even have the ability to remove a symptom that's undesirable if it mutates on its own, such as removing the "sweating" symptom so that the "fever" symptom is more lethal, since sweating cools the body down. Other than that, you mainly sit back and watch what happens. It's an interesting concept in gaming, perhaps even a bold move on the developer's part, considering the current socio-political climate surrounding bio-chemical attacks and the world's collective fear of a pandemic virus. But for all of you who couldn't care less and just want to play a mad bio-chemist for a day, try out Pandemic 2.
Cheers to Spector17, Yash, Eric, Kevin, Vault, Shawn and Patrick for suggesting this one! =)
While I can't deny that this game is massively entertaining, it is kind of stupid that even if my disease is 100% symptom free (no harmful effects whatsoever, all are sold) and has 0% visibility, countries will still close borders and airports to get rid of the disease. Plus, after a while without contact with other countries, wouldn't some have to open borders to get food or other supplies?
The game is fun, but a bit unrealistic and practically impossible to win. Especially trying to get that Madagascar. Madness will ensue when Madagascar closes it's single boat station before any other countries.
The moral of this game? Live in Madagascar, you'll always survive Armageddon. =P
I played this game for hours on end yesterday. I have come to the conclusion that people are a little too paranoid when it comes to a virus or partasite that does NOTHING. At all. (Maybe it will later, hehe.)
As for the matter of Madagascar, this comic (not made by me) explains it.
http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll100/CaptainFailcon/SHUTDOWNEVERYTHING.jpg
P.S. If it wasn't fixed overnight, robots run greenland--nothing wants to shut down.
MADAGASCAR
STUPID MADAGASCAR
WHY DO YOU SCORN ME
OH WHY?
:(
I was able to win by using a parasite, give no symptoms just put points into climates and methods of transmission until it spreads everywhere, then put all your points left into stuff that will kill.
Do you guys know that if you put Madagascar in your name you will start there? It worked for me.
its even worse if you start in madagascar... just try to get a disease to leave the island before they shut down!
I noticed they didn't mention what a pain it is to infect Madagascar.
Easy game. Just make sure you get all the transmissions done before anything. Once your Pandemic has gone to every country, that's when you raise the lethality of it, and kill everyone off. I liked the game, it was just a little slow at first, and I'm very impatient.
Another hilarious glitch is when you kill off everybody in Greenland, the hospital will manage to stay open.
ooo i feel so EVIL!!
this is a good game i like it!
What the!?
Apparently I'm a biohazard parasite that is now easily detected.
MADAGASCARRRRRR! >:[
I found this game pretty enjoyable. Just remember not to take it too seriously, it's just a game ;).
Seth's advice is the obvious strategy, but it doesn't really work. Even a symptomless supertransmisive panenvironmental parasite with the stealthy trait gets detected before spreading everywhere.
*sigh*
Any tricks that might help?
Anyone else find the UI very dark? I quit for a bit and came back before I figured out that there was a close button on the upper right corner of that "Hey watch the tutorial" window.
i'm just not enjoying this game. there doesn't seem to be anything to do except the obvious strategy, and that fails to get into the islands nine times out of ten.
a little more interactivity would be fun, or feed back on such if it is there and i'm just not seeing it.
Had spread everywhere and killing parasite, and 3359 days left for the vaccine... while they're trying to find a vaccine try buying some more symptoms to buy some more time.
I found that the obvious strategy is ineffective as others have found out as well. There is just too much luck involved with where the disease will actually end up.
As a person with a fondness for micromanaging RTS games I found this game pretty lackluster in its accomplishment. The graphics are virtually non-existent and only serve the purpose of visual indications of what's going on in each country (but even that is a subpar accomplishment.) I think it fell well short of being all it could have been.
Things I think would have improved the gameplay: instead of having to click on the WORLD button to see the progress on the vaccine or infected countries a couple bars on the main screen and a biohazard symbol on the infected countries.
When your endeavor is to make an RTS game the worst thing you can do is make it to where the decision making is not occurring in real-time. It's a continuity killer to do so and makes the game seem too 'staggering' (for lack of a better word.) Have the build options available from the main screen and don't have them pause the game.
There is also no way to at a glance see offhand the actual infection amounts. This information should be shown on the main screen instead of having to check each individual country.
I think I would have made the game completely different and gone with a less obnoxious music choice and added sounds for certain event. Wind for the hurricanes, people screaming and firing weapons during rioting for example. I would also have made it possible to evolve local strains in each of the countries for an added touch of depth and instead of using points to sell traits back I'd allow people to gain a fraction of their points back since having to purchase the loss of a trait is not only counter-intuitive it is also too much of a handicap.
2/5
I found the game awesome, with a few small problems. Won't keep me from playing the game over and over again though.
http://img158.imageshack.us/img158/6905/madagascarht5.gif
I think having water resistance II and water transmission freaks the countries out because it infects their water supplies. I'm not for sure but I'm trying it.
I have failed to infect Madagascar (of course), West Europe, and New Zealand. The vaccine is 167 days to completion, but I have drug resistance.
I had the same problem. The closest I got to winning was taking over every nation/continent except for one small island, which I think was Madagascar as well.
It was my strategy as well to pump up all resistances first, then add a few points into infectivity without raising visibility or lethality until the last possible moment, but it seems that no matter what, there was always at least one island nation that closed its airports and shipyards before I could infect it.
The developers do state in the game guide that winning will require a bit of luck. Perhaps in future versions the algorithms will be updated to allow easier infection of island nations, at least in relaxed mode.
Well shoot! I thought I'd start a second game, but when I clicked on the link to Pandemic 2, it opened on top of my existing game and I lost it.
HUMANITY OVERCOME.
Your disease has managed to exterminate humans off the face of the earth.
Started in South Africa as a bacterium; luckily managed to sneak into Madagascar on an infected ship before they shut down everything. From there, it was cake.
I must say though, this game could have been done a whole lot better. It really gets boring; there's nothing to do but sit around and gather evolution points, and hope/pray you spread to the right places fast enough.
fuzzyface,
Please submit game ideas through this link rather than posting them in an existing forum. Thanks!
http://jayisgames.com/game-submit/
I named my epidemic "Republicans" tee hee
Where they able to set feet on madagascar? :)
Success!
Looks like keeping the resistances no more than level II, and sticking to zero symptoms and only rodent and insect transmission, I was able to sneak it to most countries before anyone figured anything out. I got Madagascar finally!
This was casual mode. I'll try harder tomorrow.
I just got the most awesome thing! my disease had a vaccine made, so I bought a new symptom. deployment finished, and I got a notice saying that my virus was mutated to be resistant to all vaccines! I had level three of all resistances if anyone wants to try to reproduce it....
This game is as unrealistic as it gets...
First: A small country like Madagascar would have little-no resources in the event of a wide spread pandemic, and with insect and rat transmission, they couldn't leave the island without becoming infected themselves.
Second: The probability of a small lifeform such as these evolving the same way at the exact same time continets away is so unlikely that it cannot be expressed in numbers...
Third: There are more than 24 hospitals in the world.
Fourth: Insects and rats can travel on their own or attached to avial animals that migrate, thus providing them a journey to a small country that houses migratory animals such as Madagascar.
Fifth: I don't know but 5 seems more rounded than 4.
I find it humorous that my disease had only sneezing, and no deaths, yet the entire world shut down because a of a few countries where everyone was sneezing.
Thought of a fifth: Diseases with no symptoms cannot be found easily unless a bloodwork is done weeks after catching it.
sorry for the extra post but: Madagascar has no borders to close and where are the scientists in Antartica
All my ship ports closed while one boat was in transit and for 300+ game days I watched it float around the ocean being like "where did all the ports go?"
Didn't really see the relevance of the natural disasters.
this game frustrated me, but let me tell you, once you get Madagascar, it's like heaven!
it's the best high ever seeing those boats fork off right into that stupid country.
Is there any way to win made and distributed?
my strategy was to open about 10 different tabs with the game going and only focus on one or two at a time.
eventually, I found the other games transmit the disease more stealthfully and quickly than if I'm actually attempting stealth and speed. haha
I played as a parasite in every case. when you ignore the games a bit, the points REALLY rack up and it really is low visibility.
[I also got Greenland to FINALLY close their hospital and now the vaccine will take "infinity" days to complete.]
http://img524.imageshack.us/img524/3896/yessssap3.jpg
having said all that, I think the game is extremely luck-based.
so sorry for the multiple posts!
again, I'm so sorry about the mulitple posts but here's information on the natural disasters
copy/pasted from the "guide":
Earthquakes greatly reduce the effectiveness of hospitals in the region.
Floods temporarily boost exposure to your disease if your disease is able to spread via water.
Hurricanes temporarily close airports due to high winds. Also temporarily closes schools and transit.
Droughts increase insect population, and boosts exposure to your disease if it is spreadable by insects.
Riots negate the effects of curfews.
I remember the original fondly. Given that that version was winnable without incredible luck and the countries seemed to react slightly more logically to symptoms, I don't think this is much of an improvement.
Strategy that worked well for me was
Having the resistances at 1/1/1/2 (from the left), being a parasite, selling any symptoms that you get at the start, and buying airborne
wait til all countries are infected, and use alllll those points you've worked up in the meantime to buy some various deadly diseases. Joy ensues.
I like the way ships buzz around aimlessly like flies once all the ports are closed.
For your enjoyment:
Last man standing
The Fate of Madagascar
k, just infected people in all of Africa. I'm a parasite named "Madmen-run-away-from-you. jeeze, you'd think they'd like a disease that makes them crazy person free.
OK, my disease just traveled to China and my starting place (South Africa) turned regular brown.
so many updates! i'll stop them NOW!
I like how countries start to burn the bodies of the infected when my 0% lethal parasite has yet to kill anyone.
Here's something funny. while people were closing seaports, a ship was sailing! so now, it's lost in the Atlantic Ocean!
If you are a human, if you can make it in New York you can make it anywhere.
If you are a small entity bent upon the destruction of mankind, if you can make it to Madagascar, you can make it anywhere.
Grr! I made an awesome parasite. It infected everything. I saw everything fading into red. When I checked the world menu, I saw pretty much everything in the infected list.
Except.
Madagascar.
So I rushed to capture Madagascar. I upped everything: heat resistance, cold resistance, moisture, but no ship dared enter Madagascar. A few days later, Madagascar closed its harbor.
When it's time for the pathogenic apocalypse bent on destroying the world, I will know, and so shall all of you, to move to Madagascar. Only the strong will survive. Or those who played Pandemic II.
YAY! the only country (not counting the four cleaned islands: Madagascar, (sounds like they need my disease) Cuba, Japan, and New Zealand) that's not dead is China. though, I want It to die!
I think the main issue is while it says Madagascar has airports, it quite obviously doesn't. No planes land there, which makes infecting it that much harder. Those cute little boats just never go there enough!
i really don't think this deserved a review. It claims to be realisistic but it just isn't. it ignores so many of the rules of evolution, infection, virulence, and priority. no government on earth (and certainly no collaboration of governments) would spend money to create and distribute a vaccine for a virus, bacteria, or parasite that does not cause the slightest bit of damage to its host. And it gives you evolution points based on time passed, not people infected, which is how the three really evolve. The governments are incredibly good at response to the problem...something that I doubt could ever happen. The vaccine is also deployed to everyone on earth...how? And last, but not least, and certainly not the actual last of its problems, there are so few ways in which the virus/bacteria/parasite is spread. This game makes no sense, and the lack of control the player has over anything makes it a massive failure in my book.
it really seems like the popularity of this game earned it this review rather than the quality.
I find the instant reaction to disease changes ludicrous. I was having some slowing of transmission, so I added in rats. Immediately all infected nations began exterminating rats. Hel-LO? it TAKES a few days for dead ones to appear and people to catch on that they are a transmission vector!
Also, every nation in the WORLD closes EVERYthing the moment one person in Indonesia drops dead. Seriously, what gives?
i think it's best to just start with symptoms(dont change them) and don't add transmission and up resistance after it's uped to category2-3. use airborne and waterborne to spread like wild fire. But it didn't matter for me; i started in madagascar. Ha!
I was looking forward to this new release but it seriously falls short of a good game. Some points of criticism:
1. Luck seems to be the over-riding factor in winning, the Madagascar problem.
2. There is only one strategy to this game, have no visibility at the start and increase deadliness only when ALL countries are infected ie Boring. I would like to try a strategy of low infectivity but high mortality but it just can't work with these mechanics.
3. As soon as an uninfected country closes its borders you might as well restart. There is nothing your can do get them to reopen, whereas selling symptoms to reduce visibility to get people to relax would seem an obvious tactic that people should be allowed to try.
4. Visually: comma delimit the numbers so they're easier to read. Round of the infections per day number.
5. Transmission and resistance have no effect on infectivity bar (only symptoms) although it obviously does.
6. Increasing drug resistance doesn't overcome a successfully deployed vaccine, another example of logical strategy not employed in this game.
7. The game is still too slow even on the fastest speed. There is not much button clicking needed in this game so a lot of time is spent just waiting for points to accumulate so they can be spent.
This game has a lot of potential to be really fun and engaging, I just think it needs a lot more refinement.
Well, played this a few days back. It honestly took about 9 different games to win, and just boils down to restarting once Madagascar loses over and over, until you get in.
My disease "Reganomics" successfully infected and destroyed every country in the world, except Australia. Guess the Aussies have safeguards against the trickle-down effect. :p
I love how zero people can be dead of your disease, and the government will start burning bodies to 'help prevent infection'. This is extremely disturbing when 100% of the population is already infected. Wait...so they're burning people alive then? Doesn't that make them dead? How come *I* don't get credit for this??
I must be in the minority though. The three times I've played it, Madagascar never really posed a problem..
This game has the potential to be really good if some logical problems were addressed. It's especially impressive when compared to its rather shallow predecessor. I look forward to Pandemic 3.
I wonder if the Madagascar problem isn't caused by the map itself. That is, most of the shipping seems to take place in the "middle" (the Atlantic), while very few ships ply the "edges" (Pacific/Indian Ocean).
I was only able to win when I started in Madagascar (with a disease appropriately entitled "Madagascar Madness"). I used the high-resistance/high-transmission/no symptom strategy mentioned several times here and managed to infect most of the world before scientists finally developed and deployed a vaccine. Fortunately, I had started out with the "mutator" trait, the vaccine failed, and that was pretty much it. (Still, I almost felt sorry for the scientists--fewer than 200,000 uninfected and they finally develop a vaccine... and it doesn't work. Talk about a bad day.)
For a while I only had fever and cysts as symptoms, and nobody died. Then I added pulmonary edema and people started dropping like flies. It was scary how fast the dead count started to rise. I eventually added insanity and encephalitis (it is a "madness," after all), but they didn't seem to increase the death rate. Maybe there just weren't enough people left alive by that point.
Well, I beat it. Started in Madagascar and managed to get the Stealth trait, so it spread all over the globe -- I had a number of nations at 100% infection before the border closings started, and silly Greenland stayed open long after the carnage began. Now that I've killed everyone, I won't have to play any more.
Immortal_Z's strategy modified using rats & insects instead of airborne worked well for me. Apparently the key is that for some complete nonsense reason, resistances make your disease more noticeable so if you don't upgrade much of anything, you can sneak into Madagascar, it just takes patience.
i have a boat going in circles in the atlantic. must've been uninformed of the whole thing. "OH NOES THE WORLD BE DYING LET'S STAY ON OUR BOAT FOR YEARS AND SURVIVE!"
next on the list after all infected die, start over, make it super-transmittable, then kill them all!
Playing this game, I'm kind of surprised it's so divisive; a lot of people here (and on Kongregate, where I played it) seem put off by the lack of realism, which is the oddest thing. As a community of gamers (both JiG and Kongregate), I'd have thought we'd have all realised extreme realism is not the key to a great game. Sure, the "realism" mode ought to remain true to its word, but that's a difficulty setting, not a promise of things to come. If you want realism, go fire up your Xbox and play Call of Duty; if you just want a fun game to kill an hour or two, play a casual flash game. Make sense?
As for the game, I enjoyed it, but there really isn't a lot of depth. There may be things like world disasters, and closing amenities, and the like to account for, that you can have oodles of fun adapting your disease to counteract, but in the end, there only seems to be one strategy that will guarantee a win (and even that won't work every time): infect the world while symptomless, then bump up the lethality. Assuming you can sneak up on Madagascar, that almost guarantees a win, and is the only strategy I've found that works so far.
There are a few issues with the interface too (this part is only my opinion). The alive/infected/dead stats for each country could do with being visible without having to click into an extra screen. Ditto the vaccination progress.
I didn't find myself wanting a faster game speed, like a few people I've seen commenting here and there. I've complete the realism mode three times, all in near or around half an hour, and that was fine. But maybe I got lucky, and some people are spending hours on this thing.
The only thing I don't understand is how points are awarded. Having killed everyone in the world, the only apparent variable that matters at the end of the world, my score is still a good 12,000 short of everyone else on the leaderboard. The only thing I can think of that would have increased my score is perhaps holding off killing everyone as long as possible while I max out my disease's stats, but that seems counter-intuitive. Completion time seems like a more effective way of awarding points, but that didn't seem to make a difference.
Whatever. I quite enjoyed this game — and it's not the sort of thing I'd usually play — but it doesn't offer much replayability (until I figure out how to get a higher score).
I thought the game was pretty neat at first. Then I realized that it's still the same exact gameplay from the first one only now it takes 10 times as long to accomplish anything.
Keep visibility low, ramp up resistances, infect the world, add symptoms. Bingo, Bango, you're done. Sometimes you exterminate the human race, and sometimes Japan or some other island nation remains healthy. That's it. Finito. There's no real strategy.
What bugged me was that the lack of realism made the game too simple. (not that the game ever could be totally realistic.)
In reality, each mutation of the virus would have to spread from its mutation point. The game would be more fun if the evolution points encouraged types of mutation that would randomly evolve in different places and would have to re-spread.
Still, I enjoyed it for a couple of hours until I killed everyone. Although, when I did, I scored less than when I missed Madagascar but set the lethality up earlier.
If you'd prefer a version of Pandemic that's faster, more logical (not more realistic, more logical and easier to predict and thus easier to actually play), has a better interface, music (especially the music), and just all around BETTER game, go play Pandemic: End of Man instead. Same tactic of high infectivity/low death is necessary for victory, but at least the game is better.
what i dont get is why do countries begin burning bodies when i havent killed anyone.
unless they burn infected people alive (which would be a great way to contain the outbreak )
hmm i think this game could be way better just by simply adding some symptoms or transmissions that are only available to one class like parasites beeing transmitted through food like pork
I beat it twice, first as a parasite (which happened the first time I played as parasite), and then as a virus.
It seems that the key to winning is to turn the game into as boring a thing as possible. Sell any symptoms you happen to start with, and buy level 1 or 2 drug resistance, and *nothing else* and then sit back and wait, and hope that you spread to every country before things go nuts. Keep an eye on the game to see if something is completely shut off (Like if Madagascar closes its ports, or Peru closes its borders, might as well restart).
Once you've reached every country, you are pretty much unstoppable, save accidentally getting hit with a vaccine, but that shouldn't happen. By this point, you'll have lots of DNA points, so buy all the resistances you can, and the 4 transmission vectors, and if you have any more points, you can even get some symptoms. The vaccine should be delayed to hundreds of days, much longer than it will take to finish spreading to the rest of the population and develop some deadly symptoms to wipe everyone out.
I have just infected 6 billion of the worlds population with
Depression
but those lucky folks in Madagascar, Cuba and Japan saw it coming early and closed their borders, so no happy pills for them.
Jay, you should add the link for Kongregate: Pandemic 2 on Kongregate
i suspect this game of being created by pro-Madagascans as a way of making the world care about their country.
Actually, the current bane of my existence is Peru -- no airports or shipyards, and stubbornly green despite the millions of deaths in Brazil, Argentina, Cuba, and Mexico.
I agree that the game is not overly realistic, nor overly exciting when things start to slow down a bit -- after the rapid-fire news bulletins cease, you're just waiting to build up some more evolution points before anything can continue. I think a cool way to increase the realism would be to have the natural disasters affect the disease and the country's resistance. For example, if your disease is water-bourne, a drought would slow the spread.
In my favorite round, Greenland was wiped out first, and I had two lost ships bumping around the Atlantic like pinballs, even though Greenland's shipyards were supposedly open.
This game presents an odd sort of personal challenge for me. I found this playing Pandemic I as well as Pandemic II, but try as I might, I simply cannot bring myself to kill off the world's population. In all that downtime while waiting for points, I start dreaming up stories for the world I'm playing in. I start writing the fictional tales of scientists driven mad is pursuit of a cure, I start thinking about every mother and wife who will have to lose someone they love to the disease. And then I just can't follow through with it...does this even happen to anyone else?
Also, I named my disease "The Super-Happy-Awesome Plague," which just barely fit the character limit, I was quite pleased with myself!
I infected the entire world before I quit, but no deaths, I spent all my points on resistance...
And I started on Madagascar! Take that, lemurs!
That's it... I'm moving to madagascar...
Apparently people don't get sick there...
I'm troubled that it's forgotten how rats can swim. Or that insects can fly up to 3000 feet up.
Hilariously I started in Australia, and not only did NZ hold out, with 100% infection Aussie was dead last to close airports and shipyards.
Maybe they hate Australia and love Madagascar?
I really tried hard with various strategies, no go!
Well I wrote a lot, so I'll use spoilers to not clud your screen.
My playing experience:
I tried to even make the sickness hardly infectious so to have a stable size of sick population, that can go around the world. The basic idea was on the beginning buy cists which are infectious so increase the start population of sick, when I reched 10.000 sick, I sold it again. Didn't buy anything else but 1 drug resistance. However only that small degree to much on growth and it was a very slightly growing population. I played over 2 hours with this close to stable population, but the numbers where slowly rising, and what happens. Boom! Madagaskar closes seaport, Peru closes borders. Argh. If there is a winning strategy I really don't get it. Also I beleive its true what one poster here said, the ships don't go even roughly even, in my case most of the time they swimmed through atlantik, hardly any ships in the pacific at all. I tried much to give a go on this challenge, but I resign. Other try, be a little infectious and a little lethal, don't care about visiblity, as the numbers a very small: Start in west-europe. 33 sickness total, no additional infectioness/resistances at all, symptoms: Fever and Vomiting (this is roughly the influenza!) What does europe, close its public transport! Argh! I mean really? 33 people sick on an influence similar sickness, and you close down all public transport in europe?? redicolous
My rent about the advertisments being so close to the game window, so they get clicked by accident:
Also a real pain is the google ad rightly down of the game, more than once I clicked on the advertisment instead of the game, the game closes at goes to the new page! ARGH! Either they were just ignorant/stupid to notice this, or if I'm less friendly I say they did in on purpose because ad clicking is more worth than me having fun on the game.
Wondering about the message behind the game
I don't know what the game wants us to teach. Maybe the dangers of public transports? Or the traits of various sickness? Just be as fun as possible? or it just wants to be popular?
Reflections about infections:
It makes me think about various strategies infections can take, and what makes a sucessfull infection. Since infections don't want to be noticed so the infected not be socially excluded. Infections want to spread, however actually the "goal" of an infection is live, not to kill its hosts. In this game is complety wrong. I mean when all hosts die the infection dies itself too, and "loses" in the game of life. An infection that is so deadly it kills its hosts so fast can not be sucessfull. Thats why ebola fails on humans. So what is the most successfull infection on humans? chill is! Everywhere, hardly paid much attention to, doesn't affect its hosts too much, except what it needs to spread. Well okay, an infection wants you to survive, and even want you to be able to raise children, so it has new hosts. However after that it doesn't care if it kills you by accident or not, or uses your death to spread.
Wondering about how&what the coders did/intenioned:
In regard of this game, I believe either there is some messagae there what I fail to see (so when it failed to bring it over), or the coders failed to play their game themselves at end to check if its really funny. Also it seems a bit bad researched for me, especially as it wants to be realistic. If you e.g. are a bacteria, some symptoms still say "allows you virus to".. Its not a virus, its a bacteria! Also I wonder if there is any "airborness" at all. At least I don't know of it. Fungi can spread with spores over air, but I don't know of any infection that does not require any contact at least with any liquid (and this can in the worst case be drop from caughing flying over 10 meters, and be able to survive there for months) but over air and breath? At least impossible to any sickness known to humanity.. err sorry known to fuzzyface :-) Maybe I'm wrong.
Why do some people like the game after all?
I guess at last all what the game really caters is this little evil devil residing in us, that says, oh yes lets kill all of humanity! har har har! I don't know if this game has much more to offer.
Suggestions about a better game with similar theme:
I think it would be far funnier if the roles were turned around, that is you are a "world central office for pandemics" with incredible power to shutdown countries etc., and you'd need to fight that pandemic. Of course you don't know where the pandemic starts or it will be very easy. You get hints, about abnormal symptoms, but which can be wrong too and just "normal" sicknesses. Closing borders/airports/traffic etc. makes a country unlucky, and produce less dollars you can invest into cure of a disease. Countries being locked down too long without obvious reason to their population will riot, making people ignoring your safity banns. Worst case country goes out of your contorl and reopens its borders etc. and giving you no money at all, until it sees a good reason to come back.
The idea that "closing the borders" will somehow 100% effectively block all transmission of a disease from one country to another is kind of ridiculous. Riots should affect whether closing the borders will stop the spread. And even if the borders are closed, can't rats and insects sneak past? And how can poorer countries like Brazil have some impenetrable anti-rat/insect walls when half their borders are covered in wild jungle?
The routes of ships make absolutely no sense. I was staring at ships hoping they'd go to Madagascar, but not only would they not go to Madagascar, they wouldn't go -anywhere-. One ship weaved in and out of the Indian Sea, then spontaneously decided to go for a trip all the way across the Arctic Sea above Russia, before going for a few victory laps around the Americas. It eventually stopped in Argentina. Why would ANY ship, even the most ridiculous pleasure cruise or around-the-world racer, skip every single nearby port, and then travel in circles in the Pacific before finally docking? None of the shipyards were closed. The ship AI is just completely ridiculous. The routes of ships should be governed, at the very least, by proximity. I should expect Madagascar ships to often travel to South Africa.
In addition, sometimes a ship wouldn't come out of a country for 100 days. I can understand smaller countries not trading that much, but not a single ship ever leaving a country for over 3 months with absolutely nobody in the world noticing the disease? That's not "unrealistic fun gaming", that's just stupid.
The game doesn't have to be OMG SO REALISTIC (for instance, the generalizing of completely diverse countries into larger regions like "North Africa" is fine by me), but it has to at least make sense within itself. It's trying to go for this realistic feel with the music and world map look, so if it wants to achieve that effect it really needs to bump up the logic.
And hanging the ability to just bare-bones win completely on random luck is just plain unsatisfying and the exact opposite of my idea of "casual gaming". For hardcore players, competing to kill the world in the least amount of time would be great- you'll notice in these comments you can't even FINISH the game without random luck.
I'd look forward to a Pandemic 3 that has a lot more thought put into it. It feels like they didn't even test play this game. Unless they think barely being able to win without luck makes for a great game design.
JIGuest, exactly. I wonder if this game would be removed its "narrative theme of destroying humanity", if it would be any fun at all. If it was about "yellow dots", conquering through setable traits a "fantasy world" of blue dots. And when the blue dots became yellow after a while, they become green and inactive. Goal: Make the whole world green. (In core it's still the same game) I hardly think in this setup-up but the same core-mechanics, it would even have come close to being featured....
damn you greenland!
madagascar wasn't a problem at all
The most effective strategy:
Cross your fingers.
No, i don't agree. There IS a very good strategy to win, but not so obvious:
Do NOTHING for the first 30 days, do NOT buy ANYTHING except level 1 resistances, even when vaccine starts developing. The borders are still open despite of range of pandemia.
BTW: I am the only one to whom this game reminds old 8-bit AgentUSA? That was a game from which the authors of Pandemia could learn a lot...
This is a fun game, but overall I'm going to have to give it a grade of C.
For CRIPPLED.
If a single uninfected country closes its borders it is IMPOSSIBLE TO WIN THE GAME. This would be fine if it wasn't so stupidly easy to get a country to close its borders. There is no reason that it should be possible to lose all hope so quickly.
I managed to infect a large amount of the world with a disease that does NOTHING and is literally UNDETECTABLE (according to the extremely misleading bars on the Disease page). And yet, oh dear, Peru just closed its borders! There's no way I can win!
Frustrating. Horribly, horribly frustrating.
THE KEY TO BEAT IT
Go in as the one furthest to the right... the one that isn't as visible. Do up 2 but no more for heat, cold, moisture, and drugs. Only use insects and rodents, and remove all symptoms. As soon as the vaccine gets completed and they begin deployment, get the worse symptom possible, if not all places are contaminated, than make sure it isn't too noticeable (i used pulmonary). Then, if it works like i did for me, it will say that your disease has mutated and they cant make a vaccine for it. Once every country has it, do water and air transmission, and just make the virus go wild... GAME OVER.
AND typing Madagascar as a name does not put you in Madagascar...
I definitely disagree with people who say that the game should be more realistic. I'd rather have fun than realism.
Unfortunately, the game isn't fun, and is not balanced at all. The problem is that once the borders close, the game might as well be over. The sad part is, there is the germ of a fun game here (haha a germ get it?), just some really bad decisions have prevented it from being something more than just an exercise in frustration.
Here would be a real simple way to make this game more fun. In the game I just played I managed to infect all of North and South America, except for the United States. You're telling me that with the huge borders between Mexico and Canada, that in the event of a world epidemic no people managed to sneak into the country? Not only that, other people brought up the fact that closing the borders is not going to stop rats and insects from crossing the borders.
Closing the borders should merely reduce the chances of transmission from one country to another, not stop it completely. Also, for island countries closing off the ports should reduce the chances of transmission, but there should still be the chance (even a remote chance) of insects being blown through the jet stream or something like that.
Maybe in the end that would make the game too easy, but I'd rather have a too easy game than one that requires a lot of work for what eventually ends up being luck of the draw.
stupid madagascar ! and new zealand ! ugh !!!! >:[
There Were Only 103,868 people left that weren't infected by the disease ! >:( this is maddening ! i've played this game millions of times and i've never gotten madagascar. i did once and because of it i did not get middle east! this game is extremely maddening. >:( i want to quit but i don't cause i want to win. the want to win is overwhelming! help me! i must get madagascar and new zealand ! >:) Muahahahahahaha.;)
I'm surprised Madagascar wasn't mentioned in the review. Heh. People over at Kongregate were complaining about it non-stop the other day. @_@ Myself included. Still haven't gotten it!
Darn you, Madagascar! Foiled me once again...
Well guys, here is how I ruled the world in 499 days. Virus name: "Wrath of Nathan" and start in Cuba.
Started in Cuba as a parasite (started with the durable, parasite, and harmless traits). Sole the symptom I started with, and got level 1 in all resistances. Waited about 30 days, added drug 2 and rodent. Waited until it showed up in a different country and added insect. By day 67 of letting this sit I had the entire world infected. At this point I bought up to tier 4. Started with only Blindness when I unlocked everything. Added vomiting, nausea, dementia, and encephalitis. Then as the cure got closer to being created, I added drug 3, and that increased the time to completion. Hospitals shut down before the cure came. I had 100% population infected and people started to drop like flies. The longest part was waiting for everyone to die... Started to slow down as populations dwindled. When it got to only 20k people, it went painfully slow, but I refused to buy any more symptoms to try to kill them off faster... STUPID harmless trait.
Game ended on day 499 with 133 points unspent. Had the added traits of Bloody Vomit, Apocalyptic, and Head Popper added to the original 3.
Gah.
With no symptoms you somehow get noticed, even when it says visibility is 0.
Furthermore, they are "burning bodies" when my death count is zero.
The annoying part about that, is that it was zero when I had pretty much all the most deadly diseases.
Let me express to the author, that this game was an interesting play. I hope s/he will take this as constructive criticism.
Interface:
Change the countries to color to black as more people die off. Seeing a country completely red doesn't tell me how many people are still alive there.
Give the regions a biohazard symbol once they have been infected. When regions have 12 people infected but are still totally green, I have to go check another screen to find out if they are infected yet.
Make flights and ships red if they carry infected passengers.
Gameplay:
As others have said, far too much is left to chance. There needs to be methods by which you can spend points to forceably move across borders and infect other regions. This should cost evolution points, and become more expensive as countries close borders, hospitals, etc.
Evolution points should be given based upon the number of infected people, the number of dead people, and the number of infected regions of the world. A small number of points should be accumulating as time goes on so they player can continue to make changes to stay alive.
Transmission vectors should affect the level of infectiousness bar.
OMG!!!
I finally got into all of the countries and suddenly, they started making a vaccine. I was like "OH-NOEZ" and starting making it as infectious as possible.
Then the Vaccine was finished and I was like: "OHH-NOOOEZ!!!" and it started deploying (The only hospital left was in Greenland, and the vaccine finished with everyone in the country dead... ?)
When I was finnally finished deploying I was like: "SUPER OHH-NOOEZ!!!!" and checked how many people I had not infected...
The grand total of non-infected people (vaccinated) was:
1
And I couldn't beat the game cause you had to kill everyone.
Even though 1 person couln't reprouduce (with a human) and is better cause they would have to go through life as the last person.
I think there should be a natural death rate in which x ammount of people die during natural disasters and old age. So even if you can't get Madagascar and Japan (a problem area for me), It still can be killed by a Tsunami......... or Godzilla.
2 non-visible and leathal traits: Fever and Kidney Failure
There apparently is a small chance that areas can be infected after they close their borders/shipyards/airports -- in my last game, the disease traveled to Madagascar even though they had closed all three.
Of course, the same can't be said for Argentina, so my excitement at seeing the disease hit Madagascar was short-lived. Why rodents and insects couldn't cross from infected Peru or Brazil into Argentina (who weren't killing anything) bothers me.
It just must be a very very tiny chance that this happens once an area goes into isolation, that's all.
Otherwise a fun diversion, but frustrating that so much appears to depend on luck. Oh well.
squawky, I think on many things there is a lag in the game, that means things happen before you can see them.
Especially with boats, I've seen boats going into recently closed harbors! I think it works if it was open when to boat left its last harbor.
But at first I considered it a challenge, but now its only frustration, so it needs to stop. And yes I tried the other "strategies" above this post since my last, all failed. Its really just 95% luck people, don't feel smart if you were just lucky, just try to do it a second time you will see how you will fail with the same strategy.
My GOD! Ive tried with the stealth and patient tactics 3 times and STILL i havnt got madagascar. No symptoms, NO transmission just a parasite with lvl 1 of all resistances..
Visability 0, all of the world infected(except madagascar), and the paranoid bastards close their crappy harbour!!! I even saw a ship coming in from an infected region but without infecting the stout madagascar ppl. GAAAAAH!
Well, if i hear someone coughing, ill move to madagascar. Apparantly its safer there..
I left the game on (by accident) for 7 hours unattended
with no symptoms and only level one resistances and not being transmitted by air or water as some people suggest
on casual game mode no less and still Madagascar was uninfected. Everywhere else was infected, but for some odd reason not Madagascar. The author really needs to do an update and make it possible to infect that island!
Well, I think I did well. So far I have only three regions that have not suffered from my evil Bacteria!
Blargh! I'm not even going to talk about the game itself.
My problem is that of the SITE'S design. Why the bloody heck did they stick advertising banners right next to the game window? I misclicked (hitting the banner), and instead of opening a NEW window, it changed the current window, destroying all of my progress.
I like the game, but I found it stressful, because obviously Madagascar is impossible to infect. It really just takes pure luck and no strategy. :(
This game has the potential to work well as one of those you leave on in the background, while you do something else, because it takes so much time and patience, and there really isn't very much for the player to do - it only needs some special sound effects to alert you to when something important happens: splashing sounds for floods, or warning tones for vaccine development, etc etc for new countries infected and borders/shipyards closing, first death. That, plus perhaps making borders/shipyards re-openable after they close (so that Madagascar can't outwit me as it has in the 6 times I've tried so far!), would have made this a fantastic game in my book.
But for a more interactive experience, it doesn't come close to being passable. There's just too much waiting, and too much luck, as most people have pointed out. I'd have loved to be able to control evolution of my virus in EACH country it infected, which would also be more realistic as well as tonnes more fun; I wish I could select or prioritise which country I wanted to infect next.
And I also wish the "Disease" and "World" windows wouldn't blot out and pause the game. Real time is SO important to me.
But lots of potential. If there are any major updates, I'll definitely be checking them out...
I found a good approach
is set up a simple disease maybe just a fever sympton with all transmissinos and a few resistances then leave it for 10-15 mins (go make a sandwich)come back and you'll have loads of evolution points to spend and start being evil with as most countries are infected. however, unless you start in MADAGASCAR it results in every nation/continent devoid of life except Madagascar.
[Edit: Spoiler added ~ Kayleigh]
Madagasca is so hard to infect!!! Is it because it only has 1 ship yard && no water supply? I think so! Please tell me how to infect it other than from the insane luck that a ship transferres the infection!!! :D
Taz x
Madagascar is stupid!
http://jayisgames.com/images/hs_pam_pandemic2_madagascar.jpg
ive played this game so many times & i finally won it by making sure the disease started in madagascar. I also used bacteria. Dont even bother with the drug resistances just wasting your evolution points.
o my god, funny!!! and so tru
http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll100/CaptainFailcon/SHUTDOWNEVERYTHING.jpg
I agree with Vault
love the game. playing right now. once infected all countries except magagascar. but that was yesterday.
WINNING Pandemic 2:
OK maybe I just got lucky but on the 11th try it looks like I'm going to eventually win the game.
I started thinking "OK if this were real how would it really happen?"
Started as a bacteria (because it's not so infectious and would be low getting attention). Started out in Australia. Didn't do anything with the points for a long long time just monitored the infection rate. Eventually just added rodents and that was it, it spread slowly and had a very long incubation rate in the countries it spread to. Next came the other transmission types, just one at a time, airborne, insect and waterborne. Then just added a little resistance in all sectors just to tier 2. Then to get into the final 3 (Argentina, Peru and Madagascar) added coughing and sneezing, jacked heat to the max then more symptoms which help spread it.
Currently 1) everyone in the world is infected 2) 195 days have passed 3) all hospitals are down, i.e. no vaccine will ever be completed 4) 631M dead 5) Resistance is Cold 2, Heat 4, Drug 2 and Moisture 2 6) Ataxia is the only tier 3 symptom
I just bought lvl 1 in all resistances, i have no symptoms i am a parasite and that is my stratagy. I just leave the game like that for about a half an hour then i go back and increase infectivity.
Hi, i tried many variations and finally did best with stealthmode. All hospitals were closed before they came up with the vaccine. I was able to infect everyone in the whole map in about 35-37 days. Getting them killed was a bit harder since they cut out every single connection to the rest of the world. They reacted incredibly fast to my little present, even though at the start there were no sympthoms. It is pretty irritating to follow the destruction. This is because those countries just coulnt afford not to open borders etc again. Complete shutdown cannot be reached in real world. People need food and water to live and to get water and food you need to produce them or open borders.
Swine flu
Virus
Symptoms: fever, fatigue ...
Started in Mexico.
Arrived in USA.
Mexico has cancelled public events.
Mexico has closed schools to protect children.
Mexico is handing out masks.
68 people dead in Mexico.
Over 1000 infected in Mexico.
8 infected in USA.
Could someone create a fake screenshot?
HAHAHA infected everywhere and greenland gave up hope! Didnt close anything other than transit while everyone was infected :P
So as you may have noticed, the score is calculated by dividing people killed by days elapsed - killing everyone is irrelevant. I just got spot #41 on the high score by playing incredibly stupid (on relaxed); I put all my EPs into symptoms, completely disregarding visibility, resistance, or transmission. Of course, there were a few countries that shut down their borders before I could get in, but the disease moved and killed so fast that I wiped out 5.7 billion people in 70 or so game days.
This game isn't particular realistic even on the realistic setting. I had difficulty with Madagascar too for the first several games.
Here's the one method for winning.
Sell off symptoms to minimize visibility.
Get one or two resistances to drugs.
Get Airborne to spread the disease.
Let the disease spread and sandbag points.
Once it spreads to all the island nations, buy more infection methods and resistances.
Once you have Drug resistance IV, start buying the most lethal symptoms. It should then spread to every nation. I won this way but still ended up with a low score. I don't think it's scoring method is accurate.
I think it would be better to have a game about stopping an outbreak of disease.
[Edit- Hey, Matt. Thanks for the pointers. I'll have to give this a try because I, like so many others, have been utterly and completely perplexed by madagascar. But please, try to remember to use spoiler tags in the future, okay? Great tips. -Kyle]
It's not so hard. I killed the world in about 48 days on relaxed mode. Though I only get about 270k points for it. Still have no idea how to get 330k plus to get on the highscore list.
Start as a virus on an island nation preferably New Zealand.
Only get sneezing and 1 resist in Cold, Heat, and Moisture.
Sit back and watch as the world gets infected within 20 or so days.
Once they start a vaccine or your infected all countries just pump up drug resist and moisture 2 then grab Waterborne.
Then just grab all the symptoms you want.
Win.
I'm in Fort Worth, Texas,
and our school district is closed due to Swine Flu.
Our assignment from our Computer Applications teacher was to play pandemic and reach Madagscar before our return on May 11th.
It is one of the most pain staking assignments EVER.
Well, I made the disease called the swine flu, and what do you know. It starts up in Madagascar. Had to wait a few weeks for it to finally ship something out to east Europe and it hit the fan from there.
Got everything besides Peru and Australia.
on my 6TH TRY! i infected every region including Madagascar! i then uped all of the really deadly symptoms (like heart failure and ensepholytis ) as well as sneezing and coughing to spead it. and ended up killing off the entire population of humans, but for some reason i only got 98K points:(
Imagine if you could actually zoom in to see what you have done to the people so you actually see the streets the house and so on. Or if you are the person who has the deisease and it was up to you to spread it.
That would make it a bit more relistic!
(and you got points faster)
go with virus, buy first two drug resistances with sneezing. it will spread like a wild fire and if you get lucky youll get all the countries, then buy things like vomiting diarrhea, kidney/heart failure, and hemorrhaging and youll win. it feels good to win.
so far got china in a strangle hold with all of 8 infections and rodents and fever
I started off in Peru and i had and was:
I was Parasite, with durable and parasite traits and i bought level 1 of all the resistances (except level 2 for drug) then i bought fever and unlocked all the symptom tiers but sold anything else I was given with them.
Then I waited for 63 games days and the disease had spread around everywhere (including madagascar) and from there I hope it will be pretty easy. *fingers crossed*
I Got madacascare (No spell) but as soon as u have one person on ur last country GAME ENDS IT IS FUN BUTS ITS SPAM!
Beat it. Starting in Madagascar is probably the easiest. I went from Madagascar to Cuba as my second country.
nobody had died yet greenland were burning bodies. ? plus i cant infect MADAGASGAR!!!
For the Madagascar comment I read, I tried it, but the thing that happened is that everyone else died, but madagascar. I love this game.
Humanity overcome: Mankind's numbers have declined. Your disease has managed to exterminate humans off the face of the earth.
YAY!!! Only took me, oh, about 100 tries, but I did it.
Starting in Madagascar is definitely easiest with all resistances at no more than 2, all transmisson sources EXCEPT WATERBORNE, and no symptoms. As soon as you have infected at least one person in every country, then you use the DNA points you have amassed to quickly rack up a huge death toll and add new resistances.
[Edit: spoiler added. -eileen]
I beat this sucker on the 3rd try, and all it gave me was this lousy t-sh... no, really, all I got in score was 80,694. What a rip!
I've been able to eliminate all of humanity on several occasions, but cannot break a score of 100,000. The high scores are like 500,000 and I usually get like 80,000. I don't understand how to make my disease that efficent. Hilariously, on one of my attempts to dominate the world with my disease, 2 people survived in cuba, not sure why only those 2 did...but everyone else in cuba and in the rest of the world for that matter died. lol. Looks like humanity is restarting with 2 cubans who are immune to the best disease known to man. Let's just hope one is male and the other female! lol. Or with old age, mankind's extinction shall be complete.
It wasn't that hard to beat even on realistic. Took me about 4 tries.
I got madagascar, i don't find it hard to get madagascar for some reason, but i can never get australia, they always seem to be disease free!
I got Madagascar to close it's airports.
i got madagascar by luck one time, but i couldnt get some of the easiest countries... its very random
I finally got madagascar! It took me from 11pm to 2am..
I started in peru.
I chose bacteria and sold all my symptoms and made cold and heat resistance to level 4 and waited/ did other stuff in new tab for awhile.
Eventually other countries start to get infected. As I'm watching I see a boat go into madagascar and BAM its infected. Happiest second of my night!
So once all my countries were infected I bought symptoms that spread the infection.
After almost everyone was infected I bought killing symptoms. Eventually eveyone died. Your score doesn't get to high, but I sure feel great!! ;]
its impossible to get to madagascar but if you begin there then you can spread before of madagascar closing its harbors
Spread everywhere but....argentina???
WARNING SPOILERS IN THIS COMMENT:
So I successfully destroyed the human race! Hurray for me! I love virology, and diseases - from a scientific point of view. It was fun to watch the world scramble after I had infected each region. I did it with many attempts, using no symptoms, and just making the virus immune to everything and giving it every avenue to spread, aside from symptoms. Once every country was hit, I bought some symptoms to spread it, and slowly increased its deadliness.
Then I watched... watched as it listed "no sign of life in Japan, no sign of life in Greenland, no sign of life in the United States, etc....
Oh joy I have done it! And yet somehow it was creepy to see the world perish, even though it is just a game.
Brilliant idea, especially in this day and age.
[Edit: If there are spoilers in the comment, please use spoiler tags. Spoiler tags were added for you this time. :) -Pam]
It's easier to:
Start with no symptoms and only the first levels of resistance. I use only one transmission, rodent. When buying a new tier, have extra points in case you get new symptoms you don't want.
My gameplay so far seems good, here's how I managed to infect all countries:
I started in Russia as parasite (low detection). Sold symptoms to further reduce detection, then built up resistances and used rodents and airborne as transmitters. Just waited for it all to unfold. Eventually all countries are infected. Then just wreak havoc with any point you built up. The only thing that worried me was the vaccine, it got to roughly around 79% before all hospitals were shut down. It's a long task due to poor evolution rate but won me the game in the end. I only got 44k points though. Hope this helped anyone.
Sadistic, yet enjoyable!
GRRRRR!
I finally infected Madagascar. Then Peru closed its borders, and it has no shipyards or airports! RAWR!
If you type Madagascar into your name, but not just madagascar with other letters, you start on it.
yeah i managed to conquer every bloody country/ nation. the trick to getting maagascar is starting out in a position that let's you into japan easily so you can use it's ship port to go to madagascar.
When it was certain was going to win, on the World page, it said:
'Approximate days to completion: Infinity'
I laughed at that.
Ha! A vaccine was developed after all the hospitals were closed, and infected people can only get cured in active hospitals! =D
i infected everyone then checked on the vaccine status: infinity.
I don't remember if I won, (I'm pretty sure I did) but I managed to stop the progress of all humans making the vaccine and I sat there watching the world status and it said completion had stopped and if I remember correctly I killed all humans basically watch them them die!
I managed to infect everywhere, but I had to keep restarting game till I got Argentina, but I didn't win because my disease was too lethal an not infective enough so it gets stuck at 20 infected, gradually eating away at the healthy - - so I could have waited until everyone died but middle-east had like 600 million left - forget that.
Infecting Madagascar wouldn't be such an issue if I didn't watch fourteen months go by without a single ship docking there.
Bah I hate the island nations. Just where are they getting their supplies when the ENTIRE WORLD is shut down? *hates on Madagsacar*
This is a great game in terms of strategy. I still cant belive u can beat it in 50 days tho my best is 130
I had the US declare marshall law and shut everything down because they had 2389 cases, and no deaths...only 3 other regions infected -.-
made it everywhere besides new zeland by just waiting it out (started in North Africa, got to madagascar quickly lol)
Just lie low and then when everyone is infected make it give you heart, kidney, ect issues and everyone dies fast^.^
Nearly a year and this game still gets me hooked to it and many others as well.... Don't we all love world destruction, eh?
Fail-safe tip:
Keep restarting till you get Madagascar!
Of course, you lose the chance to overcome the greatest challenge of the game by yourself then. ;)
Here's the thing, Madagascar is always a pain and a half to get. BUT, that is part of the fun is it not? You must restart the game and try again in multiple different ways to finally overcome that obstacle. That is what makes this game worth playing, if only worth it once (lol). All in all, I had a good time and was satisfied when I had beaten it. Now I'm done. :)
Dang, I started off in Madagascar. Game is mad easy now. Lol.
1.Realistic game mode, bacteria, name: Kill
2.Sell your one symtom- your disease is now invisible.
3.Put into fast mode and wait patiently
4.When you have enough points make sure you have level one for each resistance and all for drug resisitance, once again wait.
5.There is no need to choose any transmission, watch the world fall at your hands. Madagascar included! (it worked for me such a relief played at least 50 games and this method works again and again!)
6.Now that your disease has entered every country they will make a vaccine.
7.Chose symtoms that will get your infectivity levels up fast.
8.Once everyone is infected chose your lethality and watch everyone DIE!
THIS METHOD WORKS EVERYTIME
i got madagascar, it's just western europe that i need. ALL'S I NEEDS IS A FLOOD!!!!!!
Started in Madagascar. Got way too excited. Never spread anywhere else.
In real life, Madagascar actually has airports, yes? Since this game is basically a speed up, highly virulent version of a real life scenario, maybe Madagascar should have, oh, I dunno, an airport?
(Yeah, I know, I'm just bitter because my global domination was stopped in its tracks by Madagascar :P )
Named my virus Loki.
Killed everyone.
Nice.
Okay - I just don't get it.
I just wiped out all human life on earth in 208 days... still my score is a meere 60.781, which is nothing... the first time I played (and failed) I got 132.000 points.
Sigh - this just feels wrong
Why cant rodents cross borders?
Norway is also in eastern europe... not scandinavia.
Haha!
It should have been a way to poisin the atlantic too... or airdrop it or so on countries.
It has become obvious to me that killing everyone on earth is not the point of this game, to get on the high score list anyway... it's killing lots of people quickly. Phooey on Madagascar! It's only one country... if you play slow to just get that one annoying place on earth, you will not make the list.
Sure does feel good when it spreads there, though, doesn't it?
I won with a virus and Parasite.
I've infected everyone. EVERYONE. Not one single healthy person left on the world screen. But I'm sitting around waiting to rack up enough evolution points to buy something nasty enough to start killing.
Pandemic 3 - make Mutators I-IV. It would just make it SO much better...
The best chance of getting everywhere is to:
a) IMMEDIATELY sell your beginning symptom
b) Wait. You will slowly infect every country...usually even Madagascar. It may take hours but, hey, viruses are patient...they've been around for millions of years and will be here long after we're gone.
c) With all countries infected, go for broke. The whole globe begins turning red at once. I've won several games this way.
So here's what I did...
Virus started in Middle East
Sell your starting symptom
Select Drug 1 in addition to your given starting trait (unless you start with drug resistance, then leave it alone.)
Select Airborne
Then wait..... Madagascar will eventually fall
YES!
Started in Madagascar, got 1 symptom, and let it sit. MADAGASCAR GONE!
I did it! Opened up about 5 windows, made a parasite with no symptoms with a 1/1/1/0 resistance and spread through air (also water on one of the windows). Went and made myself lunch, came back 10 minutes later, 4/5 windows had all countries infected (1 had madagascar close ports). I had tons on evolutionary points so I made the disease have heart failure, liver failure, and vomiting, and boils. A couple of these games had vaccines that worked develop, but the rest I was able to win. Just takes time. Sorry for all the typos too=P
I dont get that when there are 0 people alive, there is still a boat going around in circles. kind of weird if u ask me.
P.S. Madagascar sucks...
I started in Madagascar, infected everyone, with everything still open and then got into Argentina. How cool is that?
I've infected everywhere on Earth except Madagascar.
why. why would they close down the harbour? MY DISEASE HAS NO SYMPTOMS!
I used juv3nal's strategy of July 24, 2008, and it worked. World dead, game won.
i made one with a parasite and i only increased the tiers, resistances, and the transmissions. so when i put heart failure 2000000 people died at once weird
Used same strategy as before, but with a virus. Managed to infect Madagascar (the last holdout) JUST before they could close their seaport. It was more fun than playing the parasite, since I had more evolution points stored up as a virus, and could make the disease more deadly once all countries were infected.
I just infected Madagascar.
IT FEELS SO GOOD.
They're all going to die for being so annoying with their port.
Okay, so this worked for me on relaxed mode. Have yet to try it on realistic, but will report back when I get a chance
Start off by selling whatever you get. No visibility is the key.
Then let the points rack up until you have at least 30.
Buy Heat 1,2,3 and 4.
Buy Cold 1,2,3 and 4.
Buy Drug 1.Don't get any higher!When they start developing a vaccine make sure you have enough to buy Drug 2 and 3,even 4.When they start deploying the vaccine buy those Drugs. The vaccine should fail.
Then buy airborne,rodent and insect.When a bunch of countries are already infected buy moisture 1 and 2 and waterborne. Don't buy that before you have a few countries infected as the governments seem to notice if you infect their water supply?!
Watch with glee as your disease spreads around the world!I got madagascar and all else the first time I tried this. The second I didn't get madagascar.So I'm guessing if you manage to start with madagascar this will work even better.
When everywhere was infected I bought fever, cysts and sores(I didn't have many points)
The people started dropping like flies.
When I'd racked up a few evolution points I bought kidney failure. Cue dead world!:)
Hope this helps.
I'm going to agree with others that "popularity of this game earned it this review rather than the quality"
I've been playing this game for quite awhile, each time getting every country infected, using a parasite but what always annoys me on this game is how slowly you accumulate points.
At first I thought it was just because my disease was a parasite so, I switched to Virus, but when I had made that much progress in the game again, I was getting points just as slowly. While, earlier in the game I had over 100 points, I was now left with 8. I can't believe that points are given by time progression rather than based on people infected and deaths.
What also is ridiculous is how much it is based on luck and how as soon as I get "Waterborne" governments immediately start handing out water bottles, so I buy "Airborne". Literally, as soon as I click it, they are handing out masks. I KID YOU NOT. That actually happened.
Mind you, the disease was virtually harmless and was hardly noticeable
I'm through with this game.
When the vaccine was deployed, somehow it didn't work and gave me TOTAL immunity to any other vaccines. It was cool!
Fun times. Once, I had a disease with ABSOLUTELY NO COLD RESISTANCE. Greenland was the first to go. o_O
I am super-duper happy. I started off with Madagascar! Yay!
I'd recommend to try "Defcon: Everybody dies" if you liked this game. ;)
I finally got my parasite disease to start in Madagasacar and I was able to infect all the regions.
What I did was I sold the sneezing symptom that came with the disease. Next I boosted the resistance all the way up. Then I waited until all the regions had at least one person infected. Next I bought all of the transmissions. Then I ran out of evolution points to buy deadly symptoms and I had to wait. Then I went on to the world map and I was checking each of the regions information and Greenland had 1 person still healthy and then that person got infected. So then I checked some other regions and then I checked Greenland again and the number of healthy people went from 0 to 1 and then back to 0 and then I exited out of Greenland and went back into it and the same thing happened. I kept repeating the process and the same thing kept happening. Then I realized that I also had the immune trait and I was thinking how could that one person keep getting healed and then get infected over and over again. All my resistances were all the way up too. I still dont know how that happened. Finally I got enough evolution points to get symptoms to kill everyone.
I would say this game was okay. It had a lot of major problems and it gets annoying waiting for evolution points to build up. This would be a really good game if these problems were fixed. I hope Pandemic 3 is better.
Some of the problems are the time it takes fore evolution points to build up. The unrealistic quality of the game. The way the game is set up with the world and disease menu. THE MUSIC IS A HUGE PROBLEM. The fact that the only way you can win is if you start in Madagascar and if you are extremely lucky and a bunch of other stuff that I can't think of at the moment.
There are also a lot of weird glitches and stupid little problems in the game too. Like in Madagascar it says on the region info that Madagascar has an airport, hospital and borders even though in the game it doesn't but in real life it does. There is also more than 24 hospitals in the world and why do some regions have more airports, ship yards, and hospitals than others. I have played this game many times and there has never been a riot and since when are there hurricanes in Greenland. It's rare for Canada to get a hurricane. And why would you burn dead bodies if no one has died of your disease? It is also almost imposible for all the countries in the world to work together to make a vaccine. There are many more ways of transmissions than what the game gives you. How would all the regions get supplies if they cut them selves off from the world? What about the scientists in Antarctica? How could you keep your hospital, airport, shipyard, and schools open if everyone in your region is dead? Finally when the ships have no shipyard to go to, how do they survive sailing in the open ocean forever with out re-supplying? I have also seen airplanes do the same thing. I could go on. Overall the game was okay at best.
[Edit: Spoiler tags added. -Pam]
"Government of Madagascar shuts down shipyards due to prevent infection"
-> begin from the start once again :)
Nobody notice this...
When the hospital finally develops the cure, have they even thought about how to send it to other countries that had already closed their borders and shipyards? I mean come on... even if 5 or 10 hospitals work on the vaccine how will they spread it to countries that had already closed their shipyard and borders!!?? Man this game is really mind boggling.
PS: The F*** they left Philipines out? I saw the Philipine island but when did it become part of Indonesia?
I got everything but New Zealand on my fifth try. I did read a few spoilers though.
I was a bacteria with only fever symtom and I had all transfer ways. I got all the possible drug defences and one or two of the rest of the defences.
got an awesome disease won on realistic
parasite
Sores,Fatigue,Fever,Vomiting,Cysts,Nausea,Pulmonary Edema,Dementia,Hypersensitivity,Ataxia,Insanity,Depression
Cold 3,Heat 4, Moisture 3, Drug 3
Rodent,Insect,Airborne
The trick was to approach it slowly as i saw it,i sold all my symptoms at first,boosted resistances to all 2 then boosted them for certain environments,boosted drug to keep off the vaccine,they did develop one i mutated and it didn't work so they all died shortly after
finally got MADagascar and the only place left is New Zealand....grrrr
Woohoo, exterminated the entire planet, including that pesky Madagascar (even though the shipping port remained open even when I'd killed off over 4 million people there!). Other's top tip of
creeping in with a parasite, only displaying a fever,
really does work, along with something like
heart failure very early on
. Good game!
Total world destruction in less than 1 years time. get transmissions up then sell off all symptoms. Let it ride from there, by the time a cure is found, all the hospitals should be shut down (even Greenland). Enjoy.
Best chance of winning:
1)Pick Virus.
2)Start in Canada, New Zealand, Cuba, Greenland, or Madagascar and if you do not get there restart.
3)Sell starting symptoms, if any, and buy sneezing (unless it is what you started with, just keep it).
4)Buy 1-1-1-0 resistances but no transmissions (they trigger closures).
5) Once three countries are infected, sell sneezing to get rid of visibility.
6)Wait until all countries are infected. If Madagascar closes its shipyards or is not infected in 30 days, restart.
7)Buy all four drug resistances, sneezing, coughing, and vomiting.
8)After a few days, unlock tiers 2-3, keeping whatever symptoms it gives you.
9)Buy fever, fatigue, diarrhea, pulmonary edema, and hypersensitivity.
10) Wait until everyone dies
KEEP THIS COMMENT ALIVE IF IT HELPED YOU =D
wow i just infected every country but east europe i was so excited when i infected all the little islands and stuff but no east freakin europe had to to close borders and air/water travel
The second Madagascar shuts down, I know I can't win. So I use all my evolution points to get the most disturbing symptoms ever (before it was symptom free).
This is pretty much a clockwork game, you just sit back, watch, make slight adjustments as necessary. What I didn't like was how quickly the nations adjusted to changes once made. If you decide to add insect transmission to cause more infections the nations instantly started spraying pesticides the second you closed the disease window. Also there was zero possibility of infecting an uninfected country once they closed the boarders, shipyards, and airports, even if they were surrounded by infected countries. And the news ticker telling you about earthquakes and hurricanes doesn't seem to have any effect on the game other then giving you something to read.
What the game needs is more confusion and chaos. If each individual nation was attempting to make their own vaccine would make more sense. Also if countries were capable on containing the outbreak by quarantining the infected people that would add a new element to the game. A limit to the amount of transmission styles a disease was capable of and perhaps more ways of transmitting, such as avian, canine, livestock, etc. Say a disease could only have 1 or 2 types of transmissions at a time, if waterborne and rodent aren't working well enough you could sell one or both in favor of another. It should also take the nations a number of days or even weeks to figure out that the disease had changed. Also there should be some confusion among the nations as to the nature of the disease. Some countries might start spraying pesticides to combat a waterborne disease for instance.
What the game really needs is for one nation shutting down all access to their country to not necessarily mean you lost the game no matter what. People in infected countries might attempt to sneak into non infected ones hoping to escape the disease. Transmission my avian or even possibly fish might be a way to get the disease to migrate there. What would make all that interesting is that altering the disease to try and infect a non-infected land might cause an infected land to get a handle and possibly eradicate the disease in their nation. If you made the game a real seesaw battle between the different nations and the disease it would be far more interesting.
As it is, it's a good idea for a game, but an incomplete one.
It is all about LUCK!
If Madagascar doesn't mess it up, it's one of the other islands (i.e: Austrailia, New Zealand, Greenland and/or Japan)so, the best you can do is HOPE that you can get the whole world infected before the "Final4" close all their borders!
oh my god, i got madagascar! but then stupid argentina just HAD to be invincible, eh?
i played once, using the exact same strategy i used this time, and still no infection in argentina. my new enemy is exactly that, argentina.
now we know that whenever there is a pandemic, like now, we should all get on a boat and go to madagascar or argentina and we will live forever.
First game, I started in Madagascar, played by walkthrough rules I found online, wasn't able to infect Indonesia and Cuba...
Now playing, starting in New Zealand, unfortunately my disease has become FAMOUS... What is up with that?
Anyway, keeping resistance low and turning off all symptoms seems to help... Drug resistance is important though for closing all hospitals.
Luck is the most important thing of all...
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