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Flashback Friday - Pandemic - Do you still play?
I also can’t really overlook what it inspired, that “Stuff Happens Across the Board and You Deal With It” genre. There’s a couple of good games in there, but most of it is garbage.
I do like Ghostfightin’ Treasure Hunters/Ghostbusters Protect the Barrier, the new Buffy (which is dry, but a rock solid design that I adore) and Defenders of the Realm.
TL;DR - I’d rather read Comic Sans than play Pandemic.
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- san il defanso
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- ENDUT! HOCH HECH!
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Those elements are in service of a game that is ultimately simplistic and predictable, but that just means this game exists best as a casual experience. It remains one of the big gaming hits of the past decade, and I do think it deserved that mainstream success.
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- southernman
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- TOTALLY WiReD
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I have to agree with Matt’s original assessment in his first review. It’s a solid family game.
I just personally don’t care for it.
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I do like Defenders of the Realm which I hear tell is the same mechanics but then I'm more drawn to dragons and orcs and flying griffons that you can ride as opposed to "Crotch Rot Blue" or "Lingering Painful Death Orange".
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The only Pandemic game I still own is Pandemic Iberia. I would rather play it and Pandemic Rising Tide over original Pandemic these days. I think they are both good games for people who still want an experience similar to original Pandemic but feel like they are done with the original game. Iberia and Rising Tide both have some variants/mini expansions you can choose to use that add a little more flavor to both games.
I would also rather play Defenders of the Realm over Pandemic but have not played it in a couple years. My wife likes the art style and a couple we game with sometimes really like the game so I have kept my copy.
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Colorcrayons wrote: I still maintain that 'games' of this ilk are puzzles, not games.
Puzzles are solved.
Games are played.
Much like solitaire, this puzzle can be absolutely not solved if the deck is against you.
And the entire enterprise is further ruined by the alpha gamer dictating to everyone else how to solve this puzzle.
Nope. Not a game.
Years ago, somebody at this site had an important insight about the difference between euros and ameritrash. In a euro game, something random happens (a tile flip, a card draw, etc.) and then the player makes a decision with perfect knowledge of the outcome of that decision, not counting lack of knowledge of future turns. In an ameritrash game, a player makes a decision and then there is a random determination of the success of that decision.
With respect to co-op games, an ameritrash co-op is a game, but euro co-op is more like a puzzle, due to the timing of the randomness. And that automatically puts the euros at a disadvantage in terms of entertainment value, because solving a puzzle as a group is less fun than playing a game, and the perfect information enables both alpha player bossiness and analysis paralysis. Fun murdering, in short. I will even go a step farther and say that the perfect information aspect attracts control freaks.
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- ChristopherMD
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Shellhead wrote: I will even go a step farther and say that the perfect information aspect attracts control freaks.
And people who like solving puzzles.
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To those who keep saying it’s not a game but a puzzle and less because of it, I don’t get it. You say there’s near perfect knowledge and thus always optimal plays. Naturally someone sees these plays best and dictates everyone else’s turns to win.
But that assumes the only way to have fun is to win I disagree with that, even in a co-op where everyone can win. I still remember our first game with my brother-in-law. We thought we had the game on lock. With nothing obvious to do on his turn, he moved to Jakarta for a vacation. We lost three turns later when he was too far to stop a cascading outbreak in Seoul.
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- Colorcrayons
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I personally don't enjoy it, but then again I don't enjoy puzzles in general, though there are exceptions.
For some reason, so called "alpha gamers" are attracted to this game, when they should be playing it solo. But the same could be said for a lot of games. I recall a horrendous experience with Mansions of Madness before the game ever was released with such a gamer.
I think of puzzles as more of a solo experience, and while others could be involved in resolving it, doesn't meant they should.
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