now playing: "Pandemic II"

Pandemic II
Genre(s): Simulation
Credits: Dark Realm Studios, 2008

Time for a visual-ergonomic relevant exercise!

Close your eyes so you're not staring at the screen like you are now (this is the visual-ergonomic part), and think about one of your favorite video games for a moment (this is the relevant part). Tell me the name of the good guy, the bad guy, and what you need to do to win the game.

No matter what game you picked, you may have quickly realized that the "good guy" and "bad guy" roles are nothing alike, overlap somewhat, or have been totally interchanged. Pandemic II throws all these distinctions out the window as it simply throws upon your shoulders the burden of taking over the world by wiping out humanity—how you want to justify its methodical ethics is up to you, but it's an odd morality just the same.

Taking its inspiration from historic health catastrophes like the medieval bubonic plague and more recent panics like the swine and avian flu, Pandemic II is a graphical strategy adventure in which the player selects a parasite, bacteria, or virus; bestows it a name fitting its anticipated fatality; nurtures its infectious, lethal, and resistance qualities; and with its aid, attempts to eliminate the entire world population. It's one of the most (in)famous causal games; nearly anyone who's Googled something along the lines of "play free online games" has run across this title. It's a great example of an intelligent, unique game that also happens to have a substantial popularity rating.

The game world, as it appears early on in the disease's progress of infection.

As your disease infects more people and spreads around the globe, it gains "evolution points" which can purchase any number of 20 different symptoms, 4 methods of transmission, and strengths in cold, heat, moisture, and drug resistance. You will also have to sacrifice a few evolution points if you want to "sell" a symptom you bought earlier on but don't want anymore. Your virus is graded on lethality, infectivity, and visibility, dependent on the symptoms you buy; coughing and sneezing are effective at spreading contagion, but they are also very noticeable, which can influence how soon governments and hospitals start closing borders, regulating interpersonal contact and domestic commerce, and developing a vaccine which may (or not) halt your game score from gaining any more dead or infected victims.

The "disease" menu, showing stats and the store.

Although I have only examined a few games thus far, I have noticed a consistent unity in the soundtracks of the titles I have reviewed: they not only enhance the narrative themes, but also evoke very specific, strong moods and attitudes. In this regard Pandemic II is no different. Its music, which I can only describe as "sci-fi ship interior" meets "tribal drum," creates a definitive evil mastermind air—for the player is the villain, after all.

In fact, it's this twisted quality that makes Pandemic II the best game of its content genre, "health." While the cooler-sounding synonym "biological survival" is not uncommonly the inciting plot device in mainstream console games (Resident Evil), in the actual genre games where it dictates the entire narrative, the player is always stuck in the role of the scientist, doctor, public health intern, or simply the student in the technologically-enhanced PE classroom, required to "cure" the disease via repetitive gameplay and a preachy anti-germ agenda. These games don't work because they try too hard to fit that tricky genre "edutainment." Pandemic II's success comes from its correctly-ordered priorities: fun, fun, and fun. From the time we started watching Star Wars we realized that the bad guys had their own kind is not only a brilliant, cookie-cutter-defying example of "edutainment."that have been produced in the last two decades. After all, when are you ever going to be tested on terms like "pulmonary edema" and "ataxia" unless you're following jargon-laden discussions on TV medical dramas?

Also located for free on the World Wide Web.

Some people who have played the game, experimenting with selling off every symptom (resulting in a realistically harmless germ), notice what appears to be a developer oversight, as governments still react negatively to the "disease" just as if it was lethal: shutting down transportation and starting up antidote trials. And undoubtedly, it is a major issue, if gaining pure mindless entertainment is the audience's objective. But from a philosophical perspective, playing the game with a dummy "disease" actually fulfills the intent of its name; a pandemic is driven by panic. The glitch epitomizes the fear and idiosyncratic attitudes that result when scientific fact meets local and global administrative regulations, often written like a Byzantine document and built with someone's political agenda in mind. I don't think you have to be a Republican or a Democrat, from London or Beijing, to look back at history and agree that there are countless instances where governments, churches, and individual people decided accepting the truth was too inconvenient for their anticipated profit and ended up making an infamous name for themselves as long as they denied reality. What initially seems like a designer flaw may actually be a "cheat" to understanding a significant subtext in Pandemic II.

Pandemic II comes in two modes, "relaxed" and "realistic," allowing different depths of strategy. Even on "relaxed," however, it's a fairly time-intensive title, easily consuming as many as a few hours while your group project in Google Docs sits unattended and lonely in the next browser tab over. For this reason I wonder if the Pandemic concept is better suited for a more serious gamer's platform, or possibly a LAN system where players can choose to strategically collaborate or fight each other over the same game world with their own unique diseases. Potential improvements not regarding, Pandemic II is an absolute casual genre classic. iOS users, keep your eyes out for the upcoming 2.5 installment.


Next time: if messing with germs isn't your idea of taking over the world, try politics.