Plague Inc. iPad Game App Review

Being my first review of an iPad app, I am writing the review on my new ‘The New iPad’. I’m sure sometime within the week I will write something about the awesomeness that is my iPad, but in the mean time I will have to get used to relying on a shift key on the left side (I am also using a bluetooth keyboard with my iPad!).

A new game in the app store, Plague Inc. plays like a strategic board game. It reminds me of the popular cooperative board game, Pandemic. Instead of trying to cure a lethal disease that threatens the human population, in Plague Inc. you are the hands behind the human’s destruction, which is why Plague Inc. is so damn fun. Viruses, bacteria, prions, nanobots; pick humanities plague, and watch as your disease either destroys humanity, or brings the world together to take find a cure.

This game doesn’t use flashy graphics, which is fine because the developers focused on the mechanics of the game. As a result, Plague Inc. is a strategy game with depth. Each different plague path you can choose from (i.e virus or bacteria) has different strengths and weakness, and different ways it can kill people. Random events in the game can change how effective your chosen disease is. For example, bird migration can be extremely effective at spreading your disease if your disease can infect birds. The world can respond, however, by exterminating birds. How quickly humans respond to your disease depends on many factors, such as its lethality. Oh yeah, if humanity finds a cure for the disease, you lose.

Since every game is different, it can be challenging to create a plague effective at exterminating the human race. There are so many things to take into consideration. The cold temperatures of Canada, Russia, and Greenland, or the rural livelihood of the middle east changes how a disease affects the population.

As the game progresses, you collect DNA points that are spent on ‘evolving’ your diseases transmission, symptoms, and resistances. Because there are so many choices, it requires trial and error to find the best combination. I made a disease I called ‘East Mile’ that could spread faster than the common cold, yet it wasn’t aggressive enough to wipe out the human race. So I tried the opposite, and created a disease that kills very fast. The problem with that method was it killed all its hosts, therefor couldn’t spread.

.99¢. Buy it. It’s too much fun for .99¢, and I suspect it is a game that you can play with a couple friends, and argue about what the best choice is, and Plague Inc. would surely force someone into saying, “I told you so!”