Flashback Friday - Pandemic - Do you still play?

Personally, I've soured on it since I wrote my opinion. Back then, co-op games were still a relative rarity and having one with such wide appeal was great.

On repeat plays, I came to dislike the sense of predestination. If the deck shuffle is against you, you're screwed. It doesn't matter how well you play, what decisions you make. It's a game that exists, lost, before you've even taken a turn.

And nowadays it has better competitors. The D&D adventure system games are just as easy to get into and much more fun to play.

Along with Dominion, Pandemic is the game I used to play obsessively that I never want to play again. I have seen everything they have to offer me, even with expansions. They served their purpose and supplied lots of enjoyment. Now I'm done.

Pandemic Legacy was a lot of fun, although the act of playing very elaborate Pandemic did drag it down for me.

I played Pandemic once about a decade ago and disliked it. The game mechanics didn't support the theme well, so the whole game felt like arbitrary procedural work. The friends that I was playing with coached each player on their turn, and all fun was murdered.

We still play it from time to time but nothing like the daily or weekly play we used to. We just broke out the Cthulhu version last week (or the week prior?).

It's pretty much saturation that keeps us from playing it. There's only so many times you can play anything, even a deterministic puzzle game.

I've never once played Pandemic. I have played Forbidden Island which I'm told is essentially the same game. Forbidden Island I bought on clearance at Barnes & Noble for like $5 and would definitely still play it.

This has been a loaner game for me for a few years now, and I always get very positive reviews when it comes back. I have the first edition which I think is a little prettier.

My most recent loan went to non-gamer-gamers, people that love board games but have never been to a board game store and haven't seen what's available on the Internet. They are blissfully happy in their less-informed state, and my recommendation of Pandemic to them was the kind of discovery that would happen pre-Internet when you learned of such things word-of-mouth. Every discovery is more magical when it's rare knowledge.

They very much enjoyed Pandemic and were really struck by how hard it was. They had played forbidden Desert and Forbidden Island, which are about a 50-50 shot on any particular play. Pandemic is HARD for your first few plays. It sets a higher bar. They kept it for weeks, beat it exactly once.

I still enjoy the game but it doesn't come out much. I think all my buddies are done with it. As co-ops go, it's about the best in the euro end of the genre.

If I never played another game I'd be perfectly fine with it. I think of Pandemic the same way I think of Dominion: games that are now just mechanics in other games. Pretty rad stuff when it came out but definitely showing it's age.
I still keep my copy around to break out with family or anyone else who casually like to play boardgames.

I think that in that time, the best of the co-op Euros is still Red November.

I really liked it when it came out, and even though I haven't played it in a long time, I would play it again. Unfortunately, Pandemic Legacy left a bad taste in my mouth. My group really enjoyed playing through that, but I grew to hate it by the end. I think I'm more tired of the whole co-op genre than I am of any particular game in it.

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.

ubarose wrote: In a tactical game PUZZLE, when there is only one optimal choice, you really have no choice; you merely have the illusion of choice.

FTFY

I played it once on my tablet and the Cthulhu version once, neither plays sent me off to buy either version. I have enough co-op games to play if we do want to do a co-op that I would play before I'd consider this, but would sit down and play it when at another group.