Plague Inc: Evolved
Ndemic Creations
I just finished playing a game of Plague Inc: Evolved and I feel slightly dirty. I’m almost compelled to go and take a shower. Why? Because I just wiped out all of humanity with my virtual super-virus. You may be asking: “How did this all begin?” I’ll give you a brief overview…
In Plague Inc: Evolved, you play as the creator of a pathogen, there are ten in all to choose from. I chose a virus and infected “patient zero,” the first host of the disease who lived in a highly populous country that I won’t name. As the virus spread, I was able to evolve it and increase different aspects of it such as its symptoms, modes of transmission, as well as its resistance to different types of medicines and even weather.
After it had spread from its original country of origin to other countries, via ships and planes, the first few carriers died. As I studied the various global news reports it became evident that certain counties began taking precautionary measures such as shutting down their land borders, airports, naval ports, and the like. They also started to invest in research so that they could combat my now global pandemic.
But I was always one step ahead. After creating a fake news campaign, I misinformed the general public. Okay, I’ll admit it—I straight up concocted a lie. And it worked. I rubbed my hands together and snickered like some sort of diabolically evil mad scientist, which is when I noticed it was one o’clock in the morning in the real world.
With a game like Plague Inc: Evolved, you can easily lose track of time. That’s because no two games ever play out the same. The ten different pathogens range from mere bacterial diseases all the way up to infecting people with brain parasites or turning them into zombies. You can also choose to make your little dastardly baby transmittable through livestock, birds, or simply the very air itself. Build your pathogen up too quickly, however, and the rest of the world will catch on to your nefarious plot and begin to roll out counters to it.
There’s a guilty sense of voyeurism as you watch certain countries seal off their borders and start to pour funding into research in order to find cures. By constantly evolving, you can slow down the speed of their research progress and layer on additional symptoms, such as exploding cysts which can be highly contagious.
This, in turn, can begin to straight-up eliminate their population and reduce their last desperate efforts to fight off your pathogen, until you’ve totally annihilated everyone and the streets resemble the empty city of London at the beginning of the film 28 Days Later. If the rest of mankind isn’t able to counter your pandemic, then they’ll cease to exist and as the last human on earth will die. Then, you can raise your fist in triumph.
At the beginning of Plague Inc: Evolved, you start with a strain of bacteria, which can be pretty resistant to environmental elements such as hot and cold temperatures. When you complete the game with that, you can unlock further strains of pathogens. Viruses can be more unpredictable and can often mutate on their own. Fungi as slow-moving and parasitic diseases can literally eat away at their hosts. Later on, you can take control of horrific bioweapons that get stronger with time and eventually stuff like nano-agents that have escaped from a secret research lab. It’s like playing a series of really good apocalyptic-themed novels, only you are the bad guy.
In all, Plague Inc: Evolved is a devilishly fun pandemic simulator and the only limits are the more dark recesses of your own imagination. It’s a highly immersive experience that is fun to role-play as your hand-crafted pathogen spreads throughout the world. As a side benefit, it can also make one curious about the nature and origins (and possible cures) of the many types of diseases out there. Plague Inc: Evolved is definitely a must-have for those gamers out there who possess both strategic minds and fertile imaginations.
SCORE: 88%
Plague Inc: Evolved has some pretty good looking graphics that make its pandemic gameplay truly shine. However, you want to have a pretty beefy gaming PC or gaming laptop in order to play it at a decent framerate. So, you may just want to invest in a decent gaming rig:
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