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Lowell Kempf
United States
Chicago
Illinois
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Despite my best efforts, I am just not into cooperative games. I really feel like I should be, since working together is a great way to get things done. But cooperative games just don’t scratch my gaming itch. Oh, I’ll play them and I’ll even have fun but they are not what I crave and they are not why I am obsessed, er, fascinated by playing games.
A lot of it is that I just love me some competition. The interaction of trying to do better than the next guy goes a long way in making games interesting and exciting for me. Another problem I have seen with a lot of cooperatives is that they are prone to Alpha Dog syndrome. You know, one player takes control and runs everyone’s turn as their own.
However, Pandemic is the exception that proves the rule for me. It’s a cooperative that I really enjoy playing and would not turn down.
The odds are, if you are reading this, you’re already familiar with Pandemic. There are four virulent diseases that are ravaging the world and you represent a team of experts who are trying to quell the plagues before they end global civilization as we know it.
There are three reasons why Pandemic is a standout game for me.
First of all, it is quick. Unlike Battlestar Galactica or Arkham Horror, the game takes less than an hour to play. (Indeed, on our second play, the game took ten minutes before we were left looking at the smoking remains of what once had been civilization as we knew it)I know that it might offend some people’s sensibilities to let a petty thing like time determine whether or not a game hits the table but time is a big factor for me.
Second of all, between the theme and the fact that each individual action is easy to understand, Pandemic is very accessible. It is very easy for anyone, regardless of they read or watch on TV, to understand what’s going on. Real world, vectors of disease, all things folks can relate to.
More importantly, since the game mechanics are easy to digest, that helps cut down on the Alpha Dog syndrome. It is easy to see the consequences of actions in Pandemic and, at least in my experience, that means that everyone is able to get on the discussion of what to do, as opposed to one person bossing everyone else around. For whatever reason, I have seen people really work together with Pandemic.
Third: Things get worse. Oh, boy, do they ever 
The epidemic mechanism means the same cities get over and over again and the rate at which cities get hit by the diseases speeds up. Yes, this means you have an idea of where you have to attack the various plagues but that also means the game naturally heightens. Things get tenser and situations have a strong tendency to grow steadily more unstable.
One of my friends refers to any game where the players are fighting the game as having a robot, an impersonal mechanism that is the one providing the conflict, rather than the other players. The robot of Pandemic is very simple but very effective, and also reflects the way disease vectors tend to work in real life. It also can pound away at you like a sledge hammer.
I remember when we first played Pandemic, we decided to learn as we went along. (The very fact that we could do that is a testament of how accessible the game is. I don’t care if we had had years of practice learning games at that point. That’s still the mark of a clear rule set and well-written rule book) We didn’t think things were too tough until we drew our first epidemic and looked at what it did.
We still beat it so we decided to put all six epidemic cards in the deck. That was when we learned how lucky we got the first time as the world came to a screaming end and the red/black/blue/yellow death reigned over all
The random draw of what cities get infected provides Pandemic with a good chunk of its replay value. We have had games when we were short suited one or two plagues. Which meant that the plagues that were on the board hit us like a tsunami of virulent death. Other times, the plagues have been more evenly spread, giving us some breathing room.
In general, though, my plays of Pandemic have managed to provide an interesting evolving story each time, as well as a tense play.
One of these days, I will actually break out the expansion and find out how it makes things worse in new and different ways. However, I have not yet gotten bored with the basic struggle to save the world from disease and death 
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