Super bugs, the bird flu, small pox, and Ebola all have the potential to wipe out humanity with a few mutations, the right variables and carriers. The premise is enough to give you chills and turn you into a real life prepper. A couple of years ago Ndemic Creations infected phones everywhere with a strategy game called Plague Inc that used a simple design and incorporated it to simulate the end of mankind through disease. Does the Plague Inc: Evolved port over to Xbox One translate well or is this just another game trying to cash in on past success?
Your goal is to wipe out human life on the entire planet by evolving the very DNA of your virus. While this sounds straightforward it requires an intense amount of attention to detail as well as aptitude to multitask while trying to guess the next global effort to thwart you. The strategy behind Plague Inc. Evolved is anything but ordinary as you pick out one of several different plague types with the single minded focus of extinction.
Each of the distinctive plagues gives you the ability to alter the symptoms, survive different climates throughout the globe, and spread through different carriers. Certain combos affect the main stats of infectivity, severity and lethality that control how effective your plague really is. The key is to balance these three stats to their peak affectivity so the more developed countries have a harder time coming up with a cure to slow your spread or eradicate you entirely. Every plague has different “grow” paths that mutate uniquely keeping you constantly micromanaging everything.
Aside from the different plagues there are also scenarios that you can play through to see if you can best record times or face a challenge where the odds are already against you. There are a ton of different options to play giving you more variety with each and every attempt to infect the world. The way your pathogen progresses isn’t the best visual presentation, but it is effective as you see parts of the world overtaken with red. There are also graphs, statistics, and pop up clues on the map that give you hints and clues as to how you can progress your plague.
Players must start from the bottom of the viral pool and progress through each stage in order to gain access to the bigger, badder pathogens. Anyone new to strategy games will find the difficulty curve sadistic and most seasoned vets are up for a test even on the most casual level. Leaderboards give you something to shoot for and compete against your friends and achievements will have you trying out new combinations over and over.
Overall Plague Inc. Evolved is a great strategy game wrapped up in a plain package that doesn’t offer much in the way of visuals or sound, but the whole game oozes a tactical approach few others can compare to. The challenge is immense and unforgiving, but approachable for any level of gamer looking to pit their wits and skill against the world. For such a simplistic game it evolves itself over and over again giving it a depth greater than what the eye can see.
Score 7.5/10
Review code supplied by Microsoft Xbox.
