Review Chauliodusi 4/5 · Apr 30, 2022
Biological Technicalities
Plague Inc. has a lot of educational value, because it offers the perspective of microscopic parasites. What detracts from the realism is the disregard for immunity, and the human immune system. I would have preferred there to be waves of variants that everyone would become immune to as they pass over.
The main seven modes are fun to beat on …
Plague Inc. has a lot of educational value, because it offers the perspective of microscopic parasites. What detracts from the realism is the disregard for immunity, and the human immune system. I would have preferred there to be waves of variants that everyone would become immune to as they pass over.
The main seven modes are fun to beat on Brutal. You crack each of them and then that is it, I found there to be no replay value.
The application is very well designed for iOS, I found it satisfying to touch a small country like Afghanistan and it would be selected accurately. The game never lags.
Four specialty plagues were added to the game, each about one year after another. Neurax Worm, Necroa, Simian, and Shadow.
Simian is ridiculous. Monkey virus?? 4Real? Based off the DawnofthePoftheApes film, but an impractical game.
In Shadow, you start as an individual vampire. Interesting to play a couple times.
These modes are unlocked by beating all the main modes on Brutal, and I think the fair way to see Plague Inc. is that the original modes are a tutorial leading up to Necroa Virus on Brutal.
Although it is easy to beat, Neurax Worm mode is full of creativity. Playing with the symptoms of fanatical devotion, euphoria, and suicidal ideation pose for some awesome thought experiments. The art and concepts in this mode are immersive and unique.
Necroa Virus mode on Brutal is legitimately difficult to beat. The music, sound effects, and symptom evolution chain was designed with an attention to detail that feels much better than the rest of the game. It is a zombie mode with three stages, spreading infection, converting humans to zombies, and then combat with military. A military organization spawns in a random country and grows more fortified and international over time.
What is great about this game is that they have tried their best at technically defining these complex biological processes, and then give the player the space to imagine the concurring processes. For instance, Neurax Worm has an evolution upgrade "Undulatory Locomotion" along with a little descriptor and graphic that allows the player to visualize how this parasite is traveling along the nervous system. It then specifically requires the upgrades "Neural Breach" and "Cerebral Tendrils" to make augmentations to the brain.
The vocabulary and concepts in the evolutional upgrades in Necroa mode is rich, as you are tasked with shutting down, preserving, and resuscitating the whole human body, with room for specialization. I was introduced to a lot of concepts here, and the decisions the player is tasked with in the late game is very cool. One gets the hormonal choice between strengthening sinew, producing fat, releasing adrenaline, preserving cells, releasing pheromones, improving eyesight, ect., and each of these upgrades corresponds to a shift in quality of the limited numbers of humans you have to work with, tweaking the math that is running at all times in the miniature countries.
