Problematically, though, viruses can mutate new symptoms on their own, and indeed some of the plagues that you can choose when creating a new game have incredibly rapid evolutions that can leave you floundering. The more seriously they view the virus, the more money and time will be poured into creating a cure, thus should a few pesky humans succumb to your infection too early there’s a strong chance you won’t be able to recover.
Mutate too many symptoms early, and the population will become aware of the plague’s existence, and may begin work on a cure.
Strategy comes from working out how to best spread the virus, and judging when you need to ramp up its lethality. Points are also awarded for infecting and killing people. Bonus points can be grabbed by popping special bubbles that appear, again a clear indication of the game’s past. As I said before, much of your time is spent staring at the screen, waiting for Evolution points to role in that can be used to mutate your potential plague, making the inclusion of a fast forward button most welcome. is straightforward stuff with minimal player interaction, unsurprising given its heritage as a mobile game. It simply does.Īs an actual game, Plague Inc. It’s hard to place exactly why Plague Inc: Evolved keeps me coming back for more. With Plague Inc: Evolved, it’s all very clinical. A plague is just a bigger step forward, the simple entertainment of killing done on a grander stage.The thing is, with shooters it’s all very personal, which is why we love it. So is the answer as simple as that as humans we take a strange, perverse pleasure in working out how to kill everyone else on Earth? Cthulhu knows we seem to delight in shooting a lot of virtual people. And of course as an entire species we’ve successfully expanded the simplistic concept of violence into something for larger, creating horrifying weapons and waging huge wars. Every time you feel a flash of rage as somebody does something stupid, or even when lag ruins your perfect streak in Call of Duty, the violence is there.
Today we have the mental capacity to push those violent urges down in everyday life, and thus most people barely even notice them anymore. Indeed, our capacity for insane violence is what brought us to the very top of the food-chain. So why does it work? As humans we’re inherently violent, regardless of what we like to think of ourselves. You’re deciding how best to maximise infection before them choosing symptoms that will effectively murder everyone, usually in horrific ways. But there’s a lot of downtime in the game as you simply wait for your plague to spread or for Evolution points to come rolling in, and during these moments it suddenly hits you. For the first while of play you feel detached, your mind gliding through the many evolution options, working out the strategy that will work best for finally getting into Greenland or for holding off a cure being developed. It’s both exciting, and incredibly sombre. You float high above the Earth, using a bird’s eye/God’s eye/Satellite’s eye view of the world, with infections and death being shown as nothing more than a growing tide of red dots. You will never see any of the carnage you wreak, though. Your goal is the death of all humanity, down to the very last person.
Inc: Evolved you direct and guide a plague, choosing its evolutionary path by assigning in various methods of transmission so that it can spread, before turning it deadly with a wide assortment of horrific symptoms such as skin lesions, sores and vomiting. Why is attempting to wipe out every vestige of humanity using a brutal, savage, invisible killer so thrilling, so utterly addictive? In Plague.