Posts Tagged ‘Pandemic’

RPS Feature Panned-emic

Premature Evaluation: Quarantine

Every week we send Brendan into the no-go zones of early access to take pus-filled samples of half-made games. This time, the infectious disease management of Quarantine [official site].

Beijing, Chengdu, and Dehli are all quarantined. Michael Clayborn, my crack medical operative who has served me faithfully, has died in the industrial Siberian wastes of Irkutsk. The entirety of South America has been sealed off from the rest of the world, and Manaus is now considered a “lost city” so infused with disease that it can’t be treated or approached in any way. People are stating to suffer “pustulent buboes” in Santiago, a highly contagious development that I need to deal with. A pop-up box aide comes to me with a decision to make. Do I want to distribute medicine and help the suffering masses of Latin America? Or should I send in some white coats to analyze these curious buboes? Of course, I send in the scientists.
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Quarantine looks a lot like board game Pandemic

A cursory glance at the newly announced Quarantine [official site] could easily lead you to say something like “oh, it looks like Plague Inc but from the human’s side”. But you are not thinking hard enough, cursory glancer. As board game aficionados will tell you, Quarantine looks a lot more like a single-player version of the much-loved Pandemic.
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Pandemic Making Office Space (God, Sorry)

Sniff, sorry guys.

We’ve not mentioned the passing of Pandemic. The studio will breathe their last with The Saboteur, due to ship in a couple of weeks. They were bought by EA two years ago in a two-for-one offer with BioWare for a mere $860m. It’s sad to see the creators of Full Spectrum Warrior, Battlefront, Mercenaries and Destroy All Humans closing their doors. Some of the company have responded in the only proper way, by creating an Office Space tribute, which you can see below.

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Listen Y’all Y’all This Is The Saboteur

I’ve just returned from a trip to see Pandemic’s just-around-the-corner open world alterna-World War II game for another publication (I do so like to dance with the devil in the pale moonlighting), and was faintly surprised to realise whilst there that it was due on PC. This is because I never read any of John Walker’s earlier posts about the game, due to a dark, ancient prophecy that states existence as we know it will meet a horrific end should I ever read anything written by him.
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Angry Driver: The Saboteur Dated, Detailed

We’ve not mentioned The Saboteur, the next game from Pandemic, so with today’s announcement of a sale date of 4th December it seems about time. It’s a game about the second Planet Earth War, during which you shoot a species known as “Nazis” in a country called “France”. It sounds simply ludicrous to us. Oh, but tosh and fipsy to my dreadful British cynicism, it’s not as if there aren’t splendid WW2 games. And non-ironic-cor, look, it’s a mainstream game that’s doing something interesting with colour.

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Mercenaries 2 Gubbins

A man holding his penis, yesterday... gun, I mean gun.

A week ago Jim asked us all if we were excited about Mercenaries 2. Well, think more with a new video and dev interview from Gametrailers below. Most interesting is the discussion of the new co-op mode, which is a splendid inclusion in a sandbox game. I remember meeting the team when they were making Mercenaries 1, delighted by their stated mantra: “Blow shit up.” And then upset and enraged that it wasn’t coming to PC. That was LucasArts, who seem to hate the PC more than anyone else. Now Pandemic’s game is being published by EA, who only hate the PC for sports. This is no sport people. This is blowing shit up.

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That’s A Lot For An Electric Tricycle…

But enough about really old Your Sinclair Gags which about four people in our readership will get. Electronic Arts has bought Bioware and Pandemic, in an exciting two-for-one offer. Let’s quote the bit about the money, as money is all that matters in our world.

EA will pay up to $620 million in cash to the stockholders of VG Holding Corp. and will issue up to an additional $155 million in equity to certain employees of VG Holding Corp., which will be subject to time-based or performance-based vesting criteria. EA will also assume outstanding VG Holding Corp. stock options. In addition, EA has agreed to lend VG Holding Corp. up to $35 million through the closing of the acquisition.

Er… VG Holding group is the kind of corporate structure for Bioware/Pandemic. What’s notable about this deal is that it follows closely from 2005, where Elevation invested 300 million in forming the Bioware/Pandemic partnership in the first place. Hmm.

Oh – interviews on the sale over at Gamespot from Bioware and Gamedaily for Pandemic.