Pandemic II

Normally the games that make the rounds as being the next addictive thing are the big, AAA titles that hit with all the thunder of a blockbuster movie. You know the ones. Normally for a game to emerge from nowhere, it has to hit with Minecraft-like force. But in this case the growth of this title has been quieter, more subtle, taking player by player until it has become a full-blown time-sink, a pandemic, which, conveniently, is what it is called.

Pandemic II gives players on simple objective – kill everyone in the world. You take on the role of a virus, bacteria or parasite that starts off humbly, but has skillfully to mutate to avoid worldwide panic too early. The strategy is to keep governments unaware of your existence while you infect more and more people, and then slowly ramp up the symptoms until it’s too late for anyone to do anything about it. Keeping an eye on how the world reacts to your sneaky disease is crucial to avoiding being cured. Going in too virulent too early is almost certain to get you noticed and eradicated, and you need to be in every port and continent before people start dropping.

There’s a certain nasty pleasure in being the bad guy in games, and this one delivers that in spades. For a nice departure from your average flash game that won’t cost anything but will sap all your time, this one is hard to beat. [Alex Cole]