Pandemic 2 Walkthrough

The sequel to the ever popular zombie game, Pandemic, Pandemic 2 offers even more action than the original making it even more addictive and fun to play. It is a little more complicated than the average zombie game though so newcomers to the genre and more experienced players alike might have a hard time getting the hang of how this one is played. There is a lot of information you need to pay attention to and a lot of things you need to keep in mind as you play, but as you get into the game, you'll understand better and better what the game is asking of you. The key to this one is patience. If you're looking for a fun little game to kill a little time with, you may want to look elsewhere. This one is going to take a little time. It's also going to suck you in. If you like zombie games that offer a little more than just shooting things, you're going to love this one.

The main difference between Pandemic 2 and most of the other zombie games online is that you aren't killing zombies to save the human race. Instead, you are trying to develop a disease that will terminate the human race. Your only real goal it to create a disease that is strong, resilient and spreads quickly. You want to wipe out the human race, but human beings are crafty. You'll need to strengthen your disease, spread it as wide as possible and infect as many people as you can before a vaccine is present. You need to try to avoid panicking the government by keeping the visibility of your disease low. If the government panics, a vaccine is going to become available far more quickly. Watch the breaking news for headlines of large quantities of people dying in one area. Even if the visibility of your disease is low, a whole lot of people dying off is going to cause some panic.

All of the information you need to play Pandemic 2 is shown on the main game screen. The tutorial video offered to you when you first begin the game (the link at the bottom left of the screen), is available at any time throughout the game by clicking the menu button. This is a handy little video that will teach you the basics of the game. If you're having trouble even getting started, take a few minutes to check out the video. It will help. You can also start a new game from the menu button. If you feel hopelessly lost or like you have no chance whatsoever of beating the game, try again. The more you play the more you improve and the more you'll understand what the game is all about, so don't be afraid to start over from the beginning. To the right of the menu button, you have the world button. This brings up the world screen. To the right of 'world' you have 'disease'. Clicking on disease will allow you to view the evolution of your virus and see how it is progressing. At the center of the bottom of your screen, you'll see how many evolution points you have to use. To the right of your evolution points you have the button that will either pause the game or resume the game. You can also control the speed of the game using the slider bar to the right of the pause/play button. This is useful as it allows you the chance to either slow down or speed up the rate of the game depending on what you need. In the beginning, you may want to speed up the game while later when things are more difficult, you may want to slow it all down. Finally, at the bottom right of the game screen you have the game clock. The clock displays the date and time. The first two digits indicate the hour, the next two indicate the day, the next two indicate the month and the remaining four indicate the year.

Along the left side of the screen in the darker shaded area, you'll see information about 'breaking news' displayed with your mini map at the top. Your mini map is extremely important in Pandemic 2. The great thing about the mini map in this game is that you can use it to view a specific part of the map on a larger scale on the bigger map by clicking and dragging the 'viewpoint positioner' (the small rectangle on the mini map). This isn't something that's terribly common in the world of online zombie games. This version of the typical mini map allows you to view the entire globe and also allows you to focus on a specific area of interest quickly and easily. The viewpoint positioner is extremely easy to use so make sure you use it to your advantage. Make use of the map to make sure you're focusing your action on the areas that need it the most. This is the best way to get through the game. If you're not sure where you should be focusing your attention, take a moment or two to look around the entire map. That's the great thing about the mini map. It not only allows you to focus on a specific area but also allows you to identify what area requires your attention the most.

What really makes Pandemic 2 the most complicated is the number of icons that are shown on the actual map. You need to have a basic idea of what those icons mean if you want to do well in the game. A downward facing arrow indicates a new region has been infected with your virus. Two arrow tips pointing toward each other indicates a natural disaster has occurred. Black icons with '+' symbols on them mark hospitals. Black icons with airplanes on them mark airports. Black icons with anchors on them mark shipyards. Black icons with water drop type symbols mark water plants. If the plant has been infected, the water drop will be red instead of white. Blue icons in the water with airplanes on them mark actual airplanes while blue icons with anchors on them in the water mark actual boats. Familiarizing yourself with that all of these icons mean is important. It may seem like a lot to take in at first, but it's all fairly self explanatory.

There are prompts that will appear throughout Pandemic 2 as they would in many of the other zombie games online, but in this game, those prompts often contain important information. While it's tempting to just click the 'x' and close the box, you'll regret it. Not all of the information you'll get is vital, but if you close out the wrong box, you could find yourself not knowing what you're supposed to do next. To be honest, if you've watched the tutorial video, most of the information in the prompts should be fairly familiar, but it never hurts to have a little refresher. None of the prompts are all that long and they don't really require a lot of reading, so take a few minutes to read them over.

The disease information screen in Pandemic 2 is pretty straight forward and easy to understand. At the very top of the screen you have the name of your virus. Below that, you have the symptoms for your disease that are available to be either purchased or sold. What you decide to do with the symptoms will depend on your goal and what you want to achieve with the disease. In most cases, the more symptoms you have the better. Immediately below symptoms, you have the unlock button. When this button is shown in blue you are able to unlock new symptoms for your disease. The screen below that is divided into three sections; resistances on the left, transmissions in the middle and traits on the right. Resistances determine what your virus is resistant to. Consider the environment where you are unleashing your virus when you are choosing resistances. Transmissions determine how your virus is transmitted. Airborne is the best way to spread a disease. It allows your virus to spread quickly and across a wide area. You start out with rodents and insects working up to airborne as your virus evolves. Once you have reached airborne, your virus is in good shape. At the bottom of the screen you have your basic disease stats; evolution points, average infections per day, average deaths a day, lethality, infectivity, and visibility. All of these things determine how strong your disease is. Ideally you want to see all of these stats high.

World information is another important screen in Pandemic 2 you need to keep your eye on. This shows you what regions of the world are clean, what regions are infected and how many regions are forsaken. Clean regions have not been touched by your disease while forsaken regions are completely devoid of human life. Infected regions have cases of your disease but there is still human life present. This screen also gives you the basic information on the vaccination status in the middle panel. You can see how close a vaccine is to being completed and how close a vaccine is to being deployed. This is important information to keep your eye on. Vaccines will dramatically slow the spread of lethality of your disease.

The only way to do well in Pandemic 2 is to be patient. Don't rush. You need to use all of the tools available to you in order to spread your disease. Focus on infecting people at airports and shipyards. People who are traveling will carry the disease a greater distance and effect more people. Remember though, how your disease is spread will play into this. Start off at shipyards if your disease is only carried by rodents. Rodents get on ships and carry the disease to the next location. Rodent transmitted diseases aren't, however, much use at airports or on planes. Look at how your disease is spread and what it is resistant to and you should be able to develop a pretty decent virus - decent for you of course. Not such a good thing for the human race.

Overall, Pandemic 2 is a complicated zombie game but it's well worth the effort you'll invest learning how to play it. Regardless of how much skill or experience you have with zombie games, you're going to want to take the time to watch the tutorial video. It will greatly decrease the amount of time it takes you to learn how to play the game. That said, it doesn't offer you much in the way of developing a strategy. That's really something you'll have to do yourself. This game is rare in the zombie game genre. It really requires you to think. It's a sort of thinking man's zombie game and will offer a real challenge while still offering a lot of entertainment. This is a great game that any fan of zombie games needs to play at least once.