Kids Say:

"We started this game a couple years ago, and then put it away for a while. This time around, I enjoyed it a lot more. It definitely gets a lot more hard core as the campaign goes on and you discover all the plot twists. My only complaint is that every time dad takes this box off the shelf, it means at least a week of playing the same game every night, which can get a little bit old."

"There were times where I felt that I wasn’t really engaged, and I had a hard time paying attention because the decision-making process took a long time."

Adults Say:

"Oh, this is good. This is really really good. It’s the basic Pandemic rules and map, but it follows your team over the course of a yearlong campaign, with one or two games per calendar month. If you’ve played the base game of Pandemic, January will be as comforting as your favorite pox-ridden sweatshirt. It’s bleak, of course, but those characteristic blue blisters erupting all over folks in Los Angeles are a pleasantly familiar foe. I’m going to avoid major spoilers here, but let me just say that suddenly, it’s mid-April and you hear the term 'faded' for the first time, and OMFG. Oh My, Forrest Gump. We knew we were in doo-doo, but it’s a lot deeper than we thought."

"The game changes every time you play it, and the decisions you make in one game carry over to the next. You add stickers to the board, rip up cards, and set buildings on fire when the second wave of outbreaks hits a city. Imagine the sleep we lost when we had to set up permanent roadblocks around everything between Chicago and Montreal, and instruct armed soldiers to shoot all the infected people trying to get out of Michigan. That was a lousy day."

"I love this game, so it only makes sense that my biggest complaint is complete ridiculous. The paper is too glossy. Why does that bother me? Because we are expected to write on the cards and in the instruction manual, and the game designers clearly did not game test their shiny paper with the Pilot G2 Rollerball Gel Pen 0.07mm. Which, as you know, is the only pen worth owning. Unfortunately, the ink doesn’t stick to the paper and/or smears the next time something brushes against it. And this game is tense, so it’s pretty hard to stop pacing, wringing your hands, and brushing against the instruction manual."