Pandemic

Pandemic is a 2-4 player cooperative game where the aim is to cure four infectious diseases that are taking over the word. To win, all four cures must be discovered. To lose, (1) run out of cards in the deck, (2) suffer 8 outbreaks, (3) run out of disease markers to place for any strain. Generally, it is much easier to lose this game than win it. However, the makers have built in three modes (Easy, Average, Difficult, if you will) depending on the number of Epidemics (an automatic event triggered when drawn from the deck). 

The great feature of this game is that it is co-op, meaning everyone is on the same team and works together. As it turns out, there is an expansion which allows one player to work as a saboteur, but we won't get into that in this review. On one hand, being a co-op game means that everyone gets to discuss and formulate a strategy together. On the other hand, quiet players may have difficulty interjecting themselves in discussions and outgoing teammates might wind up dictating their moves, leading to a not-so-fun game. To enjoy this game, everyone needs to speak up and give input. Optimally, the player whose turn it is would have the final say on their own actions that turn. One way to make sure everyone gets to interact with the board is to place one set of infection markers in front of each individual, so everyone gets to mark one type of strain. 

Beware that this game is very easy to lose. Failure to notice the Infection cards that have come up or leave too many cities at near-outbreaks and one unlucky Epidemic could cost you the game. At the highest difficulty (6 Epidemics in the deck), luck must be on your side in addition to skill. It is rare to complete the game in any mode without a single outbreak, so pay attention to how many turns you are spending clearing infection cubes. 

Pandemic is a great game to play with those competitive family members who make board games impossible and has a serious replay value in randomizing the set of roles (each player gets a "special power" for each game) and modifying the difficulty (number of Epidemic cards). 

Lego Marvel Super Heroes

Lego Marvel Super Heroes is a platformer with some puzzle-solving elements and RPG elements. The game can be one or two players, although admittedly the dynamic split-screen can cause headaches during the regular game levels (there's a setting to switch to static split-screen, I believe). This game has all of the elements one could want in an action-adventure game: iconic super heroes like Hulk and Spider Man, a visible completion statistic that doesn't seem unreachable (I'm at 217/250 for golden bricks) and unlockables (so more characters open up the further you progress in the game). I played the PC version of this game. 

At first we had a bit of a struggle setting up a GameCube controller for player two, but the secret is that you should plug in the controller before starting the game and set up any controller software to get it to run right. The game did a swell job of auto-matching the controller buttons to the game controls, so that was nice as we were able to dive right in.

There are about 16 regular levels and 10 bonus levels in the game. The bonus levels unlock as golden bricks are collected (either from completing story mode levels or finishing quests in the New York City sandbox). While most of the puzzles are intuitive or even obvious (so it's pretty kid-friendly), there are a few that are so off-the-wall that we had to look up hints (boo). Additionally, there were many bugs where I got stuck between the scenery and walls or between adjacent walls merely by jumping into the "wrong area". Luckily, when a piece gets stuck, usually one can just switch to player 2 (if there's only one player) or drop out (on the pause menu) and re-enter the game (hitting any button on controller). Another cool facet to this game is that there are a ton of characters - more than 150 - and one can customize their own character to include elements of the other characters (IronShield, anyone?).