TL;DR
Pandemic Train puts you in charge of the last hope on a virus-ravaged Earth: a train. You'll manage resources like food and medicine, fend off hostile forces in real-time combat, and keep your passengers alive. While the retro visuals and upgrade options are neat, the game suffers from repetitive gameplay and frustrating controls, whether you're using a mouse and keyboard or a controller. It's a solid concept for survival fans, but the execution has some serious bumps. Want to know if it's worth the journey? Read on for the full review!
In Pandemic Train, a devastating virus has ravaged Earth, decimating the population. Hope resides in a train under the player’s control. This train travels between locations to gather essential resources, often encountering hostile forces. Aboard the train, efficient time management is crucial for producing sufficient food, medicine, and ammunition. Maintaining the well-being of the passengers, keeping them fed, healthy, and virus-free, presents a significant challenge as enemy threats escalate.
Pandemic Train can be categorized as a resource management title. Players must efficiently produce essential supplies to sustain the characters within the game. While the trailer suggested a turn-based strategy game with isometric visuals, the core gameplay revolves around resource management and real-time combat.
Pandemic Train features a distinctive aesthetic and a retro-inspired graphical style. The game incorporates numerous upgrade options and emphasizes the effective utilization of resources, a common element in this genre. Between destinations, players allocate “points” to various characters, influencing their productivity and ensuring the continuation of the journey.
Upon arrival at each stop, players can explore the environment and engage in combat with attacking enemies. Certain locations feature boss encounters with formidable adversaries. Trading for supplies and tools is also possible, with the crowbar being a particularly vital tool for accessing locked gates and containers.
A significant drawback of Pandemic Train is its tendency towards repetition. The core gameplay loop involves resource management on the train, combat at each station, and then repeating this process. Furthermore, the control scheme presents challenges regardless of the input method used. Initially, using the mouse and keyboard offered seamless access to information within the train section.
However, issues arise when exploring stations, as movement relies on directional keys rather than point-and-click navigation. The isometric perspective complicates movement, making precise diagonal traversal difficult. Aiming with the mouse also feels imprecise. Switching to a controller improved the combat experience, but navigating the cutscenes proved problematic. Unlike similar titles, Pandemic Train lacks a direct cursor control option when using a controller, forcing players to cycle through choices in a cumbersome manner.
In conclusion, Pandemic Train presents an interesting concept, and players who enjoy resource management and survival mechanics may find it more appealing. However, the game’s flawed mechanics detract from the overall experience.
Play Way provided a review code for this evaluation. Provision of material does not influence editorial objectivity.
