Nathan Blades looks at the polarising RPG for PS3 & 360.
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Nathan Blades covers some console and industry-defining titles for the Sony PlayStation
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Viral is an unusual game, because, unlike other god-simulators like Black and White or Sim City, where you must care for people, or at least have a choice in the matter, in Viral your only purpose is to eradicate them. You create a virus, and with a set number of evolutionary points try and augment certain capabilities (aerial transmission, transmission by water etc) and then set it loose on a specified part of the world. As the virus infects more and more people, governments start taking measures to destroy your virus. The game ends when there are no more people to infect, all the people with the illness have died, or a vaccine has succeeded.
Viral pretends that there is a strategy behind the game, but it’s a laughably simplistic one. I know it’s an iPhone app that costs less than a pound but there are many serious and challenging games on this format, Make the symptoms of the virus too obvious then governments will shut places like ports and start developing a vaccine more quickly. On my first go I decided to go with ‘fatigue’ and spent all my evolutionary points on suppressing the body’s immune system. The moment I unleashed the virus it spread to other countries so rapidly I had more evolutionary points than I knew what to do with. Within three in-game days (roughly 6 minutes at maximum speed) I had wiped out the whole earth! I’m not trying to say I’m some sort of a gaming god; far from it, I tried the game three times with emphasis on different traits each time and every game resulted in a worldwide apocalypse before Wednesday teatime!
Although iPhone games are increasing in variety, they still don’t compare to the innumerable Flash computer games available a mouse-click away. Pandemic 2 is a much better viral game with actual tactics being required and unlike Viral, the interface system was clear instead of fiddly. You might ask how much time I have on my hands that I have played two virus games – however regardless of that, I would urge you not to waste your money on Viral, unless you want your ego massaged as King of Easy Video Games.
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