Home > Categories > Games & Puzzles > Board Games > Pandemic Hot Zone: North America review
Disease threatens North America and only you can stop it! In Pandemic: Hot Zone - North America, players work together against the game to discover cures for three deadly diseases that threaten the continent. Travel to different North American cities to treat local populations, prevent outbreaks, and share research with your team. Can you discover the cures before it's too late?
Hot Zone - North America is a shorter, more portable version of the best-selling cooperative game Pandemic.
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Introducing Pandemic: Hot Zone - North America. It's shorter than the original game, easier to pack up and travel with, and perfect for a board game night on the go! We're big fans of this "lite" version to break out with friends or family because it's so easy to set up! We love that we can play anywhere without having to track down specific pieces for gameplay as we have in some other versions of Pandemic. Plus kids will love playing the epic battle against diseases they might not otherwise be able to take on as it just feels a little less heavy and complicated. Great job, team!
My kids love to get together with their friends and play games and I've noticed they enjoy the cooperative ones better because teamwork seems more of a necessity and it takes strategy formation. In Pandemic: Hot Zone - North America, disease threatens the continent and you have to do everything you can to stop it. It is shorter than traditional versions of the game so it would be good for shorter attention spans or if your board game nights are short. Work in teams on three diseases while trying not to let any outbreaks happen before discovering cures when this interesting take on pandemic comes out at stores later this month!
A friend of mine had won a copy of the full version of Pandemic, which I had enjoyed, so when I saw this version available and for half the price of hers, I decided to grab a copy. It was just circumstance that I bought it during lockdown 2020, during a real life pandemic and that the USA wasn't handling the crisis very well at all. This is a nice, compact game which wont take up much space on your shelf but still provide a good game. Basically, you have a limited number of turns during which you need to work together to try and cure the three diseases. There's only one way to win but three ways to loose (too many outbreaks, run out of disease cubes, run out of cards).
Being a co-op game means that it is easy enough for everyone to join in and feel the pressure as you eat closer to the end. Strategy is needed to make sure you can swap cards with the right person, stop outbreaks from happening and managed to get back to the CDC to initiate a cure. It can feel that there isn't much to the game, due to size and how few components there are, but it really does have a decent amount of oomph to it, so you get your moneys worth out of it. Each player also has their own unique ability, so make sure to remember that throughout the game because it does have a big impact on the success of your race to find the cures.
This is a game that has a decent amount of replayability to it and is enjoyable. My eldest loved it so much he opted to name the diseases in our version and most of the time we manage to cure North America of Covid-19, The Plague and Donald Trump...
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