by danieldukai
Now that I've had the chance to play with all three of these games, here's how I personally see them:1) Pandemic is the best. So much better than the other two. My only complaint is the rather anti-climactic ending when you put on the last cured disease marker. But the worst thing about the game is the Contingency Planner. There is just no excuse. This was the last game I bought from the three of them.
2) Forbidden Island - The first game I bought to ease my wife into boardgaming. Easy to teach and play, the theme is great and this is the only game where winning actually feels much better to me. You absolutely need to hold onto a helicopter card. It just feels so much better when I win a FI game than a Pandemic or Desert game.
3) Forbidden Desert - Thematically very well put together. However, I feel that the piling sand combined with the sun beating down, plus the fact that you can't recycle equipment cards, makes for a much more frustrating experience. On easy it's too easy, but on normal it becomes a lot harder compared to easy. Also, the anti-climactic ending. The ship is there just for decoration. We even stopped getting it out of the box now. My copy has a discolored, red landing tile that we can easily spot after we setup the game, so we already know the location of the landing tile. But I'm not going to bother getting another copy or a replacement part.
What do you think?