Popular Ownership Board Games (Mechanic)

I think the first modern board game I ever tried solo was #Pandemic. I had been told about Vassel, a board game emulator and I thought I would give it a try. I loaded up pandemic on it and started to play. It was a little unweildly and then I suddenly realised I could just get my physical copy out and play with that much more easily than on the computer (I'm not the sharpest of tools but I get there in the end).

In case anyone hasn't played Pandemic, it is a cooperative game where the world has been infected with four diseases and you play various specialists at the CDC who have to run around the globe keeping the diseases in check while alos trying to gather the cards needed to cure each one. You win if you cure all four diseases (you cure a disease by getting 5 of that colour card to one player who then takes them to a research centre). You lose if either you run out of cards, place all the disease cubes of one colour onto the board or get a certain number of 'outbreaks' (where too much disease builds up in one city).

I played controlling two characters which was pretty managable in terms of keeping track of everything. Your character doesn't change or improve throught the game so mostly you are just keeping an eye on the board like you would in a multi-player game. I imagine you could play with four characters on your own without too much difficulty. When playing solo it is very much a puzzle in efficiency with your own actions and playing the odds with where the disease willl strike next. While multi-player pandemic there is often a lot of discussion as people have different ideas about how to deal with a situation, solo is all just you. Because of the simplicity of the game, in multiplayer there is a tendancy for quarterbacking, or even if you all have input for player to not really feel ownership of there character, it becomes a team puzzle and who controls which character is very arbitrary. While this can be nice I think I prefer games where you feel an attachment. 

Now, in solo mode that ceases to be an issue as you are controlling all the cogs. While it wasn't a thrilling experience it was a lightweight and relaxing one of just working through the puzzle. The game plays in an hour and while I absolutely got my butt handed to me by the game that did not harm the experience (plus it was my fault as I had been optimistic by putting all the epidemic cards into the deck).

Have you guys tried coop games solo and how did you find them?