Good, but some major problems

Most everyone loves to play the board game, Risk. In my family, I the reputation of being the Risk King. My brothers and I have spent days playing the original board game, and so, I consider myself a pretty good judge after playing this for the past 2 weeks.

I have found both good and bad.

First the good.

This version makes the game much more playable for those who are newbies. Many of the time-consuming aspects of the game (rolling, troop movement,ect.) benefit from being done automatically, and thus, speed up the game.

Battles being played out through cannon and gun fire, make the game more exciting as well.

This Game Is Fun, Fun, Fun.



Now the bad.

Turning in Risk cards is a big problem. It is possible to turn in the same cards over and over. Additionally, the game lets you to look at your cards with opponents in the room by allowing you to show a fake card and thus, they don't know if it's really the right one. Well... this tends to confuse yourself more and seems to change what you DO have. Plus, it's a problem for other players to see what cards they have and therefore not plan which ones they will turn in.

In short, be careful when managing your cards.

My solution has been to go by the "Increase by one" rule. It's the better rule anyway. Gaining 50 armies when you have only one country and are about to die has always been a weakness of the game. Going with this rule, there's very little problem with the glitches in the risk cards. Everyone in the room can see when someone tries to cheat by turning in their cards more than once.


In conclusion, I would recommend this game to anyone who either loves to play the board game and wants to be able to play alone against the computer, or for those hoping to get new players into the game.
However, don't get rid of your board and pieces quite yet.

P.S.- You'll see alot of people ripping on this game over the coming months. They may talk about the PC game and say that this Playstation version really stinks, but remind them that it's awfully hard to crowd the family around their 4gig PC in office and fold-up chairs to enjoy a 4 hour game.