RISK: Factions Review
RISK: Factions was recently released for the Xbox Live Arcade, and being the massive boardgame geek I am (or at least what college has turned me into), I had to pick it up almost immediately. A console version true to the roots in the original board strategy game, RISK: Factions adds new twists and gameplay elements to the game, with extra flair through the included factions and battle animations.
RISK: Factions includes a campaign mode, featuring five separate missions in which you play as each of the various factions in the game – the Humans, the Cats, the Robots, the Zombies, and the Yeti – each faction with a typically humourous leader intended to portray the faction. The differences between the factions is purely cosmetic, however this makes the battle screen more entertaining, with each side having different types of units shown, with different attacks, and even different styles of dice to add the the humour.
However, the campaign is very short, with only five missions. Also, each mission is just a vanilla game of Risk, as there is no real abnormal objective to accomplish. Thus, you will be forced into custom games or Xbox Live matches fairly quickly.
Custom games, much to the word, can be played in whatever way you want – you pick the map, number of players, and style of gameplay including the new 2008 style rules with objectives, cities, and capitals; or a good old-fashioned take over the entire world game that we all loved to play but hated losing as a child. Classic Risk is also included to play if you can’t bear to embrace the recent changes in the game.
The one major downside to the game is also the main gameplay element behind it – the luck of the dice rolls. When the dice are working against you, the game can get very annoying very quickly, be it losing seven armies to a single army on defense with the AI, to rolling four 1′s when on attack. The AI can also be quite annoying, almost always taking the tactic of dumping their entire draft into a single territory, and steamrolling right through you – but also at times simply engaging in a single attack to take a single territory, then backing off despite having the large unit advantage.
In general, RISK: Factions is a good game to pick up on the Xbox Live Arcade if you are a traditional gaming fan. It brings the game into a more accessible way with the ability to play with others around the world easily, plus the visuals really help offset the fact you don’t have a big giant game board and tons of tiny little plastic pieces in front of you.
Nice!