Its finally arrvied & all us veteren Risk fans can finally re-live the old days without those fiddely pieces
Positives:
On a quick glance of the game you could easily been put off by its cartoony spin that has been put into the Faction side of risk but i have to say i am a convert. The factions part of risk is very well implemented and the quirky cartoon graphics does not detract from the overall risk experience.
Having both the old board game and updated risk version which includes the objective based format this game fits in nicely to make a welcome addition.
The streamlined version of factions makes it fun to play & still just about manages to keep the stategy side intact for the most part with obvously a mix of luck thrown in. The inclusions of Dams, Volcano's, Crypts. Temples,Weapon Silos and Barracks are also a nice touch to make the the factions game very playable indeed & for a different spin on the orginal. Having played a few of these on different maps they are real good fun. Well done Stainless Games for this aspect.
Negatives:
The reason i have not scored this as high as i wish i could was to do with some mad reason developers needlessly limited the games custom options
and FORGOT that there are more than 1 rule to playing risk. (Massive sigh of disspointment)
For instance the classic risk version does not allow you to customise the the game very much at all WHY OH WHY have they done this to us. They had a fantastic opportunity to make this an open ended customisable feast and ruined the chance. All that can be done in the custom option is too choose whether or not you want to place the armies yourself with predetermined countries or have the CPU do it for you. You cannot choose your own countries like in the classic PC risk 2 Version which adds another element to the game play.
Another let down in the customisation is that you have only the option to play the classic game with the one rule for trading your game cards in where theres blatently 2 options in the orginal.
The accumulative armies option is the only one that is avaliable which makes the end of the game for the last say 2 players a bit of a lottery on who hits there cards first to get given the 30/45 armies+ to win the game. I have had numerous games like this already and it does ruin the overall experience without having the options to select the other rule.
Suerly it would not be to hard to actually the include the full options you get in the classic board game where you can have the option to have the cards option set to the standard, 4 Infantry, 6 Horsemen & 10 Cannons? Its ludicrous they have not included this option in the customisation menu - thats what is FOR!!! - And this is a risk classic game RULE....??? Please Please STAINLESS if you read this please include this in the next update
My last gripe is that this is mainly ment to be an online game/experience and yet you can only play one local player on XBOX live!!!!. Unreal how they took this decision not to implent it. This spoils it hugely for me not being able to have any friend to play with in the same room against the xbox community, it's not if were going to cheat, this is risk and one person takes all for heavens sake.
Okay i know i said i would have only one more criticism, the campaign mode is a bit short, only having 5 missions which i completed in under 4 hours. Not a campaign really lol. Hopefully future downloadable content will include more.
Overall i really do like this game despite my moans. But c'mon developers STAINLESS the restrictiveness of the custom options is farcical for what was supposed to be an predominately online experience. SORT IT OUT PLEASE.