Risk II Review

We all know what Risk is, yes we all take risks at times, you take a risk coming to this site, we all take risks while driving and they are all bad risks, except for one! A risk where you're in the comfort of your own home, playing, well... Risk!

Risk started out as a boardgame, mainly aimed at families but the length of time it took to complete a game meant you had to take 2 weeks off work, see a psychiatrist every other day and go bald! Then they ported it to the PC, a game I never played, actually I never played the board game which means I have a full head of hair!

Now comes the Sequal to what many people said was a big disappointment to them and to the board game, I am about to play my first game of risk and pray!

The simplicity of the game is just un-nerving, you just get your areas of the planet, build up your forces and attack another area. However you need to think about your borders with other dictators as yourself, they all are cunning tacticians and great warriors which does not bode well with me.

The simplicity goes even further, to attack you select the number of troops you want to attack a territory, you then are zoomed closer to that territory and dice are rolled to see who wins. The dice are dealt up one per unit up to a max of 3 dice and the higher dice score wins so if you have 3 units and tour attacking a stage with only 1 unit you get to roll 3 dice and they only roll 1. Now even though this is a fair way to do it you can sometimes find yourself losing a large force against 1 unit thanks to the unlucky dice rolls, tell me if I am wrong but is that meant to happen?

While battling is down to chance more than anything else, you do control a bit of the action, every turn you are given a number of reinforcements depending on your number of territories currently held and the number of full continents you hold. These reinforcements can be placed anywhere you like them to be placed ready for your next attack or defence.

You also get a tactical stage where you are able to move a number of troops from 1 territory to a neighbouring one, you only get 1 move so you need to think about it carefully.

The maps can be laid out in 2 ways. You have the standard boardgame style map where the whole view is available and you can see everything at once, then you have your world view, which is shaped like a globe, you get to rotate it and view it as if you were some kind of space god controlling your invasion army. The main problem with this is that you don't get to view all the action simultaneously which is a major drawback, it can be fun for a bit but its nothing more than a cheap novelty.

The ingame graphics are great, no 3D polygons for you to stare at here, everything is lovely and rendered, which means crisp graphics are in the order of the day, nothing is ever blocky and it makes the game look really nice.

The sounds are also quite good, you hear the gunshots, troops dying, the click of buttons and that about it. The music isn't too bad, it's all minimalistic and pretty good.

Generally that games a winner, the fact that you can get ripped off by the unlucky random dice rolls is one hell of a major draw back. Taking 20 troops to kill 1 unit aint too bad but when you come back with only 5 units you start to think something's wrong.

Take away the bad bit and you've got a game that's got some good gameplay and the multiplayer addition allows you to invite your mates round for a good bashing!