Risk: Factions Review (XBLA)

All in all, Risk: Factions is a solid game all around. For 800 MSP ($10) you are getting the full classic version of Risk as well as a re-imagined fresh take on the old game. And you can play either version in multiplayer both locally or on Xbox Live. Risk: Factions is fully featured and tons of fun and easily worth the $10. I highly recommend it.

The classic board game Risk is a strategy game where you try to take over the world by placing armies on a map and then fighting with neighboring "countries" via dice rolls. If you win the dice rolls and defeat all of the armies in the country you are invading, your invading force moves into that country and you're free to attack the next one in line. The more countries you occupy at the beginning of each turn, as well as if you occupy entire continents, determines how many new armies you can add to your forces. By the end of a game, you can earn 40-50 armies at a time, and if you add in bonuses from cards that are distributed after each turn, you can have a ton of armies to count out.

To play Risk in the real world takes a long time. Games can last hours upon hours, and all of the army counting and figuring and dice rolling wears on you. Which is why digital versions of Risk, such as the new Risk: Factions on Xbox Live Arcade, are an improvement over the board game. The dice rolls and math are done for you. All you have to do is form a good strategy of where to place your armies and how to use them effectively. You can finish a game against 4 CPU opponents in under an hour. Playing with human opponents, either locally or via Xbox Live, takes a bit longer, however.

While Risk: Factions offers the full, classic version of Risk, part of the appeal here is the new Factions mode. Factions is a re-imagined version of Risk that is designed to play faster and offer more interesting objectives. Instead of simply taking over all of the countries on the map, you instead have to control specific locations like capital cities, bunkers, and more. New to Factions are environmental disasters and other objects that can drastically alter the course of a game such as volcanoes and dams. There is also a mysterious temple where, if you control all three parts of it, you can immediately take over any country on the map. It has to be said that the core gameplay is still the same as classic Risk - you are still rolling dice and moving armies around to take over countries - but having deeper objectives than just taking over everything make the game more interesting. Likewise, the addition of special powers like the dam or temple or crypts (that let you freeze a country so no one can attack it) add a ton of strategy to the game.

The other major appeal of Factions is the art style. There are five factions to choose from - humans, cats, zombies, robots, and yeti. In the story campaign, there are cutscenes showing how and why the factions are fighting each other, and they are generally very funny. In Factions games you can watch your armies "fight" instead of just watching dice rolls (zombies throw their limbs, cats cough of hairballs, robots do robot stuff ...), but they lose their appeal pretty quickly. Thankfully, you can skip the animations entirely if you want.

Disclosure: A review copy was provided by the publisher. For more information, please see our Ethics Policy.