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Risk: Factions
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Graphics & Sound:
Risk: Factions proves that you can make a simple strategy game look as entertaining as it is to play. The colorful cartoon art takes center stage here, and it really brings the characters to life. Play as the cats and your troops may scratch or use a sonic meow against their enemies. Play as the robots and you get those satisfying "pew-pew" laser attacks. It's goofy, but well done.
The sound complements everything in just the right way. Expect a lot of meows and purrs from the cat side, silly enough against the backdrop of explosions and laser sounds to draw the attention of anyone in the room. Expect a lot of, "what the hell is going on over there?" The cut scenes are well done, with every faction voiced in their own unique and hilarious manner. These scenes are funny enough to stand on their own, even without the backdrop of the game.
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Gameplay:
In Risk: Factions, you start the Campaign Mode as a proud, war-loving general named McGutterpants who promptly gets himself into a war with an army of cats. To beat the cats, the humans dust off an old robotic defense system. The robot turns on everyone, including the humans. One thing leads to another in this war, and somehow zombies and snow yeti join the fray. Unfortunately, the entertaining Campaign Mode is pretty short. It does, however, unlock maps and characters for use in the rest of the game's modes.
If you're familiar with the classic board game of Risk, you can still play that Classic Mode. For those unfamiliar with the game, basically Risk has you place troops in territories on a world map. Your aim is to take over the map, waging battles territory by territory. It's a numbers and luck game, but there is plenty of strategy to play on as well. Risk: Factions has a new mode, however, with a lot of interesting features. Every map features at least one special landmark that you can use to turn the tides to your advantage. For example, if you take control of a dam, you can flood part of the map, reducing the troop count in every territory there to just 1. This can, of course, work to your disadvantage. Taking over and maintaining control of these special map features can also be costly, and risky, of course.
The game features a number of multiplayer options. You can play a local hotseat, which makes a lot of sense in a game based on a board game. You can also look for a game online, or simply set up a CPU game. You've got variety, though a more robust online system would have been nicer. Searching and searching for open games can get boring pretty quick. |
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Difficulty:
Risk: Factions could make itself a lot harder in several ways, but it avoids those things in favor of being a pretty fair game. Risk is, after all, a game dependant on luck as much as strategy in order to win. Stacking the odds against you by pitting the rest of the board against you would be pretty frustrating and unfair. Computer players generally take out each other as much as they try to take you out. But the computer players also seem to ignore key choke points and really lack a strategy at times.
Winning against the computer is entirely achievable, even when there are 5 factions on the board at once. But, of course, if you're playing Risk because you enjoyed the board game, then you're probably looking for the human opponent experience anyway.
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Game Mechanics:
Risk: Factions is a point-and-click game, and doesn't have too many issues with this simple interface. Only a few points detract from what would otherwise be a perfect game. One of those problems is the waiting. Of course, there is nothing you can do when your human opponent wants to take their sweet time, but with the CPU, it can seem agonizing. There is a speed up option, but it doesn't seem like enough for my twitchy mouse finger.
Another issue is a button you must hit in order to start the game, but unfortunately, it remains black until you mouse over it. It's essentially a hidden start button at times, and a pretty aggravating way to start the game off. I restarted the first time I played thinking the game was hung up and not automatically advancing as it should. It's also just not labeled, and sometimes there's another button on the other side of the screen. It's up to you to figure out what they do by just pressing them, and what fun that is.
But really, Risk: Factions doesn't fail in the control department, and it does well everywhere else as well. Who knew Risk needed zombies, cats, and robots, but it works so well. This is a great, cute little version of Risk. There's a bit of replay value if you want to go back and achieve certain objectives on each map as well. Generally, it's not a challenging experience when you're going against the computer, so plan on finding some human competition if that's what you're looking for.
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-Fights with Fire, GameVortex Communications AKA Christin Deville |
Minimum System Requirements:
OS: Windows XP with Service Pack 3, Processor: 2GHz CPU (Pentium 4 or equivalent), Memory: 1GB RAM (2GB for Vista), Video Card: GPU capable of Pixel Shader 3.0 or better, VRAM: 256MB, DirectX(r): 9c or later, Video Playback;: Windows Media Feature pack must be installed
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Test System:
Windows XP, 3.20 GigaHertz Intel Pentium 4, 3 GB Ram, RADEON X850, Creative SB Audigy 2 ZS |
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Related Links:
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