Little Risk, Decent Reward | RISK Review

There’s always been something strange to me about playing a board game as a video game. Half of the fun of a board game is the social interaction between players in the same room, so losing that aspect certainly neuters the experience, at least for me. One of my all time favorite board games is RISK, not only because it’s fairly easy to learn, but because it can offer such sweet rewards or such excruciating defeat in a split second. RISK for both PlayStation 4 and Xbox One is a decent iteration of the iconic board game, but its somewhat boring backdrop and inconsistent AI and “chance” undermines the original formula and diminishes the game’s overall fun.

RISK is a fairly straightforward game: the world is broken up into territories, and your goal is to conquer and capture as many territories as possible in order to defeat your enemies. During their respective turn, players can set forces in their territories, attack another territory, or transfer units to another controlled area to bolster defenses. If you choose to attack an area, you’ll roll dice against the defending territory. As the attacker, your goal is to roll an overall higher number than your defender, because if the defending player rolls a greater or equal number than yours, you lose a unit. Each controlled territory must hold at least one unit, so it’s important to spread out forces accordingly so you don’t make too many territories easy for the taking.

This iteration of RISK takes place in a near-future battle simulation. The overall setting has become fairly stale in video games, and, along with the female AI walking through every move, it’s just too common a note to hit. There are some cool animations to personify your normally imagination-fueled battles, but it presents an embarrassing issue with RISK – the game suffers from serious frame-rate drops. I almost couldn’t believe it when the drops first occurred, especially since the animations are fairly basic, but these frame-rate drops are common place, and it seems inexcusable for such a low-demanding visual game.

Playing with the AI is hit and miss, and sometimes the “chance” of battle seemed a little stacked against me. There were some situations where I would attack with an 8+ fortified territory against a enemy territory with only one unit – and I would lose. This of course is entirely possible in real RISK, but it happened multiple times to me in my time with the game. Perhaps it was just dreadful luck, but it’s hard to believe it would be that bad.

While playing against the AI, you can skip their turn, you can only speed it up. You can’t even set the game to fast forward every move, you’ll have to individually tell the game to fast forward the move every single time. It becomes so frustrating and time consuming, and suddenly every AI player has become that friend that’s on their cell phone on their turn taking their sweet time no matter how hard you try to get their attention. Not to mention the female AI commentary that details every possible occurrence, and any hope of having a swiftly played game died as soon as you started.

The bottom line with RISK is precisely what you would expect: if you enjoy playing the board game, you’ll likely enjoy playing it here; though if you already enjoy playing RISK, it might just be wiser to buy the actual board game than playing it on a gaming console.

This review is based on a review copy of the PlayStation 4 version of the game Risk by Zoe Mode, Published by Ubisoft.