Ticket to Ride (USA) Review
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Ticket to Ride is an XBOX Live Arcade game that is well worth the points/money. The music/ambient sound takes you back to the 30’s and 40’s back when trains were the luxurious way to travel. Even the computer opponent’s pictures are 40’s figures with their glamorous hats and old timey spectacles. The game itself is pretty straightforward, designed like a board game. You select a minimum of two train routes around the United States. Each route is given a point value and you try to completed your route and/or create the longest route. You do this be selecting colored cards that match with the route colors. Each route contains different sets of colors; for example from Los Angeles to San Francisco is 3 yellow cards. So you collect the yellow cards (or wild rainbow cards that can be used for any color) to complete that section of your route. You are allotted 45 train pieces during the game. So you have to make sure that your intended route involves fewer than 45 trains because if the game ends and you have not completed your routes you lose the points allotted to that particular route.
Overall it is a fun game filled with trickery, (trying to mess with your opponents routes) strategy. You also get points for creating the longest continuous train (which can be challenging but very fun). It does get a little repetitive (only about 10 potential routes). It is fun to play in a group with 3 or so people. Sometimes the group can choose to be kind and try not to block each others routes or you can go cutthroat and just go to town! The computer players are fairly difficult but fair.
The graphics are pretty average and the only comment I have is that is can be difficult to distinguish between colors in a route (especially orange and red). To remedy this problem you can zoom in to see your route more clearly but after every turn it zooms back out to show the entire country.
I am looking forward to getting the European map and seeing how I like that one!
7.5 out of 10
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