While Risk: Global Domination does cover all the elements of the board game, it does fall short in many areas.
User Rating: 5 | Risk: Global Domination PS2
Many board games have been adapted to console games such as Monopoly, Life, and various others. Risk: Global Domination is an attempt to recreate what makes the Risk board game fun and put it on your screen. Unfortunatly it fall a bit short in some areas. First off when you start the game you'll notice the somewhat cheesy title music. It's attempt it to capture the old english feel just comes off as annoying. The setup is fairly straight forward. You have your difficulty selections, AI, and all kinds of little modifications to work with. Again though the game only gives you so much and if you want more you have to unlock all the extra features such as dice type and new maps. The problem is the unlockables come in the form of medals and are extremely difficult to obtain them. Some require beating an AI opponent on a certain turn and so forth. So you end up playing for hours just to unlock your new metallic die. This all seems like you just wasted some good hours of you life in the end. The gaphics in Risk: Global Domination are nothing to look at either. When a battle ensues you see two little soldier that look very dated by PS2 standards that shoot at each other with a little explosion to the side that loses while dice roll in the corner. Not exactly exciting and makes you just want to skip them and get the results. The map is pretty much what you expect, a board game map of the earth. The units on the map however are represented by little circles with numbers that are color coded. A little more detail and perhaps it would have made a large difference. The sound in Risk: Global Domination is just plain horrible. Yes the title theme is a bit annoying and cheesy and it last throughout the game as you play, but that's not the biggest problem. During a game the AI general feel it necessary to taunt you when you make a good move and the voice acting is so very bad. Ferdinand sounds like a girly man and the others are just goofy and ridiculous, not to mention is stops the game to do it and is terribly annoying. Overall Risk: Global Domination is a good way to avoid the setup of a table top game and let's you jump into Risk quickly. But if you have a few friends it would probably be better to just set up the old fasion way and go from there. So if you don't like the hassle of setting up a board game or you just don't have any Risk going friends then this game is for you and it starts at a bargain price.
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