A fine adaptation of a classic board game.
If by some chance you've never heard of Risk, the rules are thus: You, along with up to four other players, battle for world dominance as players take turns attacking and capturing territories, as well as drafting new troops and moving them about the playing field. The goal is to take control of the entire map. Getting there is achieved through combat, the outcome of which is dictated by dice rolls. Each side gets up to three dice in play, one for each solider engaged in battle, with the highest rolls being declared victorious. Simple enough, right?
Though it's a strong foundation, it isn't terribly involving or fast moving for videogame standards. The original board game, for example, would often take a number of hours to finish a single game due to each side being unrelenting with its offense. Given that a good amount of that time is spent waiting for others to take their turns, it quickly wears you down. Sometimes to the point of ending a match early. It's for that reason that Risk has never before made a successful jump to consoles before.
To combat this, Factions has seen a few additions to the long-standing formula to make that basis a little more interesting -- most notable of which are the objectives. Expanding on the base concept of "world conquest," objectives offer smaller, simpler tasks that, when completed, reward you with chevrons that grant various helpful abilities, as well as put you closer toward victory (completing any three objectives wins the game instantly). Requisites for completion of objectives are simple, sticking to small achievements such as controlling a certain continent, capturing a certain number of territories in a single turn, and controlling certain landmarks -- many of which grant further abilities if captured. This doesn't increase the pace of the game (that's entirely dependant on who's playing), but it considerably shortens the time it takes to finish any given match.
Getting back to the chevrons, though: the best way to describe them would be as Risk's equivalent to perks in a Call of Duty or other such game. The difference here being that they only last for as long as the match is prolonged instead of being permanent fixtures. Abilities granted from chevrons are, with a couple exceptions, small and hardly affect tide of war. That qualification mostly applies to things like additional troop maneuvers, which, while certainly beneficial, are hardly the most... enticing reward of the bunch. Gaining an extra two troops every draft phase, being able to construct airports, and getting an extra attack or defense die (or both, even) are the ones that carry more sway. Because of that, they're also the ones that take priority, often causing players to scramble about as they race for those chevrons. Once collected, that particular chevron cannot be obtained by anyone else. Additionally, the aforementioned landmarks grant perks of their own that are tons more devastating than anything else. The Temple, for instance, allows the owner to convert enemy territories into their own, allowing for a quick and easy means of wiping out the opposition. With something like that under your command, along with a few good chevrons, you become a practically unstoppable force on the battlefield.
All these elements, though minute in the grand scheme of things, culminate to make Risk feel more in-line with your average turn-based strategy game. With the presence of objectives, now, no longer is the game a simple linear matter of "mow down the opposition and become a maniacal overlord," but a more open-ended one where there are plenty of tactical options available. Not only does this mean that you have plenty of ways to recover from a bad situation, but it also adds a touch of depth to the overall gameplay. It's an intelligent way to adapt a board game into a videogame.
To add a semblance of context behind all this military action, Factions also has a campaign mode complete with a light but entertaining story. The gist of the situation is that one of the factions -- the humans -- while undergoing training exercises one day end up accidentally sending off an explosive toward foreign territory and refuse to apologize for the mishap. And thus begins an increasingly more complex conflict that embroils everything from cats and robots to zombies and yetis. (Each of those races make up the different factions, by the way.) Story manifests itself only in brief but superbly animated cut scenes that play before each of the five skirmishes available in the campaign. Because there's so little there, though, it feels more like a training mode of sorts than an actual full-blown single-player mode. Introducing you to the new elements and such here is its only concern.
You have to turn to the multiplayer side for some real fun. Risk: Factions offers up both online and offline multiplayer along with a ton of maps on which to battle. Options aren't exceptionally varied, only offering a choice between the Factions version of Risk or the original in terms of rule-sets. Though the online function is nice, the offline is generally the better and more reliable option. This isn't because the online is broken or anything, mind you -- it works quite well, actually -- it's because the game just doesn't lend itself well to that environment. Due to the nature of Risk, you can easily pick up on when you've basically lost and there's nothing that can be done to change it, leaving little reason to stick around for the remainder of the match. Finding a full group of users who would stay for the entirety of the game was nigh impossible during my attempts. That the players often take their sweet ol' time taking their turns doesn't help keep 'em around either. Therefore, unless you've got friends who you will stick it out to the end to play with online, your better off sticking to the offline side. It's a shame, too, because the online portion is where most of the game's longevity lies. That it's players aren't willing see games through to the end, and that it isn't the most highly populated game at the moment, is a massive disappointment.
Presentation wise, Factions is rather bland. The map is rendered in 3D, technically, but it's flat appearance and general lack of interesting elements and simplistic design hardly provide a pleasing aesthetic. Spry battle animations are the only real high point visually. Every battle is accompanied by a number of soldiers at the bottom of the screen that savagely murder each other (okay, maybe not savagely -- its very tame, actually) with each dice roll. The commanders of each faction appear in the upper corners of the screen during combative sequences as well, eliciting minor facial reactions to the performance of their respective troops. Animations aren't very diverse, offering up only a handful of attack animations per faction, but they're always an enjoyable accompaniment to the otherwise dullness of battle. Occasional glitching arises every now and then that makes a particular unit look like a miss-mash of assorted art assets, but nothing that disrupts functionality.
Factions is by no means the "definitive" version of Risk. As far as digital board games go, though, it's certainly one of the better ones. If you have $10 bucks just lying around and have an insatiable craving for some Risk or just want some board game fun without the board game, Risk: Factions fills that need nicely.