Get Ticket to Ride [Download]
CUSTOMER REVIEW
Ticket to Ride is an excellent, original board game. This PC game is an adaption of the board game to be played on your computer. The rules, and overall gameplay are identical to the original board game, but PC version falls short of perfection.
Most people who buy this game will have already played and be familiar with the Ticket to Ride board game, so I will focus my review on the PC-version experience.
PROS:
+No setup or put-away time; you can be playing in seconds. Gameplay moves pretty quickly too. I finished my first game in about 10 minutes.
+Many expansions and map variants are available, the same as with the Ticket to Ride board games.
+Counting cards, trains, score, and ticket completion status are all done and tracked for you.
+Cities contained within your set of destination cards are highlighted green so it's super-easy to tell which cities you need to work towards.
+Solo and Online Multiplayer can be played with 2 to 5 players, plus an online ELO ranking system like Chess.
+The original board-game experience is preserved and the game is still great fun to play.
CONS:
-The 1910 expansion is not included. This is a vital expansion to the overall "completeness" of the game, not just a optional variant like a map. I really believe the 1910 expansion should have been included with the game. Other board variants can be purchased for ~$5, including Europe, Swiss, and Asia.
-The interface needs much improvement. The developers were going for an "artsy" feel and it just made it unintuitive and difficult to navigate.
-There is no option for borderless full-screen play. In fact, there are no resolution or video options whatsoever. The game launches in windowed mode, which appears to be about 1200x800 resolution. There are NO options for changing the resolution and if you maximize the window using the Windows maximize button in the upper-right corner, the game just stretches the same resolution. Plus the game is not in true full-screen as the Task Bar and Title Bar are still visible.
-The options screen has about 5 things you can adjust: BGM volume, SFX volume, and three toggle-able options that were simply icons that changed from one to another and were impossible to determine what they did and NO tooltips.
-The game screen is sometimes quite difficult to discern unclaimed routes from routes covered by train cars of the same color. This could be alleviated by making the graphics for the train cars themselves more 3D or slightly larger. As it stands, the train cars are nearly the exact same size and shape as the unclaimed route spaces. This can make it a bit cumbersome to quickly survey available routes, or you might miss the fact that you have an uncompleted route because a small, 2-car green route is left between two unconnected sections of your green train--but you couldn't even tell.
THE VERDICT:
If you're a fan of the Ticket to Ride board game and find yourself with an urge to play every now and then--GET IT! Of course the social aspect of playing a board game with a group of friends is totally missing, but it's fun for a quick distraction from work for a game or two. I would feel somewhat disappointed, however, if I paid more than $5 dollars--maaaaybe $10 dollars--for this game.