Ticket to Ride Review
Trains in themselves are inherently boring, but add cards and a slow pace of progression to the mix, and we’ve got ourselves one yawn-eriffic sounding game you’d get stuck playing with the family on a Friday night. Somehow, though, Ticket to Ride manages to be an incredibly entertaining port of the tabletop classic, in which players build train routes from one end of the country to another — whether that country is Canada, the United States, or both, depends on specific-route cards drawn by the players at the start of, and continuing through, the game.
By building stacks of the same color card, you’ll find its loads of fun to construct gigantic train routes through the country, as building up the biggest set of points is not just addicting, but highly risky. Any assigned route you do not complete at the end of the game will dock you points, but everything else will launch you closer towards a gigantic score of a victory. Building the longest trail of trams and completing more or all of your assigned construction passageways, makes for some solid entertainment that translates surprisingly well from a board game that sounded like the definition of dull.
Ticket to Ride is great, for sure, but it’s limited. It’s worth its price tag, but it’s guaranteed to be a snooze for the average Halo gamer. There are a variety of card games on Xbox Live Arcade, each of them fun in their own way, but each of them uniquely interesting and fresh to a new crowd.
If you are in the market for a fresh feeling game, or already enjoy playing this with the family, Ticket to Ride is a no brainer. For the rest of the Xbox market, even the appeal of four player Live support and the neglected Xbox Live Vision camera won’t rope them in to playing long in to the evening with granny.
