This is my second review, and after the disaster the first one came to be, I want to reivindicate with a quality one (at least by my standards), so as you can see further down, you will not find any rules description or small review on all the quirks and strategies of the game itself. Also I really like negative reviews as they show the downs on a game you may want to buy, so I hope this helps...

This review will let you know one essential thing:

The Xbox360 version sucks...

Here's why:

First of all, making a comparison against real the boardgame isn't fair... Or is it?. Look at the daysofwonder.com version:



Everything is there. The great map with all the mistakes we all love to point out everytime we play with new people, all the colors and the awesome design, the routes are all clearly stated by the names of the cities, all the cards remain awesome with the same design (including the colorblind-cry-no-more small symbols). Even I dare to say the dow.com version improves the game in some non-social instances, such as the auto randomness of the cards, the red dots that appear on every city you're supposed to conect, the way all your points add up by itself, even the simple numbers that point out how many cards a player has in his hand (only complaint: it can't go over 8), you can even choose who to play with (and what level). The interface is just beautiful and is the closest thing you can have to play face to face.

So, what's wrong with the xbox version?

Well, see it for yourself:



So, here's why I think it sucks:

1. The desing all changed to become immersed in "old west" look (or whatever) so, everything in the game will look in the same color as the background of this picture, also everything has an "old" feel to it. So, what's wrong with that? All the game becomes dark and boring after 20 minutes of play. The map is plain and boring, it seems someone drew lines in a regular old map and that's it...you have a "DOW authorized TTR for your Xbox360", the colors are really confusing (even more when you're colorblind as I am) and nothing, nothing has the original desing, so if you're used to play it on real life, guess what, you have to recognize the colors of all cards all over again! Fun.. isn't it?... is it?... DUH!, NO! Also, the routes keep "glaring" every minute or so, making it even more difficult to keep track of what your routes are, because the routes you got are also "illuminated". In one word, the whole desing of this version is BORING...

2. When your turn comes you have to press a button according to what action you want to play, this gives a rather strange feeling, the feeling that you're not really involved in what you do. In dow.com version you have to select and drag the cards to the route you have, this gives an "organic" feel to it, in here you only press a button and more the cursor a bit around and there you are, you have. What's the difference? Well I dunno, the desing is still bugging me...

3. The cards are not well randomized. Remember how frustrating it is to not get that last white card you need... well get prepared for an all new experience of frustration...

4. You can't see all your routes at once. As a OCD player (as most of us geek are) I want to see all my routes at once, all quickly to keep the game moving and to fulfill my strategy of keeping most of my routes together. Also my short-term memory is not really good, so I have to keep looking at them over, and over, and over again. After, again, 20 minutes of scrolling through the routes I became tired and left the game.

5. There's two maps: Tutorial and USA. Tutorial is a tutorial... USA is USA. Where's Europe? Where's Switzerland? Oh wait... I forgot it was Microsoft, the company where you have to pay every single thing you want to download, even wallpapers, pictures of games, some add-ons, and so on.

So, as you see, I like DOW (even if I hate their recent "lets stick to what we got" policy and even when they just released 1 new game in 2007), but the new game aint worth the 10 bucks you're going to pay on the 800 Points.

If you want games that are worth every penny you're gonna pay, you want to download the 90's old version of DOOM (400P), Halo: Combat Evolved (1200P), Fable (1200P), The Catan and Carcassone versions are also decent (800P), even some classics as Street Fighter and Sonic the Hedgehog, Frogger, Metal Slug 3, PacMan, Prince of Persia, Castelvania (and more) are worth even more that this crappy version of Ticket To Ride.

So, stick to the www.daysofwonder.com version, it's free, it's beautiful and you will find great people there (and a lot of BGG'ers)

I like it, you don't. Opinions are what reviews are all about though.

I like it also.

Also....as I was checking my LIVE achievemenets, I noticed TtR Europe and 1910 achievemenets at the bottom of the list. They weren't there there yesterday morning. It looks like Europe is coming soon.

Considering the fact that the 360 doesn't have a mouse, I'm not sure what else they could have done. Gamepads are more cumbersome than a mouse by their very nature, and I'm pretty sure a "drag the cards" mechanic using a gamepad would be pretty horrid.



Can you elaborate on this?



I've only played the demo once, but don't the names of the cities on the board represent your routes? In other words, if you only had a single route (hypothetically) from New York to Los Angeles, wouldn't New York and Los Angeles be the only city names visible on the screen?



Is this a review of TtR or Microsoft? Ticket to Ride is a console version of the original boardgame. The original boardgame had one map, the USA.

I appreciate the review, because I'm trying to decide whether to pick up the 360 version. It doesn't seem like you're being very even-handed in your critique, though.

I seriously doubt this was Microsoft's decision. If you have the board game, you know you have to pay extra for any of the other boards (full price, actually, since they are boxed games in themselves for Europe or Marklin; even Switzerland was $30). I think this was DoW's call.

I think the biggest problems you're having are control and how close you sit to the screen. The controls are not perfect on the XBox 360 version, but with no mouse they are workable. The biggest change for me is how things look, but when you are used to sitting less than 2 feet from your computer monitor, you can notice subtle things on the game board and the size of items in the game can be shrunk. When I sit 8 feet away from my TV (even with my 51" widescreen), it is hard to see things sometime.

The worst part of the game, in my opinion, is that it really needs to be patched to help differentiate between purple and red, orange and yellow, and gray and black. I am by no means color blind, but I have trouble distinguishing between them sometimes unless I have the map on maximum zoom. A drawback, yes, but not enough to say that the game sucks.

I actually agree with most of interface problems from the review.

For those arguing that the xbox 360 controller can't handle things like "dragging the cards," I have to disagree. The Xbox 360 controller has two thumbsticks. You can use these to control your head and body simultaneously while running around Halo 3 - or to command huge armies in Command & Conquer... you're telling me they weren't able to figure out moving some cards onto a map? Now that I think of it, even my old Atari 2600 joystick allowed dragging blips from here to there.

I also find it frustrating not being able to see all my tickets at once. Why would they do that? Why? Why? Why? And I HATE having to constantly scroll around to see the whole map. Especially when there's so much of the screen that's just wasted space! And what were they thinking when they came up with those colors? I'm not colorblind, but I feel like I am when I play this game.

The Xbox 360 version just points out everything I took for granted with the DOW web version.

The developers should study the Xbox version of CATAN. Now that is a well designed interface; way better than any online version I've tried.

This point on the tickets is interesting because as I look at the screenshot above, there would seem to be wasted space under the train cards. Why not lay the tickets out horizontally. Or maybe move the player character images down there and then stack your tickets vertically along the left which would be even better as you'd only have to see the connection names along the top of the ticket card. Seems like the interface could use some tweaks.

Totally agree here. I like the game, think it works great, but there have been instances where I've mixed up an orange and red path, and I see colors just fine.

The orange needs to be a little lighter orange so that it looks less like the red.

I also like this game on the XBox 360, and I believe that the red/orange problem is my worst complaint of it. Everything else comes naturally - my control movements are quick and easy now.

Otherwise, I've played with a lot of people that wouldn't normally play these types of games if it wasn't put on the XBox. Two kids around the ages of 16 are actually going to buy the boardgame now so they can play it at home with their friends who don't have XBoxes. Along with Carcassone.

So I consider this a victory for boardgames, instead of the problem for XBox Live game as outlined by the OP. As long as XBL keeps exposing people to boardgames and drawing their interests to the games, then it's a win/win situation.

I'm laughing at you for this claim. I assure you: that's all in your mind.
Perhaps your opponents were hoarding white cards before the shuffle.

I agree. I actually got back into boardgaming because of Catan on Xbox Live. I hadn't heard of it before until then. Since then I've purchased quite a few board games including many different TtR variants

I also chuckled over this. Reminded me of a friend mentioning how this was a common complaint from Magic: the Gathering players online: "mana screwd again! teh game iz shuffln bad!" Which in turn reminded me of how carefully some players would "shuffle" their MtG decks...

Now, if you want to argue that a computer is incapable of truly randomizing the deck, you'd be technically correct, but for all practical purposes, I'm sure it does a fair job of shuffling.

OK, OK, Thanks all for your comments, I accept that I got a little over the top with some of the comments on the game.

I stand by my tastes, I like the game and hate the Xbox360 version. In fact one of the things I am more fond to in the original game is the great design (at last a game with 5 colors, that even a colorblind can play!), at least in the cards and the board, so one of the main reasons that I failed to point out is that I am most furious about is the fact that the design is not suited for colorblind people... even not-colorblind people have problems with some of the routes...


And about the "you can't see all your routes at the same time", I meant "you can't see all your tickets at the sime time", it got a little lost in translation on my head...

Preface: I did not work on any TTR video game. But I have worked on video games.

You won't like what I'm about to tell you, but I believe most of your issues with the game are due to the requirement of the Standard definition layout to fit within the Action safe area of the screen.
This means that everything you need to interact with must be within the central 90% of a 640x480 square -- ie. 608x440. And if you are really serious about it you should be respecting the Title safe area which is a bit smaller.

So then you are thinking ah not so bad, just jam it all in to 608x440.
Ah but the follow up problem is standard def minimum font sizes must also be obeyed to prevent illegible fonts. How big is this? Well roughly one letter "M" is 12x10 pixels on the screen. That is for the smallest recommended size in standard def. And Titles and Labels should use a bigger font size.
There's also player name length requirements which could consume up to 20% of your available screen width. You do want to know whom you are playing with right?

None of these apply on PC - up the rez, (800x600 or woo 1024x768!) use the whole window (no safe area) but you don't need to increase the font size with higher rez !-- so you can fit a lot more on screen.

Now you could say, well just do a HD UI and let the standard def users suffer -- but you dont know which rez you are going to get reviewed on.
Maybe 2 layouts is best though, but this doubles your work effort on design, dev and testing. So the price of the game goes up? I dont think so.

gtg, but I can answer questions if there are any.

It is a common complaint that the dice in the 360 version of Catan are fixed as well. I guess it's all too easy to blame the computer when you have shitty luck on a video game. Who do you blame, though, when you have shitty luck in the real games? It happens to me all the time.

Excellent, informative post.

And to the OP - I agree that the XBox version looks horrible.
Sounds like they would have deliberately tried to avoid the excellent utilitarian interface lessons from the DoW version to muck it up that bad.
Yet another in a long line of reasons why console gaming is vastly inferior to PC gaming.

It never ceases to amaze me how countless legions of (usually) youngsters can not peek their head out of the handcuffed, hobbled, non-easily-customizable world of console gaming to see what other kinds of gaming are out there.

Inferior controls, inferior screen constraints because they have to fit everything from standard to widescreen without modifications, inferior updateability, overwhelmingly loutish multiplayer behavior, locked-in structure that doesn't easily allow for user additions, etc etc etc

[crankypants] Why would someone who was interested in the gameplay of Settlers of Catan, Carcassonne, or TtR have to have a XBox version trotted out for them (to pay for it) before they realised its existence?

How unmotivated & buried-in-the-console sand does a gamer have to be to be unaware those 3 games exist? Do they only go to GameStop and ToysR Us? Have they never set foot in a gamestore? Have they never looked on the internet for any game information?
You can NOT go 2 links online before finding those games referenced nowadays.

Oh, well - it's about as ridiculous as (priveledged) teenagers saying they don't know how to work a computer.
As if Word and a browser are tough to get access to, or learn.
No big loss for them though - the internet and computers in general are just a passing fad - they'll go away soon, so no point in trying them out a couple times, right? [/crankypants]

On consoles as a platform:
There are many advantages.

Trusted (Virus free) environment
Works everytime (tm) functionality
Access from your playroom - as opposed to workspace (where your PC is plugged in).
Equitable multiplayer environment (everyone has the same gear so it is player vs player, not gear vs gear)
Centralized, easy, software purchasing
Excellent player count for multiplayer

And for developers: Near zero piracy for games, (without requiring a subscription model).

At $10 (800msp) this is a great value compared to one of the Board Games which I've seen in stores at $45(CND). Extra maps (Europe, Swiss, Etc) on Xbox Live will probably be 400 points ($5) which is still way cheeper then buying another physical Board Game map. Catan on 360 was good, but my main grief is you can only play it vs AI or Online... this was nice to see that you could play it local multiplayer, even though that lets your local opponents see your tickets (which is minor). Only valid complaint I've heard about the XBLA version, Red and Orange on the gameboard are tough to distinguish unless you zoom in, and city names get in your way (also it doesn't show all city names at once)... but these are minor complaints. I though this was a great purchase from Xbox Live Arcade.

Actually, if you click the right thumbstick it will cycle between no city names, all city names, and only cities on your tickets.

I don't think anyone's arguing that the 360 sticks can't handle that. The question is whether such a solution would add anything to the game. In my opinion, it wouldn't. Quite the contrary, it would become cumbersome and fiddly, as opposed to simple and straightforward.

I don't mind the 360 version, but I agree that the red/orange colors chosen are *way* too close to each other.

Great points.