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Publisher
MacSoft
Genre
Simulation
Release Date
10/17/2000
Status
Available


Risk II
September 26, 2000 | Dan Radmacher
Pages:123Gallery


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I grew up on a farm outside of a very small community of around 200 people. During my prime Risk-playing years, I was doing well to find one game-playing partner. I never had the satisfaction of carving out an alliance, and then stunning my ally with a treacherous attack.

But now, thanks to Westlake Interactive’s upcoming port of Risk II, the world, literally, is my oyster. Or, at least it will be once the GameRanger-enabled world-conquest game hits the market.

I got an extended look at a beta build of Risk II for this preview. This was a rock-solid version that never crashed on me once. That means, I hope, that the title is close to a release date.

Risk fans should be very, very excited.

Take your pick
When you start Risk, you have three options: Single Player, Hot Seat (which lets two or more human players switch spots at one computer while playing against computer opponents) and Network Play. I found no partners on multiple visits to GameRanger (and I hesitated to make a copy of the game for any of my Mac friends).

I gave the Single Player mode a good workout, though. That mode also has three options: Classic Risk, Tournament Play and something called Same Time, which I did not particularly like, but more on that in a minute.

Classic Risk is, well, like playing the board game, only against computer opponents instead of friends. Like your friends, these computer opponents are of varying skill levels, named after an assortment of famous generals. The in-game tutorial says to see the manual for a rundown of the computer opponents, but I’m betting that Bonaparte guy is maybe a little bit better than Baird, who I have to admit I’ve never heard of.

There are several options to spice up the classic Risk games. You can add nations to continents, which also adds different avenues of attack. Adding New Zealand to Australia, or the Falkland Islands to South America makes those continents just a little harder to hang onto.



Pages:123Gallery




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