Ticket to Ride PC Version Review by Mike Brunton

First off: this is an excellent transfer of Ticket to Ride (TtR) to the PC. For your money you get the US and Europe maps from the boardgames lovingly recreated, plus an exclusive Switzerland map with its own special rules. That's three versions of Ticket in a single pack!

The good news is that the game runs cleanly and on machines that are theoretically below the minimum required specification (it doesn't run quickly, but it does run) thanks to being written in Java. The really, really good news is that the game is being patched and updated regularly - at the time of writing it's up to version 1.07 - and it's well worth making sure that you have the latest patch downloaded and installed. Apart from anything else, the patches give you all the game contents of the 1910 TtR Expansion Pack. The patches add three play modes from 1910 at no extra cost, giving you a chance to learn the routes and practice your tactics.

If you can play TtR, then the game holds no mysteries. Once you're past the very simple start menu, the whole in-game control mechanism is drag-and-drop, and there's a tutorial to guide you through the mechanics. After about three minutes, you'll be playing fluently. There are two basic modes of play: online, for which I recommend a fast connection, and solo, played on your machine against AI opponents. Online play is as you'd expect: you're playing against humans with all their wiles and cunning. Are the AI players up to the standard of a human? Well, no, of course not. But they are better than no opposition at all, and do make the annoying card picks and route claims just before you need either the cards or the link. They will give you a reasonable game, but not an insanely challenging one; it is disappointing that there's no kind of difficulty level selection for them, but then we can't have everything. It's also a bit disappointing that you can't change the animation speed, as the slow and measured movement of cards from the stock to AI "hands" and out again to claim routes does drag after a while. But this is a very minor niggle.

If you're still undecided about whether or not to buy this game, then let me come back to the Switzerland map. This is a new version of TtR that plays rather differently from the other incarnations. The tunnelling mechanism used on the Europe map is used again, as you'd expect in such a mountainous country. Locomotives, however, are no longer general-purpose joker cards, but can only be used on tunnel routes. This makes them particularly valuable and, because there are no general jokers, makes it important to collect the right colour cards for any route. With a three-player and 40-train limit, plus the new rules, Switzerland is recognisably TtR, but it's a very neat twist on the game. For my money, this one map makes the game worthwhile.

So, it's a good package. The bonus Switzerland game is great for TtR fans, and the patching to a full version of the 1910 pack was unexpected and splendid. Well worth getting.