Board to Video Translations

Every Tuesday Night, I go to a Local Game Store (LGS) and play a board game of whatever sort crops up.

I also like to play Video games, and there have been a good history of board games translating over to Video games quite well. Settlers of Catan, Ticket to Ride, Carcassone, Risk: Factions and even Blood Bowl are good examples. They all have their own special features but they can still be played as the Base Board Game, with the added feature of playing across the internet.

One game that I would like to see a translation of is Talisman. Talisman is a massive board game, with many different characters and encounters, and variants as well! While it's all well and good to play it on a clear table, with drinks and food afoot, the same can be said for those mentioned before.

The thing about Talisman is that one can't be happy with just a basic set. You wouldn't necessarily want to play the same game again and again, which is why Fantasy Flight Games creates expansions for it, to provide a refreshing and expanded experience.

So can the same be said about the Video Games above? I own a copy of Risk: factions and Catan on my Xbox, both of which are very entertaining for what they're worth. They provide a handful of options, for example Risk: Factions allows you to play with objectives, or just World Domination, ala base Risk.

There are more options to Risk than what are provided though. And one feature I would like to see in Risk Factions is a long term Campaign, ala: Risk Legacy. Why? Because it has gotten a bit stale playing the various unique levels over and over again, no matter how much we mix it up, and a proper campaign setting, where you can influence your future actions, rather than play a new game on a larger map with more players, up to a total of 5 games.

But is there anything in sight?  Only if you're playing on Facebook.  And I feel that's unfair.  I bought Risk: Factions on my Playstation thinking it'd be hours of fun.  But I was disappointed to find that it wasn't.  I've hardly played it in months simply because I've gotten over the novelty and the lack of expansion in it.  And the Facebook game is nothing more than a town building game that I can spend money on if I had a diarrhetic stream of cash if I wanted to get anywhere quickly, or just sit there waiting for my Marching Grounds to refresh so I can get more troops.

However I can always just play one of the variants of Board Game, from various video game licenses to even their own variations that include conquering the moon.  They're all interesting and change the same in their own ways.  And that's what I would like to see in Board Game Translations.  Expansions and Variation.

If I wanted to play Settlers of Catan, I could play with the River, or with Seafarers, or I could even jump off into the future with Starfarers of Catan.  But I don't see the Video game providing such a variance.

So it saddens me to see interesting games like these going unappreciated as they are.  I hope that one day, just one day, a developer will translate to a Video game and expand on it just as any other Board Game developer would.