Ticket to Ride is not a game concerned with the minutia of managing a railroad empire. You won't be negotiating with neighbouring cities to trade, or overseeing construction of brave new train routes to previously uncharted frontiers.

This is an Xbox Live Arcade version of a board game, one that distils the most satisfying parts of a race to expand your railroad network into a simple, yet immensely strategic game that anyone can enjoy.

The game plays out on a map of North America, the only map on offer for this digitised board game. The map shows a plethora of cities connected by a network of routes that have already been conveniently laid out. Each player has 45 train carts in their disposal, and you will take turns to build the most elaborate rail network as measured by the number of routes you manage to claim, which ones you claimed, and the length of those routes.

Sounds like a lot of work? Well, it really isn't. The game breaks down the experience into exactly 3 actions you can perform. When your turn comes to make a mark on the North American rail system, you can either draw destination cards to dictate your routes, draw train cards to enable you to build a route, or actually lay down the route.

That's it. The game also arrives with a simple tutorial that will have you caught up with everything you need to win your first game within a minute or two.

With such a simple premise and only one map present, one could be legitimately concerned over the staying power of Ticket to Ride. Fortunately, the game scales extremely well depending on the skill level of the players, and for advanced board-gamers there is ample strategies to be employed to ensure a very different experience every time.

When played offline, you have the option to go head-to-head against 3 friends or AI opponents. Ticket to Ride is the only XBLA board game so far to have offline multiplayer, and does its best to overcome the problem of having your opponents see your hand of cards by requiring confirmation before a turn begins so you can clear the room. It's a slightly awkward way to play, but the inclusion of the mode is a definitely plus and perfectly playable.

The game supports facing off against a maximum of 5 other players online, which can be any combination of human or AI players. The AI opponent do a serviceable job both online and off, but they have a tendency to remind us that Skynet's promised judgement day is still a long way off by behaving nonsensically at times. You can play the game online at a leisurely pace, or in a ranked mode that imposes a time limit on each turn to ensure a brisk pace.

In terms of presentation, the game sticks very close to its board game roots and befits the Western theme with all the requisite sound effects and visuals in tow. For some reason, the colour red and orange in the game appear fairly similar and can be easily confused, leading to unnecessary frustrations during a match. This is probably the biggest strike against an otherwise fantastic translation of an excellent board game.