I'll write first about the board game that is the basis for this Xbox 360 game. See my last paragraph for info about how well it made the transition to a video game format.
Ticket to Ride itself is a very good board game. It's one of the new flock of board games coming from Europe. It's also one of the lightest and easiest to learn railroad-themed board games ever made. Consequently, it's very fun for a wide variety of players, and very approachable by casual game players. However, veteran board game players or fans of the old grease-pencil rail games may find it a bit too light and lacking strategic complexity, which is why I've bumped it down to 4 stars.
Gameplay is very straightforward and can be learned in minutes. Each player starts with a set of hidden goals to connect various pairs of remote cities. Connecting the secret cities gives you a bonus depending on the difficulty; failing reduces your score by the amount of the bonus. (You also get points for connecting any cities at all, but you won't win without focusing on your bonuses.) Your main actions consist of accumulating train cards then spending them to lay down track connecting adjacent cities. Unlike grease-pencil rail games, connection opportunities between cities are a fixed feature of the map and thus a limited commodity. Connections have a specific length and color; players must obtain the right number of train cards of the right color in order to claim the connection, and once claimed, no other player can use that connection.
That's about it, but it's enough to make an exciting board game for 2-5 players. Your plans to connect your secret cities may be thwarted by another player seeking to use some of the same routes to connect his/her secret cities. Skilled players will learn to recognize critical connections and claim them early while working around blockages in less critical areas.
The Xbox 360 version of this board game is very well done. As you might expect, it removes all the tedium of the game. There wasn't much tedium to begin with, but you no longer need to setup the board or clean up afterwards, or hunt for cities you don't recognize, etc.. Also, the Xbox 360 adds some great graphics and sound effects. Every now and again, you'll see a balloon float by or a ship sail by on the map -- nice touches. You can also zoom in to get a closer view of a tangled set of connections or zoom out to see the board as a whole. And, of course, the game provides solid AI opponents of varying skill, so you can play with any combination of human and computer players, both locally and remotely. Your train cards are supposed to be a secret from other players, but the game plays just fine even if all local players see each other's cards, as players tend to focus on their own connections and train color needs rather than on blocking opponents. You get all of this, plus Xbox Live achievements, plus a tutorial to help you learn the game easily, and all for less than the cost of the actual board game. Board games are a great social activity, and they don't always translate well into video games, but the Xbox 360 version of Ticket to Ride is superior to the original board game in my opinion. The only drawback of the Xbox 360 version is that there isn't sufficient contrast between red and orange, which can sometimes lead you astray. (It makes you wonder how difficult it would be for a color blind person to play this game, either the board game or the video game.)
Now if they'd only port Iron Dragon to the Xbox 360...
