Monopoly

It might be an age thing, or an upbringing thing, but Monopoly holds a very special place in my heart. I can remember the thrill I felt when I first ‘got’ the rules of this archetypal property trading game. I loved the feeling of counting out all of that games cash. In fact such is the impact this game has had in our society that ‘… like Monopoly Money’ is still used to describe the sometimes wanton way some people spend their cash.

So to find out the EA have brought my childhood, and later years, friend to a console very near me filled me with a kind of childish joy. I couldn’t wait to slide the shiny new disc into my Wii and get stuck in.

The EA release of Monopoly provide us with 2 game modes, there is the classic game of dice rolling, property buying and rent collecting played until the winner simply owns everything. There is also a sort of short-cut version called simply Richest, it’s this I tried first.

Richest is a game of chance with a little tactics thrown in. After you have selected your playing piece, or pieces as up to four can play the games, four dice are rolled and you are then thrust into a little mini-game to decide who gets first pick, the mini-games range from ‘quite fun’ to ‘What the?!’ but serve a purpose. Assuming you have won at this rounds mini-game you then have the first choice of the dice. The number shown on the die you select is then translated to that number of your playing pieces randomly scattered around the board, wherever they land you get the property, simple eh? Well in the early rounds, yes it’s that simple but after a while more of the board has been claimed and any of your pieces landing on opponents property incurs a ‘Rent’ of one or more of your properties. the game progresses for 6, 9 or 12 rounds and the player with the most property at the end is the ‘Richest’. I lost.

The standard game is just that, a standard game of Monopoly. The additions to this new digital version are that the movement, cash handling, house and hotel placement, rent collection etc. etc. are all taken care of for you and you simply need to buy as much property as you can! I’m going to step sideways here because there’s another reason to buy property, each one you buy puts a stamp into a virtual passport in the game, the more stamps you get the more playing boards are opened up such as the World board, the Future board etc. Nice if you like a different flavour to your Monopoly.

The problem I have, in fact the problem we had here at home while playing, is that without all of the cash handling, house and hotel placement, rent collection etc. etc. there is actually very little to engage ones interest. The rounds become a simple turn of the handle, the wins of rent from other players simply ‘happen’ and the losses met with a shrug and a “Meh”. I felt a little saddened by this I must confess because I really wanted this next generation of my childhood favourite to bring it all back to me. Unfortunatly I’m afraid it didn’t.


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One response to “Monopoly”

  1. Kate avatar
    Kate

    I didn’t realise this game had come out until last week. It’s always a bit of a puzzler, isn’t it? A computer game of a board game. Quite a hard thing to translate. Why not just play the board game? Having said that, I love Monopoly and I’ll pick it up regardless.

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