Meh-nopoly
Monopoly: Here and Now Worldwide Edition is a difficult game to review. On one hand, it emulates the classic Milton Bradley board game fairly well. In that aspect it succeeds, but the game as a whole is fairly awful, and some choices the developers have made will leave most people a little puzzled.
Before we get into the review, let me just say that I never thought I'd own a Monopoly game for any system, especially not for the XBox 360. Enter girlfriend, stage left. We were at the store a few days ago, just casually looking through the games, not really looking for anything to buy, when she said, "Oooh! We have to get this!" I didn't know what I was expecting when I looked up, but it definitely wasn't Monopoly. This coming from the girl who, just one week before, played through all 4 campaigns of Left 4 Dead with me. From the girl who casually ribs me for not beating Fallout 3, when she beat it over a month ago. Girls are weird.
We got Monopoly, and preceded to go home, eat dinner, and popped it in the 360 tray. We were presented with the options of playing Classic Monopoly or something called "Richest Mode"(more on this later), and we picked Classic. The first inconvenience I noticed is that when you set up a game and pick your piece(Top Hat, always), you have to actually manually enter your name. Every time. Isn't that what my Gamertag is for? It's not a huge deal, but it is lazy. One thing I enjoyed about the setup was the surprising amount of modifications that you could make in the house rules. As a kid, I remember going to different peoples houses and playing Monopoly, and it seemed like everyone always had little things they did differently, like starting salary or turns in jail, and it's nice to see some of that reflected in the game. The only problem is there are only 2 or 3 options for every changeable rule. You can choose for a certain number of properties to be dealt out at the beginning of the game, for instance, but you can only choose 1,2,4, or all. Why not let players have more flexibility in making their own gametypes? But that's a small concession.
The actual gameplay works fine, playing the game works exactly how you'd think it would. It's just as fun as playing the actual board game. About a half an hour in we realized the jazz flute background music was really annoying, so I opened up the options so I could turn it off. Or tried to, at least. There's no option to turn the music off. I wasn't expecting the music to be good by any means(which it isn't), but at least give me the option to turn it off. Again, not a game-breaker(we've yet to get to those), but it's just lazy on the part of the developers. In case you are wondering, the options menu will allow you to toggle subtitles and autosaving. Or watch the credits. At least the developers didn't forget those.
There is a small amount of replayability, albeit forced. At the beginning of the game you will receive a passport, which you get stamps on when you buy a property for the first time. After receiving a certain number of stamps, you will unlock more boards, which you can then play for more stamps, etc., etc. All the boards have unique property names and pieces, but it's still the same game regardless of which one you pick.
Then there's Richest Mode. The main idea behind Richest is that it's a fun, quick, minigame filled version of Monopoly, and I can see why that would be appealing, but in execution, it's terrible. It's not fun, the minigames are excruciatingly bad, and the whole thing feels terribly random. It's not worth a whole paragraph. Stay away, that's all that needs to be said.
There's one more glaring omission that should be incredibly obvious to a developer, even in pre-production. First, there is no online play in the game. Why you wouldn't put this in is beyond me. Board games are designed to be a social experience, why not utilize XBox LIVE? Obviously it wouldn't be on any most played lists, but I'm sure it would have sold a few more units. Especially with word of a "Hasbro Family Game Channel" coming soon on XBLA, which surely will have online multiplayer features.
All in all, Monopoly: H&NWE just feels like it should have been an XBLA game. The classic Monopoly mode is functional enough to let some of it's problems slide, but "Richest" mode is just garbage. It's hard to justify the $40 price tag, especially when compared to other "budget" titles, such as the latest Banjo game. If you absolutely need to play Monopoly on your 360 then it'll do, just make sure you lower your expectations quite a bit.
