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(More customer reviews)What can you say about Monopoly? It is quite simply a classic board game. But board games don't always translate well to the PC. A monitor is not a game board, and keyboards sometimes get between a player and the game. However, Monopoly, with its reliance on strategy, translates pretty well to PC.
My first Monopoly PC game was originally written for DOS, and I played the Windows 3.1 version. I decided to buy this new version for my Windows XP machine. The multimedia effects, while better, aren't as cutting-edge as the older version was. The only people who'll be amazed are those who have been living in a cave for the past five years.
What is new are the voices. The older version had lots of sound effects - sometimes just to make noise. In this version, not only do the tokens make appropriate noises, they talk as well. What they say is appropriate. The dog, for example, when landing on a property he owns states that it "smells like home." However they only have so many phrases to repeat, and it doesn't take long for them to become annoying.
There is also a narrator doing play by play, including reading the Chance and Community Chest cards drawn. The narration is complete enough that visually impaired folks may actually find this to be an acceptable game. It certainly is better in this regard than it's previous version, but you still can't feel the board projected on the monitor, nor can you do things like count your money out loud, so not all the challenges have been overcome.
The animations in my older version consisted mostly of little clips that played during the token movements. They added nothing to the game play. While they were fascinating, and fairly advanced for the time, once you saw them each, there was no reason to not turn them off. This version is different.
In this version during game play the board is rotated, tilted, and zoomed in and out of to allow you to see what's going on. But it can be a little disorienting at first. Imagine playing the low-tech board version of Monopoly without a chair, moving around the table while you play. It's easy to loose track of which side of the board you're looking at! But it does allow you to see what's going on, and who owns what better than some of your other tools.
Speaking of tools, there is a calculator available that can do things like estimate your potential earnings, and other statistical functions. But if you're really into that sort of thing, you'll find it's a bit limiting in what it can do, and can't handle the "what-if's" the strategist may want to know.
The biggest drawback is the speed of the game during trades. You need to think fast, and you don't get much opportunity to gather more information when a trade is proposed. I would suggest not worrying about the time. Let it expire. Take your time, and then go back and propose it as a new trade.
If you like playing Monopoly, and either want to play against computer generated AI players, or on-line against opponents far away, this game is a must. If the only way you play Monopoly is with live people surrounding a table, the multimedia effects of this game won't replace that social interaction, but you might find this game to be a fun way to practice between parties.
The bottom line: There's room for improvement in future versions, but this is a pretty good PC implementation of a board game classic.
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