Cheap Monopoly - Xbox 360 (Worldwide)

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First, let me just get this off my chest: I will never understand why people complain about something after they buy when they clearly know that one of the features is missing. All of the negative reviews complain that there is no online play and they hate the whole game for it. First of all, it clearly states that this is a single player only and doesn't include online play. Unfortunately some folks don't bother to read what they buy. That's like buying rotten tomatoes at the supermarket that are labeled "rotten" and then come home and start complaining that their tomatoes are rotten and how bad their supermarket is. Now as for MY review below...Yes, I did put "No Online Play" as a negative aspect, but I didn't penalize the game's rating because I knew what I was buying months before this title came out.

The Good:

*The classic game you love without the clean-up part afterwards.

*Several boards to unlock and choose from, including world board, ice board and even cheese board.

*Multiplayer games can be played with a single controller, if only one controller is available(pass controller around.)

The Bad:

*Online Play would've been nice.

*Richest Mode can be dubious with questionable mini-games.

*Mr Moneybags will just not shut up at times and you can't fast-forward what he says.

The Bottom Line:

A great alternative to your old cardboard game. Very colorful graphics that include animated Mr. Moneybags that hosts the games for you. My biggest gripe is the Richest Mode. For those that are not familiar with it, the game is played with 4 players(at least 1 human and 3 computers.) Each round four dice are rolled. The minigame that follows will determine who gets to choose one die first. For example, if a player chooses a 5, 5 of their tokens will land on random board spots. If property is unowned, it goes into their portfolio. If it is owned, they pay a rent of 1 property or more. There is no money involved in the Richest Mode. That is all good, but the concept that completely kills it for me is that if somebody lands on a community chest(regardless if its the last place or the first place,) the poorest player will usually get to steal the richest player's 3 properties! This means that you might as well flip a coin to figure out the winner as this becomes very very random and anyone can win at any time, mostly based on luck. Mini-games will also make you scratch your head. One particular one is a stocking-stuffer game, where everyone fills their stocking with items. Sometimes, one item is enough, but sometimes you need 5 to make it full, which makes no sense. However, because Richest Edition is simply an "extra" to the classic edition, I will not downgrade the rating because you do not have to play it. The classic edition plays perfect with no quirks. This title is a great buy for those who play monopoly often. If you don't play it often, it will simply collect dust.

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This release is quite the anomaly. First off, I didn't even know it was out a friend of mine who works at Electronic Arts told me that it had come out. If it wasn't for that, I wouldn't have known. Now that's not a fault of the game mind you, but for such a classic board game, you'd think it would be a little more promoted. That issue aside..

I was quite looking forward to playing it. I'm a Monopoly fan, and my wife is not, so I never get to play anymore. So I was looking forward to getting in some Monopoly. I sat down, fired it up, and played a few single player games. The game does a very good job at replicating the board game onscreen. There have been some Monopoly games on the PC in the past, and this one is quite good. The graphics look quite spectacular on my 46" HDTV. But the game play is right. So much so that there's a whole gaggle of custom rules you can put into play. Things such as "Land on Go, get double pay", "All tax goes into pile which is won by landing on Free Parking", Number of houses/hotels, mortgage rate, etc. The game play is pretty darned customizable, so that's a plus. There is a wide range of board themes. There's the obvious standard one, a future theme, a World Board, a Jungle Board, even food themes like chocolate and cheese. Each of these themes have appropriately named properties too (things like "Polar Bear Mountain" and "Blizzard Plains" for an ice themed board). There is a very strong variety of play here without changing the basic game at all. And that is just in standard mode.

There is another mode called "Richest" Edition, where you play with some new rules. One of which is no money. Richest uses no money at all when you owe someone money, you have to give or take properties. When I first played it, I thought it was going to stink the formula is changed around a lot, but I have to say, I really ended up enjoying it. The lack of money gave the game a rather different, and very enjoyable feel to me. There are also mini games in between rounds in the "Richest" mode to play which are loosely based on certain aspects of Monopoly. The mini games are kind of hit or miss depending on which one you get (there's about a dozen different ones, including one bizarre one where you have to take X-Rays of the Pennybags character). But I do have to say I really took to the Richest Edition variant of game play. It's notably shorter than regular games of Monopoly, which is one thing to take into account.

So I was really quite enjoying this game, which brings me to the strongest negative to this title. THERE IS NO SORT OF MULTIPLAYER OVER XBOX LIVE! THIS IS A FAILURE OF EPIC PROPORTIONS! How a game like Monopoly could be created without any sort of online play in 2008 is beyond me. It's not like this a Gears of War game or a Halo 3 where you have to push massive amounts of bits up and down an Internet connection. It's Monopoly. I cannot fathom why there was no Xbox Live play here it just boggles my mind that I cannot do this. This is such a major drawback, I can see it preventing a lot of people from buying the game. Yeah, there's multiplayer locally. You can play up to four people here on the same console. But to be honest, if I have four people in my living room, I'm going to play the real board game version. I might have been inclined to give this game five stars in my review, but the lack of Xbox Live play takes it down to three. It makes me think this omission is why the game ha a list price of $39 instead of the $59 most Xbox 360 games have.

Still, my feelings on lack of Xbox LIVE play aside, this is a very good representation of Monopoly. If you are big time into Monopoly, and always wanted to play but had nobody to do it with, this can work for you. It is a very good game of Monopoly, and the new modes bring a fresh flavor to a game that most of us know pretty darned well.

I wrote this review on the Xbox 360 version. It is also out on the PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, as well as the Wii. I do not know the multiplayer situation on those, but if they can play online, and the 360 version cannot, I'll be even more irritated at that.

Best Deals for Monopoly - Xbox 360 (Worldwide)

I bought this at Best Buy for $. Very enjoyable game. The narration can be annoying and the controls have some faults but I really like the game. I like the different boards you can unlock and the shortened Richest version. This game is eating up a lot of my free time!

Honest reviews on Monopoly - Xbox 360 (Worldwide)

A great game for those who love to play Monopoly but hate the hassle of setting the game up. Just plug the cd in your xbox 360 and be prepared for hours of fun. If you are after achievements this game will give you loads in no time. I won over 300 in about 30 mins. of play.

Have fun!

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A really poorly designed game with major issues:

1. No way to opt out of the constant comments from the "moderator".

2. Must play with 4 players (Total of human and computer players.)

3. Computer will make idiotic deals with other computer players to establish monopolies early in the game.

4. Interface designed poorly. Defaults to "Manage properties" instead of "next turn", requiring extra work. You end up pressing wrong button consistently, which takes forever to load.

5. Increasing difficulty of computer players results in same idiotic gameplay and cheating, with the main difference being that they'll land on your properties less. (Cheating dice.)

Don't waste your money. You'll be disappointed.