Monopoly Here & Now: The World Edition is a board game by Electronic Arts. $4.99
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And once again Electronic Arts has been able to recreate once of the most famous board games in history. Monopoly Here & Now: The World Edition is not the original board game we all know and love, as unlike the Classic version with make believe places, Monopoly H&N features some of the well known places from around the world. For those wanting the classic board of Monopoly, I believe it is due to come out on the App Store later this year. The best thing about EA's board games is the great multiplayer modes letting you choose to either play using Pass n' Play or by Multiplayer WiFi. Like Trivial Pursuit however, Facebook Connect is not available at this point in time. Monopoly is very customizable in the fact that the rules can be tweaked or changed to suit your style of play. There are a few things missing from the rules however, which are really frustrating for me, but I will get to them later. Graphically Monopoly is a great game graphically, with the added surroundings and the different soundtracks. If you had the option to buy only one of the board games by Electronic Arts, Monopoly would have to be the choice for me.
Monopoly is a perfectly good game in the graphics department. Monopoly differs from Trivial Pursuit and Scrabble which has the aim of simplicity and just showing the board game. Monopoly gives it more of a personal feel with the basic Monopoly Here & Now board game as seen in reality, as well as the option to change the playing environment. These different settings provide a small bit of change, but even if there was only one of these it would still be a welcome change from having a plain background. Monopoly runs quite well and I haven't experienced any lag or crashes as of yet. The game board as always is exactly the same as the board game but there was a bit of added video that wasn't in this, but in the PC version. I thought it was a great idea and it shows a short clip of the place you have landed on, and if it had houses they looked like they were just dumped on the property. This may have taken up alot of space and they were going for a simple gameplay that is easy to play quickly.
The controls for Monopoly are easy to use, but require a bit of knowledge about certain buttons. To move you are required to roll the dice which is done by selecting the dice icon and shaking the iDevice to release them. Options such as buying, auctioning and trading are all made by selecting the required button at the bottom of the screen. The only thing slightly different to this is placing down buildings, which is done by dragging your finger around the board until you get to the desired house. When there you can then choose to buy/sell houses or put it on mortgage. For new players you can hold your finger on buttons and it will explain what it is used for, but after a while you will get the hang of it.
Monopoly has in-game music that to me sounds like something that belongs in one of their Sims titles. That isn't saying it is a bad thing, as the music is quite soothing but can get repetitive after a while. There is an option to turn the music off but just gave in game sound effects, which is my preferred method. The sound effects include rolling the die, and your pieces moving around the board sounding like they look (A rolling soccer ball sounds like a rolling marble). The music is quite good, but I wouldn't say any of the sound from Electronic Arts have been great to listen to until Tiger Woods and Need For Speed.
For the four of you that are unfamiliar with Monopoly, here is a basic run down. The aim of Monopoly is to be the last person standing. This is done by buying properties and having your opponents pay rent. They are also doing the same to you. When all of your properties are mortgaged and you have no money left to pay rent if you land on someones land, they are out of the game. The game involves building houses and hotels on your squares to increase the amount of rent needed to pay. It is a game that requires skill but also quite a bit of luck to roll the right numbers. The Here & Now World Edition means it uses places from around the world as the land. Other versions such as the Classic Version use make believe places and the US Here and Now Edition uses US landmarks and places as the land. There are different game modes that can be played ranging from versing the computer, Pass n' Play and Multiplayer Wifi. Pass n' Play and versing the CPU can be mix and matched if say there are three of you playing but you want a larger game so you include a CPU. Many options of how to play the game such as the starting limit, pass Go bonus and others can be altered and changed to how you like to play the game. The game again provides the most fun when played with or against friends, but the CPU provides great practice.
Monopoly Here & Now: The World Edition is an addictive game that has managed to successfully bring the famous game onto the App Store. Monopoly has a lot of replayabilty with single games going for a couple of hours or more. The craving to win is always in the heart of Monopoly players and it will bring you back time and time again to play Monopoly. A great game that I would recommend to any board game fans or those who enjoy competiting against other humans or just multiplayer games. Again it doesn't feature Facebook Connect to play anyone anywhere in the world, but I am hoping it comes in a future update. A great game, definitely worth a look.
Gameplay- 8.5/10
Graphics- 9/10
Sound- 7/10
Overall- 8.5/10
I would recommend this game if you enjoyed- iNetMania
