The Game of Life

"Iiiiit's Pay Day baby! Cha-Ching!"

This game brought my sister and I closer together... at least for an hour, before we started to argue over what to watch on the TV, and wrestle over the remote, and claw each other's eyes out.

The Game of Life on PC is a million times better than the board game version experience. For one, playing The Game of Life on PC means that you do not have to manually arrange all of the cash wads, with the individual bills that always seem to stray from their brethren, with the occasional dollar bill from a Monopoly Game mixed in. Also, choosing your salary, career, and house is a lot fairer than choosing it with the board game.

When you play The Game of Life on a board, the banker must personally see to it that each and every party gets their fair share of pay days and stock benefits. On your PC, the computer does all the work. No more of that annoying younger cousin claiming he can rob the bank if he wants to (and he's losing)! And you don't have to bother keeping up with your LIFE tiles, either. The computer takes care of those as well.

However, despite all of this, The Game of Life on PC has all the same spaces as the real board does. Nothing gets taken away. Every space you land on brings up a funky little picture, or maybe a small cutscene of some sort. These pictures and/or videos are always funny, even after the fortieth time.

The Game of Life, for those who are not familiar, is a fairly simple one. You choose a car and, in this game, a character (one of several ethnicities), and you spin the spinner, moving the number of spaces that the spinner lands on. You try to become as rich, as successful, and as well-rounded as possible by the end of the game... well, as rich, anyway. You get married and buy a house; you may end up having children or adopting twins; you choose a career and get a salary. There are spaces that have the symbol of your career on them, and if another player lands on one of these, he or she (or it, in the case of a CPU) owes you money. Greedy smiles are plastered on faces everywhere, and irises take on the tint of money. In the end, the player who retired with the most money wins. You also collect LIFE tiles, which give you money in the end. It's all a really, really fun game.

Not only does The Game of Life for PC take away all of the annoying necessities of the board game, leaving you with raw fun, but there are other great aspects of the PC version as well. One such aspect is the sound. The music changes from decade to decade. The narration is chipper. Some of the sounds are wacky, like out of a comic mischief cartoon. The sights and sounds of the board keep your attention while making the game thoroughly enjoyable.

I'm not too sure about how my grandmother came about owning this game... very truthfully, I think that she found it, free, in a cereal box. That would explain the number of other games for the PC she has, and the General Mills emblem on the disc. However, I do know that I am very glad that she did. It has made my summers in Canada a little bit more enjoyable... and besides, I just love hearing that man say: "Iiiiit's Pay Day baby!"

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 07/18/05