Monopoly

"Stay away from me!"

Introduction
I guess that the board version of Monopoly is surely one of the most famous games worldwide, but is a gameboy advance version of it any good?

Gameplay
I bet you know the board game, so what do you think that you will have to do in this game? Well, mainly you just have to try defeating a set of opponents, taking them to bankrupt in order to win. However, one of the most important things in the "real" game is some trades you could make with your friends (like, a friend of yours may want a certain place, and you sell it to him, or trade it for another things you may want), and in the game that doesn't seem to work right... For example, your opponents will ALWAYS sell you something, for a price.

Also, there are some new rules added to the game, for example... if you stop in a place that doesn't have a owner yet, you are abe to make an auction for it. This may seem good, but it is a way for a player who already has a lot of money to easily get a property he wants.

However, there are also good things about the game... you can play with lots of players (up to 8 players, if I remember correctly) controlled in a single console (well, just give the gba unit to the other player, on its turn), or you may also have them being controlled by the console, and in that case you can even choose their skill level. But we must think of something... is there REALLY a skill level in monopoly? I mean, it doesn't matter how good a player is, if you don't wanna sell them something, their skill doesn't matter! So, I guess this isn't important at all...

Apart from this, there are some play modes, but all of them are based in the original game with slight adaptations, like... a mode in which you need to try to get all the places, another in which you need to defeat all the opponents, and so on...

Story
No story at all, but that isn't very important in this type of game, is it?

Graphics
The graphics are nothing special for a game designed for this console (neither good nor bad), and despite not being very important in this type of game, at least they could have added some more nice small videos (for events like the dice moving, the characters moving, character building houses in a place, and so on...) or something...

Sound
Truly, I must say that both the sound and the music in this game are simply awful, except some for some slight details which last no longer than 1 second, and I mean... some of the the sound effects, for some odd reason some of them seem to be good sometimes...

Play Time/Replayability
Of course this game has both an huge play time and a big replay value, but personally I think that you would rather get the real game instead of this one... Plus, I guess you will become fed up of it easily...

Final Recommendation
If you have a gba unit, really love monopoly and have nobody to play the real game with, I guess you could buy this game, or at least rent it for a few days. If not, just stay away from this!

Reviewer's Score: 2/10, Originally Posted: 02/14/05