If you've never played Monopoly (it's a ridiculous-sounding statement, but there ARE people out there who haven't), we're assuming you've been living in a remote part of this planet. Welcome to the western ... er, uh ... civilized world. This game is just the type of training you'll need to survive in a contemporary western economy.
For those of you who have enjoyed the country's oldest board game, [er, can we get a fact checker in here? -ed] the PC version from Westwood Studios includes some welcome features. It's fair to say that even the most conservative of die-hard board gamers should find some redeeming values in this title. First and foremost is the fact that the game will always be in the same condition as the day you bought it. How many games of Monopoly have you or your family bought over the course of your lifetime? How many of them are left? Do you still have all the pieces? If you have kids or little brothers or sisters, there's probably a token or two down the heating grate, and you haven't seen the money for years.
It's convenience aside, the single most important feature of this game is connectivity. As many as six players can compete. That can be you against five friends sitting around the PC, against five computer opponents, or the same possible number on a local network or over the Internet. Yes folks, we can finally buy back some of our famous historical landmarks from the Japanese. To play over the Internet, you need to have your own PPP/SLIP connection although the game does have its own chat box. The game even makes all currency conversions automatically, and sports card-sets from 6 other countries.
The options for playing the computer AI are plentiful in and of themselves. There are a number of pre-set AI players, with varying strengths and weaknesses, whom you can choose to play against. If you feel some changes are necessary, you can open the individual AI files with a file editor and examine that character's attributes. You can also create your own AI files by copying the preset AI files and renaming them. The game's help file gives instructions on what the character parameters mean and how to modify them. Character creation is a lot easier than it sounds. For instance, in each AI file, every property on the board is rated from 1 to 200 - the higher the rating, the more that character will want to buy that property. Did you ever think you'd say Monopoly and character creation in the same sentence? Maybe they should have called it AD&D Monopoly. I created my own character and set it against five other preset AI characters and I was down to my skivvies (skimpy, mesh skivvies for you ladies) in short order. I was able to beat the AI several times with all the player slots filled - one-on-one with a computer AI is tough.
Strangely enough, the game options include a choice that allows the computer AI to cheat! In one game, the one where my wife threatened me with divorce, I owned everything from Park Place all the way around to Virginia Avenue and had hotels on all of them, all I needed was for my AI opponent, the only one left, to land on one of them and I would have had the game in the bag. That #$%&^#%#@$ made it around the board four times unscathed, and got the same combination of rolls in two consecutive trips. Folks, the AI in this game cheats like a congressman.
Monopoly players have always fiddled with the rules. I remember as a kid that whenever we played, we would stick $500 under Free Parking. If you landed on it, you got it. In this release, you can go with the official Parker Brothers rules or select from a few available options. My favorite option is the one that allows immunity from rent for a specified number of landings for the player of your choice. It's a feature that can be used to finagle many a crucial deal. All trades have to be approved by all participating players - obviously, each player is going to accept or reject an offer based on how it is going to effect them. If one opponent has a property you need for a monopoly and won't trade for it at any price for obvious reasons, offering that recalcitrant player immunity from rent on any property in that particular monopoly for, let's say, five landings, you could probably sew up the deal if the other players accept those conditions.
All is not golden with this option, since immunity from rent is granted in numbers of landings, not trips around the board. It's also non-transferable. I made the deal of the century with one AI player in which I gave up Baltic, which that player needed for a monopoly, in return for North Carolina, which I needed for a much more profitable monopoly, and immunity from rent on Baltic and Mediterranean for 30 landings each. The deal was complete and we both put up hotels, but the other player went bankrupt a few turns later. When another AI opponent took possession of that monopoly, I instantly lost my immunity from rent.
Some other handy options are a variety of MIDI tunes and appropriate sound effects. There are also a few extremely handy game-board options, such as having mortgaged properties indicated and having unowned properties grayed out so that you know what's still available. The playing screen is laid out very simply but effectively, with the playing board off-center to the right, and all players and their deeds and get-out-of-jail-free cards displayed in a column on the left.
Of course, no multimedia re-release of any game would be complete without some sort of animation, and Monopoly has it in spades. The center of the board becomes your viewing screen for some great 3-D rendered animations. Monopoly includes animations for Rich Uncle Pennybags throwing the dice, and pulling up Chance and Community Chest cards. The animation for going to jail is hilarious; when you land on the Go To Jail corner, you are catapulted across the board to jail. If you land on the jail and are "just visiting," the animation shows Rich Uncle Pennybags laying in a cell on the top bunk smoking a cigar and blowing smoke rings. By far the best animations are the tokens themselves as they travel around the board. They all come to life with some real personality thrown in. The ship heaves and rolls as it cruises along, rolling over repeatedly when "just visiting" jail. If the ship passes through the Go To Jail corner, it ducks under the board and goes into submarine mode, raising a periscope. The same attention to detail has been paid to every token in every situation. Grand kudos to the graphics team at Westwood Studios for this one. You can even choose different backdrops for the animations to appear on in the board's center square.
Basically, Westwood understood that this is Monopoly, and took care not to mess around with the game itself. There are lots of bells and whistles, in the graphic and multi-player departments. However, if you want to keep it simple and just concentrate on economic domination, it allows you to do so.
