#81: Monopoly

Rich Uncle Pennybags!

I know it hurts my boardgamer cool factor but I actually like Monopoly. It's not a perfect game by any stretch of the imagination but I had a lot of fun playing it as a kid and I still enjoy rolling dice and seeing what happens. You can certainly play with rules mods that make the game worse (like Free Parking being Profit Parking) and I have to admit I don't think I've played the game since Tom and I schooled Andrew and Ken when we played it for money back in University but I still like the game. So I was oddly looking forward to this game more than most thus far.

WOOHOO!

Unfortunately the things I like most about video game adaptations of board games are not present here. The biggest problem is that they added in an animation when a piece moves around the board. And then they play it every time someone moves. It's like playing the game with someone who doesn't realize the board is divided up into 5 and 10 space segments so they have to count out each and every space. Only it's worse than that, because they're counting VEEEEEERRRRY SLOOOOOOOOOOOWLY. And they're counting it out for each player. Having animations on the community chest cards seemed a little more reasonable. You need to pause and read the card anyway. (Well, no you don't, just give me my $10.)

Nick, are you a moron? PRESS A!

The AI was TERRIBLE. This is the first trade offered in the game, from the guy who has Boardwalk. He is interested in my Park Place and is willing to give me nothing at all for it. This wasn't just the AI trying to fleece the rube either. I was playing a 4 player game with 3 AIs and they insisted on offering each other trades of something for nothing. The worst part is it went into all the menus to show them building the trade of something for nothing. The other AI would reject the trade. Then on the other AI's turn they'd offer nothing for something back the other way. I had to sit and watch them try to trick each other back and forth with it taking a lot of time for each 'trade'.

I ended up quitting before even finishing a single game. Not because I didn't want to play Monopoly... In fact I actually want to play a game of Monopoly more now than ever! But because this version is abysmally bad. I wouldn't recommend even the most diehard Monopoly fan give this a try.

Rating: F-

#65: Clue

Whodunnit?

I have always been a huge fan of logic puzzles as appeared in puzzle magazines, and I've always been a huge fan of board games. It should come as no surprise that I loved to play the Clue board game as a kid. Video game adaptations of board games, on the other hand, tend to be pretty flawed. Either the AI is terrible or the interface is terrible or both are terrible. But since Clue is really just a single player puzzle with other people racing against your clock it isn't actually so bad.

Shake-a, shake-a... Boom!

The game had difficulty levels to choose from, so I chose the hardest one. It ended up giving me a game that wasn't the same as the Clue board game. The normal action of interrogating to find out what cards other people held seemed to be limited, and I used all mine up right away. The rest of my turns, and all of the AI turns, consisted of entering a room and nominating a person and a weapon. Then the game would try to link those objects together in some way, or not. So it might tell you if Mr Green was in the Lounge, or if he had the candlestick, or if the candlestick was in the Lounge. Basically turning the whole thing into a really big logic puzzle.

Winner!

The AI found out for me that Mrs Peacock was in the Conservatory, and I had that card, so I got to exclude her from my calculations. I had the Scarlet and White cards dealt to me, and someone showed me Plum during my limited interrogations. So I knew it was down to Green or Mustard and put all my efforts into figuring out which weapons they had. Green had the candlestick. Mustard had the revolver. Either could have been the weapon. I excluded both of them from a couple of the rooms I had, and then the AI found out that Green was in the Hall. I couldn't see how I was going to get better than 50-50 to win with my earlier wasted interrogations so I went for it as an accusation. Success! Suck on that, Mr Green! Colonel Mustard rules the day!

The game had some cute music clips that played for each room and each character, which I liked. The game's music bugged out halfway through when I alt-tabbed to notepad where I was making notes and it ended up with the looping choppy sound that kept me from playing Jack Nicklaus Golf. Pretty sure that's an emulator flaw. I considered finding a different emulator but decided I could play Clue without sound and just took my headphones off.

This game was one I remember renting multiple times as a kid. I loved Clue. I still do, really. The movie is awesome and I've even named a Blood Bowl team after the characters. The SNES adaptation was still fun even 21 years later.

Rating: B+

#6: The Chessmaster

Can you beat Gandalf at chess?

Do you have a desperate need to play a slow, plodding game of chess with bad sound effects and AI? Then Mindscape has the game for you! The first thing that happens when you hit start is you get thrown into a game against an opponent of unknown difficulty. This AI was really big into trading units and actually had a one pawn lead on me into the late game. I don't know how/why it happened (I certainly didn't plan it out) but he ended up losing a rook for no cost and that was pretty much game. I promoted a pawn into a bishop (it said to hit A for a queen but the A button on my xBox controller is in the same location as the SNES B button) but it was good enough.

Suck it, Black!

I'm bad at chess. So the fact I won the first game either means the AI is bad or it let me win. After that game it actually took me into an options menu that I feel should have been available from the start...

2-Player Mode for those without a set.

I tried turning the background music on and let's just say it's very good it defaults to off. It actually reminded me of my first computer programming class in high school when people first discovered they could make qBasic play 'music'. A lot of this game felt like an intro programming class, actually. The graphics feel amateurish. The sound effects certainly are, with the same sound playing both when you take a piece and lose a piece. And the music is just terrible.

The only thing it has going for it is actual chess AI. There are a bunch of different 'level of play' settings that probably change the game a fair bit and which I wouldn't expect a teenager to be able to program. Maybe this game was ok at the time but it seems pretty mediocre now. I'm pretty sure I rented this game at some point in my youth since I remember the Gandalf intro screen but I doubt I was very happy with that decision.

Rating: D-