By and large, Monopoly Plus really puts on a visual presentation for you. Every single screen is filled with all sorts of animated action, which again really helps to advance the concept beyond its board game roots. When taking turns in play the game really shines, with a.
As a child I was always a fan of board games. I loved Candy Land to death and when I finally reached my teenage years, I was introduced to Monopoly. Needless to say, I absolutely fell in love with this game because of it’s whole premise. Move around the board, buying properties, building houses, and collecting money from other people until you bankrupt them. What’s not to love about that? Not to mention that when you’re actually playing with other people the shady dealings that go on. “Oh you can’t afford to pay me for my hotel on Broadwalk? Well, you can try to mortgage just about everything you have…or you could just give me your collection of green properties and we can call it even.” The other person looks nervous before handing them over and essentially handing you the game, as if you didn’t already have it. It took a while for me to realize that I actually had this game with the Hasbro Family Fun Pack: Conquest Edition that I purchased last year, so I figured I would give it a go and see if it held up to my standards.
Anyone remember this game on the Nintendo? So while I played the actual board game Monopoly. Who hasn’t? I also played the Nintendo version that introduced the whole “auction concept” which was just fascinating to me because when you play the board game if someone can’t afford a property it get’s left alone until someone else you can afford the property lands on it and buys it. Needless to say, I loved playing Monopoly hours upon hours on the Nintendo. Anyway else play on the Nintendo? Let me know in the comments section.
Monopoly Plus is exactly like the board game so there isn’t any story to it. I mean if you want to be creative you can make one up in your head, but the main point of the game is to play with other people, move around the board, buy properties, build houses, turn those houses into hotels, and try your hardest to bankrupt the other players in order to win the game.
Overall I have to say that I really wasn’t impressed with this game at all. There are basically two board types, the original board that showcases the classic Monopoly board and the “living” board which shows all different types of animations as you move around the board. There was really nothing special with this game as you can play by normal house rules or set your own rule like whatever is collected from Community Chest and Chance goes into free parking and whoever lands on free parking gets all that money. I couldn’t really find a reason to play beyond the hour and 30 minutes that it took me to get all the trophies for this game, because there really didn’t seem like a point. That’s not to mention that you have to play with another person. There is no AI to play with. This was just a foolish move on Ubisoft’s part in my opinion because I could have seen myself playing for a lot longer if I wasn’t playing against myself. We’ll get to the online multiplayer porting a little later on, but you get my drift. There could have been so much more to do and actually make this game more playable if there was an AI option that had different difficulty levels.
The playability of this game is simple. Pick your board, pick how you want to play, pick your piece, and start the game. All you have to do is roll the dice and click a couple of buttons to make purchases, trades, buy house and hotels, or mortgage properties. It’s so simple that when the controls simply don’t work for whatever reason it makes you want to smash your controller into a million little pieces. How many times do I have to hit R1 to buy a damn house? Apparently a lot because it seems like the game doesn’t recognize it. How many times do I have to mash the damn X button to roll the dice? More than once because the game really doesn’t respond that well to that either. Of course I checked this out on another controller thinking that I was the problem only to find out that nope, it’s the game itself. While this game doesn’t have any bugs or glitches, the fact that the controller isn’t really all that responsive causes some controller breaking moments as you try to purchase that property you want, roll the dice, trade with another player, or put up some houses and hotels. Not to mention the fact that the game animations themselves take way to long to complete making it take a long amount of time to actually move a piece around the board. This becomes annoying quickly and even hitting the skip button doesn’t work all that well or cut down the amount of time it takes for a player to complete a turn on this game.
The graphics for this game are simple and nothing to write home about. I remember enjoying the graphics for Monopoly more on the Nintendo than I did for this game. The classic board is your original board that is just floating in space and you’re living board isn’t much better either. Sure it has some animations added to it and makes it look like a living town or city, but it really does nothing for the game. The graphics were ones that just made me shrug my shoulders and try to ignore them as I went along my merry way playing this game.
Annoying announcer…is annoying. Not only are the graphics lackluster, but the announcer for this game is down right annoying. He repeats the same thing over and over again and after 10-15 minutes of this, it’s time to put the game on mute and hook up your headphones, if you’re playing alone, and listen to some music to make the time go by faster.
There are a total of 15 trophies for this game and they’re all super simple to get. You’ll basically have to do everything the game has to offer from buying property, to winning auctions, to playing locally with 6 people, and playing a game with house rules. This is nothing that can’t be done in an hour and a half or even less. I’ve seen people get all the trophies for this game in 30 minutes.
So there are only two ways you can play this game, with someone sitting next to you or with someone online. I’m going to say right now that the online is completely dead and I wasn’t able to find a match when I tried so after a good 20 minutes of searching, I gave up. Locally, you can either play with someone else logged in or you can play with a guest. Have no one to play with? You’re going to end up playing all by yourself because there is no AI for you to play against.
Overall I give this game a 1 out of 5.
What’s Great: + It’s the same old Monopoly that everyone knows and loves.
What’s Not So Great: – There is no AI you have to play with someone else or play against yourself if you have no one to play with. Don’t count on the online portion because it’s dead. – Graphics are lackluster and I really expected more for something that was released on the PS4. – Buttons are not at all responsive and you’ll basically be button mashing in order to roll the dice or to buy houses which becomes annoying really quickly. – Moving around the board takes way to long and so do the other animations, at first it’s cool, but gets old real quick and even hitting skip doesn’t help.
I would give it my strong recommendation to just skip this game. Even if you have a group of people and you want to play Monopoly, you’re better off going out and getting yourself a board so that you can play like that because there is nothing special about this game. Also, now a days if you get a board, there are like a million to choose from. You can even get a Mass Effect one if you want. Anyway, I know the trophies for this game are easy and if you’re in it for the trophies you’ll want to play this because not many games can give you 15 trophies in 30 minutes. If you’re not in it for the trophies and you’re looking for a decent game of Monopoly move along because you aren’t going to get it here. And here I thought that Ubisoft couldn’t screw up a game as much as they screwed up Tetris Ultimate. I hate it when I’m wrong.