Turn Your iPad Into A Classic Board Game
MONOPOLY HERE & NOW: The World Edition for iPad ($9.99) by Electronic Arts takes the classic board game to a new level.
Rich Uncle Pennybags invites you to once again test your financial skills against your opponents. Play as a soccer ball, taxicab, penguin, Easter Island statue, nesting dolls, baseball glove, or sumo wrestler. The properties to be bought span the globe.
Playing can either take place against the computer, using tabletop mode (as if your iPad was a game board), or over a LAN. Teacher mode is also available if you’d like to learn the ins and outs of being able to crush your opponents. Online multiplayer would be a nice option, especially if you’ve burned all your friends from ever wanting to play against you again.
You can customize the house rules, such as getting money for landing on Free Parking (my favorite), distributing properties at the start, or even a turn timer. A sleight of hand menu also allows for three special abilities that can each be used once: trick dice (pick any number to move between three and 11), property grab (build a house for free after completing a color group), and rent dodge (pay only half of the rent).
Before the game begins, you can select in which environment you’d like the game to take place. Your game board could be in a pub, a shack, a dojo, a beach-side terrace, or a stuffy sitting room. No matter which scene you choose, you’ll always experience great graphics.
Gesture movements are used to roll the dice. You won’t need to worry about them tumbling off the board because they’ll always stay within the boundaries (trust me, I’ve tried).
The confetti animations tend to be a little overwhelming. Any little action such as rolling doubles results in outlines of images flying around the screen.
It’d be nice if turning off those animations was an option. Instead, you can only control whether or not you want to see the tokens actually move across the board (I highly recommend this, especially the sumo player).
Fans of Monopoly will appreciate playing it on the iPad. Those looking for nostalgia with the classic properties, like Boardwalk and St. Charles Place, would probably want to go with Monopoly HD.
But in the end, it’s all about having fun with a game, especially if you can crush your opponents.
