Monopoly, one of the most played board game in the world, has been made available for iPhone. It is a colorful game with an interface that is very simple to understand.
Monopoly Here & Now, as its called on the iPhone involves negotiations, resource management and some amount of luck with the dice.
Electronic Arts (EA) has managed to neatly squeeze the board game of yesteryear onto iPhone's 3.5-inch screen.
Objective of the game:
Each player starts with 15 million monopoly currency units and when it’s your turn, roll the dice and move those many numbers of spaces. When you land on a space, one of the several things can happen depending on the block you land upon.
The objective is to become the wealthiest player at the end of the game.
User Interface:
The user interface as been managed well and is very simple to understand.
However, the game play needs some getting used to which shouldn't be too difficult if you have already played the board game.
The character token is well designed 3-D object and are quite animated. Such as the running sumo wrestler as seen in the screenshot below.
The animated instructions get annoying after the first game play, but it can be easily turned off using ‘Options’.
Features:
There are many cool features available in the app, the most notable one is the way you roll the dice.
Rolling of Dice:
A simple shaking of your iPhone just as you would roll the dice. However, this feature can be turned off via the Options menu.
Wi-Fi Multi-Player:
I found this one to be the most exciting feature. Nothing can match the
excitement of playing with friends on the same Wi-Fi network. The
interface is simple enough for one person to host and others to join
the game.
In the event of disconnection the game is not disrupted as the AI plays your game instead.
House Rules:
This option allows you to change some of the rules such as the amount of money each player starts with, limit on the number of houses, hotels etc.
Play your own music during game play:
It does not restrict the user with only the jazz and the lounge music options and allows you to play any personal music as the background.
Tips to play the game:
You will find these tips useful to play the iPhone game:
- The initial strategy is to land on un-owned properties and to buy them. Some level of luck does determine which property the player lands on and could prove to be advantageous. But there are other factors involved, such as trading with other players, bidding the right amount, building hotels to increase rent etc.
- Try collecting cards of the same color. This will give you ‘Monopoly’ i.e. the ability to enhance the property by building houses, hotels etc.
- If you are short on monopoly currency, buy or trade the cheapest properties (dark brown and light blue), this will allow you to build more houses/hotels and yields you higher rent.
- If you have sufficient funds then go for the costliest properties (green) as they will yield you higher rental returns and higher mortgage values.
- Building hotels (more houses) will ensure that you drain your opponent faster.
- Buy or trade Utilities – the more of these properties increases your rental income by many folds.
- If you own a property that happens to be the last piece to another player’s set then try to get more out of those properties while trading.
- During the bidding process, check out the price of the property and if required mortgage your existing property to get your hands on this new property. This works against an AI opponent. Remember: you will end up paying at least 10% extra while trying to un-mortgage the property but if well planned then the benefit far exceeds this 10% loss.
It would have been nice to have the following features:
- Ability to set time-limits, this could ensure that the winner is decided within predefined time limits.
- More movers (token characters) to the current set of characters.
- Ability to name each saved game.
- Ability to ‘hide your money’ – this can help during the auction or bidding process. Your opponents are aware of your bidding limits, since, your account balance is out in open.
- An option to bypass an auction.
I observed the following issues while playing the game:
- Over Wi-Fi, the game seemed to be a little unstable, as my friend kept getting disconnected. I guess this feature would work a lot better when the game gets ported to iPhone firmware 3.0 which includes peer-to-peer connectivity. The saving grace is that in the event of disconnection (if you're hosting) the game is not disrupted as the AI plays your game instead.
- Some movers (token characters) are always placed on top of the value of the property. I found it difficult to see the actual property price, especially if the token character belongs to my opponent.
Please let us know if there are any issues that you have faced so far.
Verdict:
Overall, I found the game to be very addictive and definitely worth its price of $4.99.
You can download Monopoly for the iPhone from the App Store using this direct iTunes link.
As always, don't forget to let us know your thoughts on the iPhone game.
Well, it is a very fun game, but it's been out for almost a year now… A little slow on that one…
Yeah, you're right, it's been around for quite sometime now. It was released in December last year.
We've always wanted to write reviews of iPhone apps or games we really like so that our readers can check them out in case they have missed them.
Unfortunately due to time constraints it hasn't been possible.
But we hope to write review of our favorite apps a lot more frequently.
Good game; I play it occasionally on the iPhone. The main games I play are Muddled, Tetris, and Scrabble. I'm not a really graphics intensive gamer, hah.
Well, from personal experience, it's a pretty addictive game
Good to know, that's exactly our view.
And that's really the idea behind reviewing apps that we like, so we can find a connection with you (our readers).
So we can share our favorite apps with you and you can share your favorite apps with us and fellow readers just like Marc has done below.
We don't want to write about all the iPhone apps/games out there (not that its possible with more than 30k apps on the App Store).
We hope you folks like the reviews as much we enjoy writing about them.
the game is awesome but it destroys battery life
Good on ya, and I look forward to future reviews
I can attest to that… Best to play when plugged in haha.
I have had this game since it came out, my boyfriend & I play it against eachother alot at home. Its nice that even if you aren't able to play against someone becuase they don't have an iphone, you can play multiplayer on 1 device and just pass it around.
I agree on the face that it sucks battery life, especially when playing a WiFi game, and that it does seem to crash ALOT when playing a WiFi game as well. I definately hope that the new Iphone OS 3.0 will fix this issue.
why don't you consider requesting 'App User Reviews' based on your game review layout above? If your tied up with time, let your readers do the writing, you can select a review, check the App out, edit submission then publish. Ask for a specific App genre and see what happens. A simple credit of thanks would be enough
A lot of people use this site for it's info, be nice to see a Users Reviews section too.
Just a suggestion
Monopoly: my kids would murder me if I didn't play it with them, they'd bury my iPhone somewhere if they saw this game on it
It is, and always will be a family favorite
A lot of people also tend to abuse of this "user review" privilage…
i realize that it could be abused if it were 'open posting'
My suggestion would be to submit review via email for selection or editing, then for iPhone Hacks team to review before turning it into an article about said application.
There's too many sites that allow 'heated discussions' about topics then they turn into insults and the essence of the original post gets lost to bickering and squabbling. My phone's apps are better than your phones apps etc
Thanks for the suggestions.
We have been thinking on these lines as well and we are of the opinion that a forum with a section dedicated to App Reviews might be apt place for readers to submit reviews of their favorite iPhone apps.
We could probably write an article with links to the genuine and good app reviews and maybe even have rewards for the best app reviews depending on the response it generates.
What do you think?
Yankii said and I still agree that there are many who abuse forums and flame members and the opinions they post.
Why not start with a limited forum, iPhone related only, with a negative post rating system ( 3 strikes {neg votes} your post gets removed)
I'm willing to supply reviews on Apps that I find useful to myself, including PC interaction > (don't have a mac, I'm a Bill Gates minion…. Not through choice)(question on rectifying this later)<. as I use a fair few Apps like Discover, Folders, Veency and the like.
Personally, if I use an App, it's because I like it, I don't need or want someone slating my prefs as has happened elsewhere in cyberworld
If this will help, then I'm more than happy to put fingers on keys.
In the words of iphoneHacks……..What do you think???
Mac O/S question….
I'm running Vista home premium, can I just d l a mac os and install straight onto my pc?
thank for sharing
I haven't tried wifi, but I love when you play the AI because if you have more money than they do, go to auction on every property and just bid $1 more than their max! I forgot what replaced Boardwalk because there are so many different editions now, but I won it at auction for 140K!
Thanks, we have taken note of your suggestions.
yankii is right, forums can lead to abuse in fact we had forums but had to close it down due to excessive spam.
We are currently looking for a platform that would work for us and we plan to also nominate moderators to keep tab on abuse.
We hope to launch forums in this quarter, we'll keep you posted.
thx for sharing
Can't seem to get a wi-fi or bluetooth game started. Anyone know how to make this happen?
I have been trying to figure out how to unmortgage a property on this app I just got it. Please help I know it cant be too difficult.
To unmortgage a property, go into ‘manage’ (the house icon), touch the property you want to unmortgage. On the left-hand card you will see a red letter M – click on it and hey presto.
Can’t get to work freezes on the setup screen. Fell like I got ripped off for $5
I can figure out how to change house rules. I see the rules, just can’t see how to change.
I can’t either. Do you know already?
I have a weird language appearing that I cannot get rid of – please help.
Thanks. Is it available for Android
I have a weird language appearing and I don’t know how to change it. Please help !!!