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Personally, for my first review, I thought I’d choose something a little out of the ordinary. For me, that choice is obviously Monopoly.

Before I go into the good and bad about this game, I want to make two things clear: I love Monopoly as a board game, and I hate that this game does not have Live multiplayer. This being said; I move on to my actual review.

The game has two separate modes: Classic and Developer. Classic mode is exactly as you’d expect it to be. A normal game of Monopoly, a selection of multiple different boards to choose from; some you’d see in the normal board game (Standard and World being obvious choices), some you’d probably never seen before in your life (Cardboard board, Cheese board) which make for an interesting spin on the mix.

In terms of early game, if you’re an achievement whore like I can tend to be, you can rack up plenty of early game achievements if that’s what you’re into, but 100%ing this game may take some time and is heavily luck based (Rolling 3 doubles to go to jail is one in particular).

Developer mode is a bit different though, where this mode is a group of mini-games at the start of every round (either 6, 9 or 12 rounds) which designates your choice of die roll. The higher the die you choose, the more tokens you get on the board. The more tokens, the more ability to get a property (if it’s unowned), pay rent (if it’s owned by another player), or build a house (if it’s a monopoly you own). The mode is interesting, to say the least. Whoever owns the most amount of property at the end; wins.

The gameplay of the game is quite good. Some options would have been better to add; The amount that “Mr Monopoly” speaks. He can get tiresome, and it was a while before I found out the Y button shut him up temporarily, but the option would have been better.

Perhaps a custom soundtrack would have been a nice option. There’s only a few ’songs’ in game so they get old quick. There’s plenty of rules for Classic Mode players, but there was still a few rules that I use that weren’t included.

Multiplayer is limited to System Link or Local only, which is a massive shame. The ability to play this game over XBL would have been an amazing addition, and to not see it in a game nowadays causes me to scratch my head, wondering “Why?”

Ok, now for the final breakdown.

The Verdict

Pros

Good controls
Plenty of board/game options
Masses of replayability

Cons

Mr Monopoly just won’t shut up!
No XBL multiplayer
Repetitive music

7/10