N-Gage Review – Monopoly Here & Now: The World Edition

Monopoly on N-Gage. Now there’s something a lot of casual N-Gage fans wanted to see.

And why not ? Its Monopoly, on your N-Gage compatible device. The board game that about 750 million million have played ever since it’s debut in 1935, is now playable on the go, in the palm of your hands.

Backstory and Gameplay :

Like we mentioned earlier, Monopoly debuted around 1935, and has since then achieved immense popularity as a board game, being played in households around the world. Game play revolves mostly around chance and is based on moving around blocks and buying them. When the other player lands on a block you own, you can demand rent from them. If they cant pay rent, that player is declared bankrupt and is sent out of the game. The last remaining person is the winner. The game uses its’ own currency unit, the Mono, designated by M.

The thing with Monopoly though, is that while it may sound simple, it can take a while to play. Normally a game lasts well over 45 minutes. Luckily Monopoly on N-Gage saves your current game automatically, provided you quit properly, so you can always pick it up and resume it later.

There is only one “Game Mode” in Monopoly on N-Gage, and that’s to play Monopoly. You choose your piece from the eight different ones available, then proceed to setup options for the other 3 players. You can choose from 1 to 3 other players to play along with you, being either the AI or for Multiplayer(which we’ll go in more detail later in the review). After that you can setup the rules for the game, such as Initial Cash, Auction Rules, Number of Houses, etc.

When the game begins, the dices are rolled and whoever gets the highest number plays first.

After that, it proceeds turn-by-turn. You go around the board buying blocks (properties or services), just like the board game. Depending on what’s going on, the game zooms you in and out of the board on-screen. For example, when you roll the dice, and your game-piece moves the board is zoomed in. Once your game-piece lands at a block, the game zooms back out again, to an overview of the board.

The game-pieces in particular, move pretty smoothly. Each game-piece has a different movement animation. For example, the car game-piece drives around, the penguin waddles ahead, etc. You can choose to switch the animations off though. To hurry things up a bit, you can keep the select key held down. This fast forwards the animations.

The board on the other hand, is your pretty standard Monopoly Board. The problem however, is that you cant really see any of the text on most blocks, when its zoomed out. You can clearly make out the colors assigned to whichever block though.

After your move, a menu pops up, asking you what you’d like to do. Depending on whether you own the block or not, you can choose to buy it or put it up for auction if you want to try to get it cheaper.

However, if you come across a Chance Card or Community Chest card, this changes.

These cards are also accompanied by a “Did you know?” fact that appears on-screen. This is mildly annoying after a while, so luckily you can turn this ‘feature’ off.

You can pause the game at any time and view the board to see how things are going. You can also trade properties with other players at this menu.

You’ll get trade offers from your AI opponents every once in a while, containing their properties and cash offers. You can ofcourse bargain with the offers.

Its worth nothing though, that if you’re new to the game, there is no tutorial at all. There is however, a help file which is incredibly badly formatted and hard to read.

Online capabilities :

Aite, so this is where things take a turn for the worse. There is no online multiplayer support at all, not even via bluetooth. This is a total missed opportunity, because Monopoly is all about the multiplayer.

You can however, still play 4-player multiplayer games in a group of peers, by passing your N-Gage compatible device around, although I dont really see many people doing this.

You can view your score online however, which is a bit quizzical. There’s also the usual unlockable NGP (N-Gage Points) pickups, as with every N-Gage game.

Controls and Orientation :

Controls are pretty much what you’d expect. Move around with the Dpad, etc.

The game can be played in both portrait and landscape modes, although it does look a bit better in landscape mode, as the board ‘fits’ the screen better.

An annoying part of the control scheme is that if you’re in landscape mode, and you’re entering a bid amount in an auction, you have to slide your device’s keypad open and use the numeric keypad.

Graphics and Operation Speed :

Honestly, the graphics are not mind-blowing at all, but they’re good enough for this genre. Not being able to read the titles on blocks, is annoying though.

Music and Sounds :

The music and sound are pretty much what you’d expect. There’s calm quiet background music going on, and each game-piece has its own unique sound effect, which is a nice touch.

Conclusion :

When it comes down to it, Monopoly on N-Gage is basically the board game, in the palm of your hand.

There are a few graphical annoyances here and there, but nothing too crazy. Lack of proper multiplayer though, is a huge mistake on the developer’s part.

Taking all this into consideration, we’re going to give Monopoly on N-Gage 3.5 stars out of 5.

Rating:

You can find out more about the game over on its Official Game page or if you need tips or help with the game, head on over to the Official Monopoly N-Gage forum.