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Platform: Game
Boy Review by: Paul Franzen I knew this one girl in high school—let’s call her Betty. Now Betty, she liked to take control. Not in the sexy sort of way, though, or at least, not as far as I know, or would want to know, given Betty's general lack of attractiveness. She did, however, like to take control in Monopoly, rolling the dice for everyone, taking and receiving money for everyone, moving everyone's pieces and even yelling at whoever was too busy having fun to pay attention to whatever it was she was doing. Monopoly was not so much a game to Betty as it was strategic warfare, and she sucked all the fun clean out of it. You've played Monopoly with Betty before; I know you have. She always, always suggests Monopoly at any gathering she's attending, and she never, ever wants to do much else. And lord, heaven help he who wants to leave the game early! Hell hath no fury.
Action Video Monopoly is your alternative to Betty. Instead of playing against obnoxious human players, AVM allows you to play against nondescript computer opponents, ones who won't get irritated if you get up in the middle of a game to get a handful of pretzels and a Mountain Dew. The game is four-player, so if Betty was around you could play with her; but your best bet is to play against CPU opponents, who have names like "Ollie" and "Erwin," which, as a side-note, means they are definitely not people you’d ever want to hang out with. AVM plays like your standard board game version of Monopoly, assuming your standard Monopoly game abides completely by the game's official rules—there are no "house rules" in AVM. One rule that threw me off was "any property landed on but not purchased is immediately auctioned off among the players," and there's no doubt other quirks you'll notice if you play. If you've never played Monopoly before, you should be able to pick it up just fine with this title, watching your computer opponents and following their lead. One thing you'll learn to do quickly is set the game to quick mode as, and try to follow me on this one, watching the computer roll the dice, move its pieces slowly, take its maddeningly-long time to buy houses and trade with other computer opponents, isn't particularly exciting. Setting the game to quick mode reduces the game from around an hour to maybe twenty minutes. Which is, of course, about a couple days shorter than real games of Monopoly run for. If you want your game to go even faster than that, there are several scenarios loaded into the game for you to play out. Scenarios wherein everyone starts out with lots of money and lots of property, lots of property but no monopolies, few property but nice monopolies, etc. These games can end in minutes, and they’re actually not as fun as regular ones just because they go by so quickly. Plus, what's the fun in starting with Boardwalk and Park Place, anyway?
AVM has one of the two features that all reputable portables need: Multiplayer on one cartridge. (The other feature, the ability to save anywhere and at any time, is completely missing, as is the ability to save itself.) You not only share the cartridge, but the system itself, passing it off to one another when it’s someone else’s turn. If you’ve got a friend with a Game Boy and a copy of the game you can link up for two-player action, but I doubt you could’ve pulled that one off even in 1993, let alone 2006. Some could argue that AVM features the perfect soundtrack for a portable game: The game’s totally silent. No tunes play during gameplay, and its sound effects are absolutely minimal, meaning you can watch Mammaltoes, the Turdburglar on G4 without missing any integral parts of the game. Also, while on the topic of aesthetics, both the "action" and the "video" parts of this game’s name are nowhere to be seen, unless the game’s talking about its standard animations of a racecar driving across the board at a decidedly not-racecar speed. That's not something you wanna advertise in a game's name, though; it'd be like calling Mario 64 "Super Oh My God, There's Animation!" The graphics are about what you’d expect from a game called Monopoly, putting them slightly below what you’d expect from a game for the original Game Boy. For a round of Monopoly on the go, you’re not gonna do much better than Action Video Monopoly for the original Game Boy, assuming you haven’t bought a new portable gaming console in the last fifteen years. It’s easier to deal with than it’s portable board cousin, and the game itself is much faster to play through than the real thing. Plus, there’s no clean-up, there’s no hunting through property cards for the one you just bought, there's no not being able to play because one of the cards is missing.
And, most importantly, there's no dealing with Betty. Unless you wanna explore the sexier side of her control-taking, that is. As far as board games go, Monopoly is one of the
best, and this portable port is spot-on. The only things I’d like to
have seen is more players (c'mon man, we can handle "Pass the
Game Boy" with more than just four people) and an ability to alter the rules, and
maybe AI that’s slightly less irritating (as un-lifelike as that’d
be). Other than that, Action Video Monopoly is surprisingly worth the
three bucks it fetches on eBay, and it's a great cheap game to play with
your family on those wonderful four week driving trips to Utah.
-- Paul Franzen {04-01-2006} |
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Past Reviews by Paul Franzen: Dig
Dug: Digging Strike (DS) |
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