Monopoly

Chairman of the bored

The world seems to be going crazy about revamping old board games at the moment. Michael Bay is making Battleship into a movie (Pearl Harbour 2? That's just sadistic), Pirates helmer Gore Verbinski is doing Cluedo and Sir Ridley Scott himself is taking on Monopoly, er, somehow. Monopoly doesn't exactly scream 'there's a story here' does it?

This new video game based on one of the world's most popular board games incorporates the Wii controls for 'shaking' your dice or bidding on a property up for auction, with standard controls across the board on other versions. There are also some alternate versions of the tried and tested formula, but really it's the game we know and love transferred to the 3-D realm.

Admittedly, you wouldn't get a fanfare like that when you're playing the real game

Despite such a thorough sprucing up, with Uncle Pennybags acting as the jovial host who scampers along the giant board keeping players in check, the fact is that much of the pleasure of Monopoly was down to 'bending' the rules; something you can't do when playing a computer. Families all tended to have their own way of playing that didn't necessarily have any relation to the rule book.

The video game offers pages and pages of calibration but that's kind of beside the point. It'll let you alter the rules, but not break them. Once you begin a game you have to stick to the options that you've chosen. So cheating - an important part of any game, board or otherwise - is a no go. This is one of the problems. The other is that having an actual board to twist around to see the layout better and then taking your sweet time to plan your next move was much more fun than being rushed through everything like you are in this video game.

But at the same time, you can't casually sneak houses onto your properties while no-one's looking

Presumably Hasbro and Electronic Arts came to the decision that a faster game is a better game, and that's simply not a wise choice. Playing with up to four friends slows the number of computer decisions compared to just playing by yourself against three CPUs, but you still feel like you're on the clock. If you're not being rushed around and bombarded with commentary by Pennybags then you're wishing you had total camera control so you could study the board from better angles.