Monopoly Streets

Don't Pass Go!

I can just about guarantee that everyone out there reading this review has played Monopoly in one form or another. For those rare (and might I say, odd) people who haven't, Monopoly is a game in which you buy, sell and trade properties to gain monopolies over their respective color groups.

Having a monopoly over a color group is beneficial as it allows you to build houses and hotels on the properties. This increases the amount of money that you receive when an opponent lands on your property, which in turn decreases the amount of money they have. Whoever has the most money at the end wins!

The battleship token moving around the board during its turn.
You can see the top hat in the background waiting its turn.

Monopoly Streets is one of the many iterations of the game, available on Playstation3, XBox 360 and Wii. It follows the same general format as all the other versions: buy properties, collect rent, and get rich. However, what is different about this version is the fact that you are actually playing at a street level view. So, your character/token moves around the board (different types of movement for each token) just like they are going down a real city street. And as houses and hotels are built, you can see them get constructed on the board.

Another cool little addition to this is the addition of alternate boards and tokens. After each game you play, you get some Monopoly money that you can use to unlock additional boards and tokens. However, not all the boards and tokens can be unlocked in this fashion, and must be purchased with real money. This, in my opinion, is a major drawback. I feel that they should at least have the option to unlock all the extra tokens and boards with the in-game Monopoly money, for those who may not have a whole lot of extra money to buy the extras.

There is also a multiplayer aspect to the game, where you can play with up to 4 people on a single TV, or you can play online with others around the world. I can attest to the greatness of the local multiplayer, although I did not get a chance to play online. I assume it is much of the same, however.

The final thing about the game is that you don't have to follow the regular rules necessarily. You can customize your own rule set, or use one of the built-in sets. You can even customize and save your own based on these other sets. Each rule set provides its own challenges and changes the gameplay, increasing the replayability immensely.

Monopoly Streets gets a respectable 8½ stars

After everything, I'm giving this game 8½ stars, not bad for a game that has history that can be traced back to 1903. It has great replayability due to the myriad of boards that can be played on. Granted, all of the boards are set up the same, just with different looks and property names, but I digress. The game is great, especially for a party type game (auctions for mutually wanted properties comes to mind), the more people, the better. If you want in on this action, you can rent the game through GameFly, by it from your local games store, or get it from Amazon. The link for the PS3 version is below.

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