Review: Monopoly U Build
Score:
71%
Never trust anyone that updates Shakespeare for the kids. Does that hold true for classics like Monopoly? Let's find out as EA Mobile bring "Monopoly U Build", with hexagonal boards, new buildings, and a lot more cash (millions!) to the smartphone gaming world.
Buy Link | Download / Information Link
Hold on, this is labelled as an arcade game. That's not the Monopoly I know, which lasts for a good hour or so, where people ignore the rules that speed the game up and complain it's too slow (that'll be the automatic Auction rule), who make up stuff to do with Free Parking. In fact it's miles away from the square board game beloved by many.
It is based on a board game though, called Monopoly U-Build (here it is on Amazon), and allows you the opportunity to build your own board, with familiar names, on a hex-based grid, with extra pieces such as skyscrapers and sewage works, and a bundle of new tactics and gaming opportunities.
Most of these elements have made the leap to the smartphone, although you don't get the complete freedom to build your own Monopoly board - nevertheless the five different layouts you can choose from range from a quick fire starter board (for short games, with only properties in each colour group), to much longer and involved boards. Which gives you a nice choice of pace to the game.
Neither does Monopoly U Build change the basic essence of Monopoly. You are still moving around a board made up of properties which you can either buy or pay rent on, avoiding the trip to jail, the increasingly weird Free Parking space, trying to manage the cash flow to make your opponent go bankrupt before you do. Yes, there is still a part for random chance to play, but as any good player will know, it's not all down to luck - canny building, property management and trading are all key to a successful game, and they are all here, present and correct.
And the update to money, with everything measured in hundreds of thousands and millions, is a jump from tradition as well. Yes it makes it more like the real world, but there's a certain joy in asking for £2 on Old Kent Road - asking for £20K isn't the same.
What is a bit off-putting for me is that this game could be so much better on a Symbian smartphone. Built in Java, some of the graphics are simply scaled up and look a bit [make that very - Ed] fuzzy on the E7 because of this. There's a reliance on menus and linear lists of options to make your choices in the game - I suspect to ensure that non-touchscreen devices can play the game without the developers (EA Mobile) having to do a huge amount of work.
Thankfully the touch screen is supported, so it's finger interfacing on the menu, but seeing a good game hampered by the needs to accommodate a lower specced device just feels wrong.
Because there is a good game in here. I'm happy to see classics updated (especially when the Ovi Store still has the classic game available) and beyond the philosophical debate of whether this deserves to be called Monopoly or not, I'm enjoying this smaller challenge - because limiting the time for a game and reducing the size of the playing board as the fancy takes me is a good thing. Different enough to be different, but close enough to be familiar.
I actually think that this update is better on the smartphone than in real life - there's something reassuring about the familiar square board, and while that can be captured on a smartphone, the U Build variant gives it a zest and sparkle, tailors it for better speed and playability on the move, and generally gives you something that (a) feels like Monopoly should and (b) still feels modern and mobile.
Barring the quirky java issues, I'm going to recommend this, and honestly I wasn't expecting that when Steve pointed out this "update for the kids" to me. So congratulations, Hasbro and EA. I'm off to build another skyscraper to tower over my hotels.
-- Ewan Spence, August 2011.
Reviewed by Ewan Spence at