Monopoly Family Fun Pack (Xbox ONE)

I bought this one following on from Monopoly on Xbox 360 and found it to be a more up to date and colourful version of the previous instalment. The Family Fun Pack also consists of two games; Monopoly Plus and Monopoly Deal. As both were relatively short, I’ve decided to review them together.

There’s not much else to add to my review of Monopoly regarding the gameplay in Monopoly Plus, although it’s worth pointing out the games flow a lot easier in this version and they have removed the Monopoly Man along with his annoying comments and the tendency for the interface to stop working. The board is also more interactive than before. You can roll the dice to a specific strength and when you throw them down, they can also knock over your playing piece, much like in real Monopoly.

Monopoly Deal is an online only version of the game based on the card game of the same name. You have to compete against up to 4 other players to be the first to collect three different sets of properties. There are other cards that you get to try and disrupt the other players using abilities which include stealing their completed sets, forcing them to trade properties and making them pay you, which can lead to getting their properties.

Being an online game, I found the connection times in Monopoly Deal to be pretty poor. It also timed out on me three or four times after giving me a countdown telling me it was my go... but then didn’t let me do anything.

Also the game doesn’t require communication as it’s always versus each other so I don’t understand why I even had the option to listen to some of the idiots out there who are doing other things while playing, like talking to their girlfriend, shouting at their kids, something that seemed like doing the laundry and.... EATING!!!! One thing I’ve learned is that people who eat crisps while playing in a group with their microphone on are the most sinfully annoying people in the world. It’s even more annoying when they try to talk through a mouthful of crisps.

Achievements – 2,000 Points – 30 Achievements

Monopoly Plus is a nice easy run for 1,000 points. There isn’t anything that requires playing over Xbox Live so that immediately rules out the random chance factor of other people which I will come on to later.

The fact that it isn’t online-capable makes getting a few achievements really easy. Winning a 6 player game in local multiplayer becomes a breeze, as well as getting a property for at least 10% less than its original value. It also makes completing two colour sets in one trade easy, which would probably be impossible if playing with real people.

The rest can be obtained by playing with two human controlled players and making the game last long enough to fulfil the criteria. There is one exception to this though.

‘Precocious’ was the last achievement I unlocked and it requires you to collect rent during your first turn. So basically you have to roll a number, land on a property, buy the property and then hope another player rolls the same number as you. It is completely luck based and even having 5 other computer players, I still had to replay at least five times to get it.

Multiplayer

So Monopoly Deal is the other side of the coin where all the achievements have to be earned over Xbox Live. The problem with pretty much all of these achievements is that they require you to go out of your way to get them. This is where the random chance factor comes in to play.

Firstly, you have to get a game with someone. This is fairly difficult even for what was a relatively new title. Then, you have to target an achievement. The first game I played I managed to get two achievements, one for being the first player to get a full set, and another for using a rent card on a full set. After that I had to target achievements.

Random chance allowed me to get ‘Helpful deal’ for completing two sets for me and an opponent by using Forced Deal. I got another for using Deal Breaker to win a game. It continues like this. You have to get specific cards and complete specific actions but this is all for nought if your opponent gets the cards to win the game.

Once you get down to one achievement, you are basically playing to lose in order to have the chance of satisfying the achievement conditions, meaning that for achievement hunters, there is next to no impetus to win a game other than two achievements that require you to win in a certain way.

I finally decided that enough was enough with six achievements to go and asked a friend (ukscoob) to help me out. It still took a while to get them just playing one game and we both had several opportunities to win the match and had to ignore them. Pointless.

Downloadable Content – N/A

So there it is. Nothing really new in Monopoly Plus and a horrible online experience in Monopoly Deal. Not recommended for achievement hunters who don’t like having to play against real people in luck based scenarios.