Wednesday, February 09, 2011

Whose Turn Is It?
Monopoly Live is a new version of the same old game, with one big difference - a big-brotherish electronic monitor towering over the board to tell you whose turn it is, which space you should occupy, how much money you have, basically squeezing the last drops of fun out of it.
The tower, powered by 4 AA batteries, bathes the board in infrared light, and a camera can see reflectors placed on each game piece. To roll the die, you hide your game piece from the camera by cupping your hand over it, and the computer rolls, complete with fake dice sounds. It then watches to make sure you land on the right property. There are new random events like a horse race, auctions, or a gas tax, and there’s an option to pay a bit more to upgrade your utilities so they are green.
What's the point of being an actual big brother now, if some electronic gizmo is going to eliminate all opportunities for bullying, pointing out mistakes, running the game as we see fit, etc?

2 comments:

Mark Anderson said...

A tower that tells you whose turn it is? What's the fun in that? A button you can push that audibly asks, "whose turn is it" in a really annoying tone...now that would be cool. Wait, that would replace me with a button.

Doug said...

Everybody's ahead of me on this one. You'd have to ask either of my little brothers to be sure, but I suspect that the only difference between this and the Monopoly games we played as kids is that I didn't have an infrared light (not that I wouldn't have been happy to use it if I did).