.KEYWORD monopoly
.FLYINGHEAD PRODUCT REVIEW
.TITLE Handmark has a Monopoly of fun on Palm OS
.FEATURE
.SUMMARY Do not pass Go, do not collect $200. Go directly to Andy Eddy’s review of Handmark’s Monopoly for the Palm OS to find out how successfully this famous board game has been brought to your favorite handheld’s small screen.
.AUTHOR Andy Eddy
When Monopoly first hit dining-room tables and play rooms in the mid-1930s, you can be sure that its creators didn’t expect that it would quickly become America’s favorite board game-nor that years later it would still be played by millions and inspire countless themed variations, such as Disney, NASCAR, Star Wars, and Powerpuff Girls.
And if they had predicted all that would come to pass, what are the chances that they could have seen its expansion into the electronic world, as a CD-ROM PC game or that it would be playable on a global basis over the Internet?
The latest take on Monopoly has come to Palm OS handhelds thanks to Handmark (at http://www.handmark.com), which recently ported another big-name board game, Scrabble, to the Palm OS platform. It’s pictured in Figure A.
.FIGPAIR A Handmark has brought Monopoly to the Palm OS.
Handmark has done a great job in providing the excitement of the real-estate contest, offering multiplayer matches and (thankfully) putting the computer to work handling all of the money counting, property purchases, auctions, and other clerical aspects, leaving the players to concentrate on simply enjoying the game.
.H1 Robber Barons R Us
Running a game of Handmark’s Monopoly (at http://www.handmark.com/products/monopoly) is easy. You create a list of what players will be in the game, which can be any mix of computer and human players, and select playing pieces for each, as shown in Figure B.
.FIG B Select the players and their playing pieces.
From there, it’s all point-and-tap goodness, from rolling the dice, to placing houses on a property, to setting up a trade, to participating in an auction. You can see this in Figure C.
.FIG C You’re instructed to tap the screen to roll the dice.
Tapping on any property on the board brings up a replica of the board-game’s card, which shows rent, house/hotel costs and, most importantly, who owns it, as shown in Figure D.
.FIG D You can view a replica of the board-game’s property card.
Now is a good time-if I may be so sacrilegious in the midst of a Monopoly review-to mention that Monopoly has never been one of my favorite games. However, the fact that the software handles all the essential housekeeping streamlines game sessions to the point that I almost enjoy playing it. I guess it isn’t Monopoly that bothers me as much as some of the tedious aspects, such as banking and tracking who owns what property.
Another nice feature is the ability to do a mid-contest save, which captures the status of the board and all elements that make up the game. Not only does it enable you to spread the game-play out over a period of time should an appointment or other interruption crop up, but it also offers players the ability to test different strategies from the same point in the game.
The game enables the player to set up a game that’s customized with various preference settings. These include the level of animation of how cards are displayed and how pieces move on the board (reducing the animations speeds up the game substantially); whether actions in a game are confirmed with dialog boxes; and whether the game-play is accompanied by sound. Rule variations are also provided, such as whether landing on Free Parking brings a cash bonus (from accumulated fines, income tax, and such); whether rent is paid when a property is mortgaged; and whether properties are passed instead of auctioned if a player doesn’t choose to buy upon landing on it.
.H1 AI-AI-Oh
The difficulty in creating competitive computer-controlled players comes from the need for a high level of artificial intelligence (AI) built in. If there’s not enough AI, the experience doesn’t resemble playing a human player, and while Handmark has created capable AI for Monopoly’s computer players, the game-play can often be somewhat sterile and staid. This becomes apparent during trades, which often result in off-balance value assessments. For instance, you wouldn’t likely give up New York Avenue in exchange for a railroad-even though both cost $200 to buy-if the computer would gain a monopoly on that property group. No, not even if the computer offered you a little bit of extra cash.
A major problem comes with the infrared beaming of a game between players. The procedure is for one player to make a move, and then beam the game status to the other player, much like play-by-mail chess. While in theory, this seems to be functional, in actual game-play, problems crop up for situations that require both-or all, if more than two are playing-to interact. Auctions and trades require both to participate, but IR beaming doesn’t support that level of interactivity.
.BEGIN_KEEP
Additionally, there’s no restriction on one player taking up the action and completing a few moves on both sides in a human vs. human game, then beaming it back to the other person with the hope that they didn’t notice. Again, using the play-by-mail chess analogy, it would be easy for the other player to realize that the other player cheated in such a way because the board position would be noticeably advanced, but it might not be as simple to keep track of the status of a Monopoly game given all the factors needed to be tracked (i.e., properties owned, money held, etc.). For these reasons, multiplayer games are probably better accomplished by passing around a single unit, though I’d guess that this is just one instance where the table-top game is preferable to higher technology.
The Handmark version has a few other foibles to deal with-such as not being able to delete players in the middle of the list, because clicking Remove only takes them off from the bottom. Also, you can put more than one player on the list with the same name, whether by writing in a human player’s name again or by selecting the same computer player from the drop-down roll. However, if you do your best to work around these glitches, the Monopoly game is quite enjoyable, particularly because a computer version provides simplification and minimizes the tedium. Yes
