MONOPOLY DEAL D600 Mobile Cell Phone Java Game

Customer reviews for MONOPOLY DEAL D600 Phone Game:
Customer	Review of MONOPOLY DEAL D600
Adrian Jackson	There's a tendency among board-game snobs to look down on monopoly. It's simplistic, long-winded, heavily based on luck, and has problems with a runaway leader eventually winning a boring and drawn-out game. Monopoly deal addresses most of these problems by turning the traditional board-game into a fast-paced card game, with plenty of potential for quick turnarounds and sneaky victories. Plenty of the old monopoly staples are still present. You still build sets of properties, and improve them with houses and hotels. You still build up supplies of monopoly money to pay rents, birthday presents, and taxes. But instead of a plodding progression around the board, these are driven by the play of cards. Each player in turn gets to play three cards, which allow them to obtain properties, add money to their stash, or charge the other players rent on the properties they already own. In addition, there a range of actions for stealing properties from other players, collecting debts, getting new cards, and so on. To win the game, you need to collect three full sets of properties. With luck, this can be managed quite quickly - in theory, you could even do it in your first turn in a three-player game, though most games tend to go on quite a while longer than that. But never too long - this is very much a five-minute pick-up-and-play title. Don't have five minutes, or finding a game going on longer? That's fine too, as you can quit the game and continue exactly where you left off at any point. The game does still have a large element of luck to it, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing in such a fast-paced title. Sometimes you just won't get the cards you need, but the game's over so quickly that you can jump straight into another round, and hope for better cards the next time round. And unlike some games where luck plays a large part, it's difficult to feel hard done by when the opposing players steal your carefully collected property sets to steal victory from you. It's all just part of the fun of the game. There's a fairly short 'story mode' to the game, pitting you against increasing numbers of increasingly skilled opponents so that you can learn the ropes. There's also a quick start, which sets up a random game, or a custom game option where you can choose the rules and players. You can also play with two human players through the 'pass & play' mode, which tells you when to pass the phone to the other player. Replay value is increased by a series of achievements for everything from pulling in a small fortune from a single rent to completing each stage of the story. Unfortunately the game's somewhat let down by the technical side of things. There are bugs in the game that quite often cause properties to fail to be counted in their sets (leaving you needing four properties of that colour rather than three), or prevent the 'advance to go' card from working at all. On a couple of occasions it's just hung mid-game for me. But again, in such a fast-paced game this doesn't much matter. It's so much fun in the games where it does work that it's easy to forgive it the occasional technical glitch. At the end of the day, monopoly deal has taken over as the game that I play when i've got a few minutes to kill. It's easy to play, hectic fun, and one of the best card games to make its way to the mobile format. A few minor technical irritations take the edge off the experience, but don't stop it from being a good buy, and i'll probably end up picking up the card version of the game on the strength of the mobile version.
Paul Kelly	Easy to play. Every game is different. Can't stop playing this. Love it.
Paul Haworth	This one was something of a surprise for me. I picked it up by mistake (thought it was the monopoly board game - d'oh!) and once I worked out the rules, loved it. It is incredibly addictive. It is a turn based card game rather than the board game, but really don't let that put you off. The graphics are fairly basic but very functional, bright and clear. The sound, as ever for a java game, is basic. This doesn't detract from the game in any way though. Game play, once mastered, is incredibly simple. You will find yourself winning enough games to make yourself keep coming back for more.
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MONOPOLY DEAL D600 Mobile Cell Phone Game