| The first impression one gets of Monopoly Tycoon is SimCity in the Monopoly universe. Great, right? Monopoly, that venerable board game, is the original city-management sim. How cool would it be to watch Boardwalk or Marvin Gardens evolve over a century?
Not so fast. Monopoly Tycoon does indeed bring comparisons to SimCity, but more in the vein of, "Man, I wish I were playing SimCity right now."
Okay, I exaggerate. I exaggerate because I love! In reality, MonoTycoon is some fun, but its execution is lacking. Where I was hoping for a free-play exploration of the board-game world, I instead got the chance to essentially play quick board games against computer opponents.
Gameplay goes something like this: The player picks a character, the embodiment of those great pewter Monopoly pieces. Each supposedly has a unique personality, but I never saw anything like that during gameplay. Once on the Monopoly world, the player must meet certain goals — make this much cash, sell that many units — to win and move on to the next scenario. That means building apartments and businesses, and eventually buying up whole city blocks.
My favorite strategy? Buy blocks owned by the city or opponents. The owner of a block can buy businesses on that block on the cheap, which at once raises the player’s worth and kneecaps said opponent.
At the heart of the city are Sims — errr — Monopoly residents. These little people have a range of needs depending on where they live; residents of disadvantaged areas just want a great deal, while the upper crust craves exotic goods. Each day in the gameworld represents five years, during which time different building types are revealed.
Sounds fun? It is, somewhat, but scenarios are either too quick or tedious. Also, there’s absolutely no way to skip ahead. Get stuck, and you’ll have to play over and over before figuring out how to win and move on. Worse, some strategies are only revealed online — whatever happened to the quality of manual writing? Geez. Most unforgivable is the lack of sandbox mode, forcing players to seek opponents online or wade through the scenarios.
Graphics are gorgeous, even when zoomed as close as possible. The Monopoly City is almost as alive as SimCity, with scurrying residents and fancy cars and building designs. Sound is good, too, though the various eras’ theme songs can grow repetitive over longer games.
All that said, only Monopoly fans will keep this one around more than a few weeks. Everyone else will get nostalgic for replicating splines and head back to Maxis’ masterpiece. | 
