Review of the Game "Monopoly Revolution"

My very gracious Grandmother and Aunts purchased the older children some games. They purchase Operations, I SPY Go Fish and Monopoly Revolution. Here I want to talk about Monopoly Revolution. I am very grateful for these games and am thankful that they thought about the children. I do want to make some observations about this "New" Monopoly Game.

The first thing that is obviously different is that the board is round and not square. This is kind of cool and looks modern. The property cards are smaller and the tokens just have pictures on them instead of being in the shape of the objects. The biggest change is there is no physical money. Each player receives a credit card in which their money is kept on (well kind of). The game has a machine in which you stick your card in to add or subtract money from it. You also use the machine to transfer money from one player to the other. All prices are have been adjusted from the 1930's game. The prices are now in thousands or millions instead of tens and hundreds.

Each player is given a "debit" card instead of money.

Another nice change in the game is that there is no Community Chest and Chance can either happen by landing on the board or randomly when you remove your card from the money machine. So you might purchase some houses and when you pull your card out after paying a Chance can come up applying to you. I do like that feature. The game also allows for you to force a trade with another player. This speeds up the game and makes it possible to get all of one color group when a player isn't willing to trade for anything. Over all some nice improvements have been made. The lack of physical money makes the game easier to deal with because you don't have a bunch of loose bills.

This is the cash machine that keeps track of how much money a player has.

All that to say, my biggest complaint is also the money issue. In order to add or subtract money from your account you enter the amount press if it is K's (thousands) or M's (millions) and the bank machine does the rest. For a game that I think is a good game to teach children about money, how to spend it and how to count it there is very little need for counting your money. You just plug in the amount to subtract or add and the machine does if for you. It does not take a lot of skill to do that. The game still has strategy but it is easy to just spend and not consider how much money you have left because it is in the computer. In my opinion this is a lot like what is said about credit cards "It is easy to spend more when you put it on a card instead of paying cash because it doesn't seem real."

The Property Deeds

My conclusion is that most of the changes in the game are an improvement to it, adjusting the costs, the way Chance works and being able to force a trade are all good. The biggest drawback to this new monopoly game is the fact that it removes the concept of cash and replaces it with Credit Cards. I want my children to learn to handle money wisely and learn to count it out and count back change, this game does not allow for that now. I believe it is a dumbing down of the game.