The end of the game is a long, drawn out, unpleasant affair. Meanwhile, the last two players are still playing after 3 hours, exhibiting sheer bloody-mindedness, as one player slowly gains the upper hand, and one player sits around hoping to be a David against a monopolistic Goliath. They sit around twiddling their thumbs for another half an hour, hoping for someone else to be eliminated so they can have a quick game of something on the side. You play Monopoly, and inevitably one person is eliminated after about 45 minutes. For better or worse, Charles Darrow’s Monopoly, published in 1933, though neither the first, nor the best, has left a lasting imprint on the board game world.īut entirely like Kings Quest I-IV, ET, and Vince McMahon’s XFL–and entirely unlike anything nominated for the Spiel des Jahres– Monopoly is an example of extraordinarily bad game design. It means exchanging money, picking up cards, and playing cards. It means rolling dice, and moving in a circuit around a board. After all, for most people, a board game means Monopoly. But I disgress.) Anyhow, if I had to multiply suffering per units sold, Monopoly wins hands down. (I once had to play a privately published board game that took the worst aspects of Monopoly, Backgammon, Twister, and Trouble, and wrapped it up in a pirate theme…but the most piratey thing about it was the cosplayer they hired to spruik it at the Toy and Games Expo. Monopoly is not the worst game in the world. I’ve traumatised friends with frenetic negotiations and futures trading (under our liberal house rules interpretation). I love the top hat and the racing car and think the addition of a cat is a travesty upon the game. I understand the frisson of rolling the exact number you needed to avoid the plague of hotels and potential bankruptcy, or the frustration (or relief!) of rolling a third double and landing in jail. In the first ten years of my life, the board game I played more than any other was Monopoly. If you're going to buy weird versions of Monopoly, you might as well get the one about cutting grass.
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