giant post
Just picked up a new Monopoly set, it's apparently published by EA. EA also maintains pogo.com, and the website is advertised on the back of aforementioned Monopoly boxes; how fortunate.
EA advertises the game as being fast-paced: you can't pay 10% of your total worth for the Income Tax anymore and the Luxury Tax has been raised to $100, the Speed Die is featured, and the booklet stresses official rule play. That Speed Die is insane; if you manage to roll a 1, 2, or 3 with
all three dice, you can move
anywhere on the board. The Community Chest+Chance cards and the Deeds have been resized to fit in a large pile, haha. Oddly enough, the first property color has officially changed to brown from purple, like the European boards always had.
Here's some other stuff I read in the booklet for the set I bought:
-When a player goes bankrupt, all of their mortgaged properties are sent to the Bank for auction as one large item.
-You can actually build houses and mortgage things at any time; if two or more players are attempting to buy from an insufficient number of houses or hotels at the same time, they're auctioned.
-Whether or not you mortgage something does not affect related properties; other same-coloreds are still worth x2 in rent, mortgaged Railroads count towards the total Railroads that is considered for rent, etc.
-If you buy a mortgaged property from another player, you must either unmortgage that property or pay 10% of the mortgaged value (card back) as soon as you get it.
-The "Mortgage Value" on the front is how much that Deed is worth to your Total Worth, thus factoring into the Income Tax's 10% rule.
-If you land on a property that is owned by another player and they forget to ask you to pay up before the next player rolls the dice, you do not pay.
-You can actually survive on $0; it's when you're in debt that you have to pay something.
-You can do anything in Jail except move.
I played a game of the 2007 PC port, with 3 Easy difficulty AIs. Easy is cheesy; when trading give a value that is exactly $1 more than their value and you get whatever it is. So basically I can spend $401 to get Boardwalk.
The 3rd Edition PC port (2001~2002) will do TCP/IP. Haven't tried it, but it should work fine. I am not a giant fan of this port, though.
Also, there's a port of this new Monopoly (the set I bought and its standards) along with H&N World for the 360, has anyone played it?