Monopoly Tycoon - PC Games

After playing through a very detailed tutorial series of missions you'll proceed to the main game: a series of locked scenarios you unlock by successfully completing the previous one. There are three difficulty levels and you can choose to play as any of the familiar playing pieces, each with their own personality, advantages and disadvantages.

The game itself plays on a 3-D map. You can zoom in to see the wandering people and their cars, or zoom out to view the map top-down like a board game. The layout isn't like the board game, however, it's more like a city, but Monopoly conventions hold true. Each block consists of two or three coloured properties with familiar names. You can't buy these properties. You can build on any of them, owning various retail or residential buildings of varying size and height, and pay rent to the property owner, or you can engage in an auction to lease the property (for 25 years). If you lease all the properties of a colour you gain a monopoly and can build lucrative hotels and even commandeer buildings away from rivals.

The action begins in the 30s and moves all the way to the new Millennia. You'll see styles and cars all change to show this as time moves forward, which is a nice touch.

All told, Monopoly Tycoon is a must for fans of the Sim or Tycoon lines of games. It's deep, fun, has a great multiplayer option, and it has just enough Monopoly in it to be utterly charming to anyone familiar with the classic board game. Infogames didn't invent the city-building game here, but they did reinvent Monopoly for the 21st century. --Bob Andrews