A type of video game I am surprisingly fond of are the licensed board and trivia games. From the TV show games like Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune, to the traditional Monopoly games every system gets such as Monopoly Streets or Monopoly For Nintendo Switch.
As such, a curiosity piece for me has been the Hasbro Family Game Night series, something I had skipped over by accident or on some occasions because I never found a copy in stores. Now that the SARS-COVID-19 virus prevents going out, I decided to see if I could get lucky enough to order a used copy from Bullmoose Music, a local business that had the decency of morality and business sense to lock up from the start while keeping online orders to stay afloat. I’ve been playing this game for a while now and feel it’s a game worthy of a review even today:
Game Played On: PlayStation 3
Also Available on: Xbox 360, Nintendo Wii
The game plays as an amusement park hub world where the player(s) pick which of the five Hasbro games to play a video game variation of. To be fair to this process, I will examine each game and the hub world itself. While the full game will still have an aggregate score, each represented board and card game will have one individually.
The Hub World:
The amusement park starts out with each of the games represented by an attraction, plus a little bathroom that once clicked on allows the player to choose a costume for Mr. Potato Head. Head is not just a wandering mascot in the park but is also the de facto host. The costumes he wears in those games can be unlocked once the game is played five times, as well as two other costumes that unlocked when all games are played at least once and then played at least six times. These costumes often look a bit wonky, and it should be noted you also earn that costume for Mrs. Potato Head, whom the player can choose instead as the wandering mascot and whom sometimes appears for the remix versions as host. The bathroom changes from boy to pink depending on which Potato Head is picked.
Costumes are not the only unlocks, the park also earns building pieces, gold statues, and finally confetti/ticker tape once a set number is played. There are PlayStation trophies and Xbox Achievements related to all of these items as well, unlocked when the player collects a full set.
I love these collectibles as they really do look impressive once you have them all. There is a sense of accomplishment like any good collectible does, and the player really feels like they are adding to this world despite how simple it all is. Scary costumes aside, I find this a great hub world that makes me miss the compilation style for these licensed Hasbro video games, even if I do like the single releases they do now.
- Hub World Rating: 8/10 -
Clue:
In Clue you roll the dice with the analog stick or the prompted button, for manual or automatic respectively. The player moves into the guest rooms with an NPC to gain part of a clue or steps on a question mark tile to earn “clue points”, and once six are collected (you earn 1-3, sometimes straight up and sometimes from a mini-game) you can make a suggestion to learn about what may or may not be the answer. Other players are told to look away when this happens. You can check your clue sheet at any time (also tells others to look away) and quick games preemptively cross of half the possible outcomes from the start.
In remix, you get event dice which do little but hinder the game for yourself or others. In both original and remix, the game can meander and drag, more so than the actual board game due to the changes to suit the video game version. This game is still good, but even in quick mode the length drags the experience down.
- Clue Rating: 6/10 -
Mouse Trap
In Mouse Trap the player moves to the end of the board while building the titular trap, and the last player left alive via not being trapped is the winner. The original version drags due to only one minigame to build the trap, limiting the fun factor and adding to time even in quick mode. However, the frantic rush at the very end to stay alive is noticeably still there and adds excitement.
Remix mode is the most changed from original for all the remixs, and the game makers were clearly proud of it if the trophy/achievement list was anything to go by. In remix you go around a circulating board where you build between 5 types of traps. Traps no longer kills a player, they only steal cheese, and the first player to 8 cheese is the winner. When you move past a trap you are given a button prompt to try and escape, but landing directly on a trap guarantees it unless a player has the wrench (they call it a spanner, which is not the only UK mannerism that is kept for the American version, they only managed to change Cluedo to Clue but left everything else in).
A fun remix really saves this game but the boring repetitive nature of the original is still a huge set back.
- Mouse Trap Rating: 6.5/10 -
Yahtzee Hands Down:
Earlier I said I do like the newer Ubisoft approach to Hasbro games of single small releases, but do miss this hub world approach too. One thing that is a massive problem with the old approach though, is a truly bad portion that feels not playtested.
Yahtzee Hands Down is broken and cheaply designed, hard for all the wrong reasons and restrictive for petty and possibly unfinished reasons.
Remix mode is the ONLY choice if you play with more than one player unless it is a team of four with four separate controllers. Any other way forces you into remix. Remix itself is too fast paced to be fun and instead stressful and confusing, irritating and with the possibility of forgetting to even tell you the controls like it did the first time I played it.
Original can be played in single player with one controller, but you must play with three bots who are designed to be so much better than you that I am not the only person online who believes they are literally cheating. They are fast and always have a better combo, I do not feel there is another reason, they are computers designed to be better than you even unfairly, and it is always unfairly.
Play by yourself with four controllers if you can, or with four friends maybe, but it will still be an unpleasant experience.
- Yahtzee Hands Down Rating: 2/10 -
The Game of Life:
Shockingly, a long and boring game in real life is the best made and most fun game in this collection. The length is not a problem in quick game and the game switches from “play to retirement” to “each player has five turns and only five turns”. This adds no stress from the faster pace and instead gives a quieter but still important feeling. A full game is still Life, but with the game controlling the tokens and the debts still makes the game more fun than the alternative by quite a bit.
Remix mode is interesting, nothing great like Mouse Trap but nothing tedious like Clue. Instead of retiring with the most money, players just have a race to the end of the board, with money being replaced with extra moves forward or backward. A quick game is still five turns and instead is just to see who gets further.
Some of the mini-games are recycles, you get a job by gabbing green envelops and avoiding red ones which is also done with files in Clue. You also play a dancing mini-game when you get married which is completely recycled from the last game so I will get to that in a minute. The others are original in those terms, a card flipping to match game to get your first and second houses, a wheel spin for spin-it-to-win-it, and waggling the stick when you are in a lawsuit.
I prefer this to the real Game of Life, and would have felt justified in buying Game Night 3 just for this version. Thankfully the longest and most involved game in the collection is also the best made and most fun one.
- The Game Of Life Rating: 8/10 -
Twister:
Twister is a button press rhythm game. At the bottom of the screen you see the combo, and when the dots then come back blanked out in red and at the top of the screen, you press what that combo was. Getting it right gets you points, and you earn more points for perfect in-sync rhythm.
Remix is very much the same but different version of the beats and longer combos. There are three music styles and at least two choices of beat for each style.
Twister is simple harmless fun but it’s also technically more fun to play by yourself. I found it better to just see if I could get perfect than to directly compete with someone else for my time. Also, as stated above, the marriage mini-game is recycled from this. Only one song, no perfects as it’s just counting each correct button, and the prompts are all on the top of the screen instead of the bottom and then the top. So yes it’s much easier but I don’t think either version is better than the other really. Both are valid and don’t feel crammed in which is nice but strangely also disappointing that one is not superior.
However, it’s still the second best game in the collection and that is something notable after the other scores I’ve handed out.
- Twister Rating: 7/10 -
Hasbro Family Game Night 3 is a Hasbro game they don’t do anymore ever since Ubisoft was given the license. I love what Ubisoft did with Trivial Pursuit and Boggle, but I also think this version of The Game of Life stands out even among those Hasbro video games. At the end of the day, having an Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, or Nintendo Wii with some friends open-minded enough to play board game licensed video games means this would be quite a few fun nights as long as Yahtzee isn’t played, except of course to fill the park with goodies.