I love a good board game.
But with the advent of button-mashing video games, it can be tough to pull the kids away from all those rampaging, exploding high-def visuals on a big screen and then get them to appreciate the true joys of rolling dice and tapping little game pieces across a fold-out cardboard landscape. For that matter, just finding the time to gather the gang for a rousing bout of RISK can be daunting. Who’s got four or five hours to spend whetting their strategy skills?
Well, gamemakers Hasbro and Ubisoft have teamed up and released a fun little digital collection of board games that they hope will make it easier to relieve your board gaming itch. Even if you’re the only one who shows up to scratch.
Hasbro Game Night, which was just released for the Nintendo Switch, wraps three classic games into one small cartridge. You get the property-buying standard Monopoly, the strategy battler RISK and the factoid-quizmaster game Trivial Pursuit. And they all come with some fun extras designed to spice up play.
In Monopoly, for instance, you have the classic game with its standard board and rules. Or you can play with “living” boards that feature more active house building or amusement park construction features. You know, to give the younger players something colorful and flashy to watch.
You can also choose from a collection of player-option rule adjustments in this Monopoly, such as getting cash when you land on Free Parking, receiving a cash bonus when you roll a 2 on the dice or making every land purchase into a group auction, etc. And if you really want to keep play time to a minimum, this version offers Action Cards, too. They allow gamers to quit after someone reaches a particular goal: being the first to build a hotel or bring in $500 in rent or earn $2000 cash. (Though, why you would want to quit right when things are getting good evades my board-game sensibilities.)
The RISK game notches the action up a little further by starting things off in a computerized war center. Then—after manually or automatically dividing up the world—it offers players quick tank skirmishes and helicopter bomb-drops to visually illustrate their dice-rolled battles. (There are mini-explosions and the like, but nothing too destructive and no mess of any kind.) On top of that, the game allows you to collect your victory cards for as long as you want and then trade them in to fortify a massive momentum-turning army.
Trivial Pursuit? Well, it gives gamers the option of a laid back Party mode where they can discover who’s the brainiest collector of insignificant knowledge in their group. Or you can plunge into the more concentrated Versus mode, which gives players new team-based contests and tougher questions. As for this game’s graphics, it sets things up like a colorful gameshow, with celebrating contestants and flashing-light confetti drops.
Now you may be asking, “Hey, if I want to play a board game, why do I need a video game?” And the makers of Game Night would likely say there are quite a few viable answers to that excellent question.
First of all, thanks to the Nintendo Switch console’s handheld option, Hasbro Game Night can go anywhere. Its three games look best on a big screen. But if the fam crowds into the car for a road trip, most of them can pass the handheld around and fill the time with a rousing contest of one sort or the other without a table, board or TV. Plus, there are no pieces to lose.
These are also the kinds of “video” games that anybody can enjoy without any seasoned hand-eye coordination skills. The youngest to the oldest in your clan can jump in and give it a go. And the games play out more quickly than the “real thing,” too. You can often make your way to victory in as little as 30 or 40 minutes per game.
For that matter, you can enjoy these games all on your own if need be. Community and give-and-take are definitely a big part of a board game experience. But you can still have some immersive fun on your own with AI competitors. I found that even a highly strategic game of RISK came down to the wire with a number of unexpected AI twists.
Oh, and if nothing else, these games are easy to be around. One thing you don’t get with a board game is tons of slashing and spewing nastiness. Hasbro has maintained that sensibility here, too. And that’s always a big plus for families looking for a bit of old-school fun in new-school packaging.
After spending more than two decades touring, directing, writing and producing for Christian theater and radio (most recently for Adventures in Odyssey, which he still contributes to), Bob joined the Plugged In staff to help us focus more heavily on video games. He is also one of our primary movie reviewers.
