![]() The interesting question for me is: who this title is aimed at? This isn't for the hardcore gamer, it just doesn't have enough choices that allow skill to make a huge amount of difference, and it takes a bit too long to play through. This can be mitigated by selecting the 'fast' option when the AI opponent is playing, to zip though the animations that would normally play, but you are in for 'steady' game play here, rather than fast and furious fun. ![]() It doesn't actually make the game move any faster though, and to play a relatively fast paced two player game against the computer AI is at least twenty minutes of gaming. Unlike other Hasbro/EA titles, where the animations and creating a sense of watching a physical version of the game detract, here it actually benefits the presentation and the flow of the game. Moving the camera around the board to different areas and viewpoints, especially as your car moves, adds a sense of energy and vitality to the game. But anyone who's up to speed with Hasbro's board games will recognise everything that's going on here. The Game of Life went through a regeneration in 2005 to re-balance the game to be more about risk tasking than relying on luck, which means that the board on show here is not the board from my childhood. I want to credit the developers of the game for the graphical accuracy of the title. Okay it's just a finger and a spinning action, but it's enough to create the association with the touch screen and memories of the game from my childhood. Not only does it take up the centre of the digital board, you also get to spin it. By giving each of the numbers one through ten an equal chance of turning up (rather than the curved probability between two and twelve you get with two dice) it added to the random nature of the game. The one thing everyone remembers about The Game of Life is that, rather than using dice to move around the board, a spinner sits in the centre of the board and players take turns with this Wheel of Fortune- esque random number generator. Okay it's a bit of a capitalistic determination by only measuring wealth, but you have to keep score somehow! You move around the board, making decisions at certain points on which route to take through this ribbon of life, and when you reach the end of the ribbon and retirement, all the players' net worth is added up, and a winner is declared. ![]() The Game of Life is a simple game, where you move along a ribbon of squares, some with bonuses, some with forfeits, and others that do nothing at all. Is that enough to make a strong smartphone title? It's a curious choice of board game to convert to the digital sphere, but EA have done a really good job in replicating the experience of playing the game. Last week's release of The Game of Life on Xbox Live was another exclusive title from Nokia.
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