Hasbro Family Game Night 3

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My boys are 9 and 6, and have been playing this game for the last two days. They seem to like Life the best, but also really like the Mouse Trap game. I like that I don't have to clean up any pieces from the real games. I think its a great way to introduce your kids to these more complicated board games. The games are quick, although the graphics are somewhat of a let down for PS3. It looks much more like a Wii game graphics wise, but they don't seem to care and if they are happy, I'm happy.

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There has been a lot of negative buzz surrounding HFGN3. A lot of people have complained that the board game gameplay and rules have been warped or abandoned altogether for this video game. Well...that IS because it's a video game. How exactly would you expect to play the literal Twister on your PS3? Obviously they had to reinterpret them.

Hasbro Family Game Night 3 uses a theme park as the general menu when it comes to selecting what games you want. It's a nice way to present them, but little is done with this idea. Your character can be customized, but there are few options. And in order to get the most out of this game you'll need to play with 4 players, which is best done with 4 controllers. But really...how many PS3 owners will own 4? It can be played online, but it's a wasteland with very few players.

In order to be fair and unbiased I will review each game and its remix separately.

Yahtzee Hands Down:

A poker-type game played with cards. Can be really slow and generally takes ages for things to happen. When playing alone the game seems deliberately programmed to never let you win. Also has the hardest trophies of the entire game.

Remix:

Best played with 4 players to maintain the hectic feel. Otherwise it's even slower.

Clue:

Pretty good game. The 4 player gameplay is a little clumsy (involves 3 players not looking at the screen every other turn) but still quite good. The transitions between 2D and 3D boards is quite annoying and pointless though.

Remix:

Horrible. Badly programmed (the board is reset virtually every turn, which itself takes 30 seconds). Very slow.

Game of Life:

The best game, and can be really good with 4 players. Very much an interpretation of the board game come alive. The most immersive of the 5.

Remix:

Largely the same, only a bit faster and streamlined. Still quite good.

Twister:

A game very much in the style of Dance Dance Revolution. The most fast-paced game of the five and one of the most enjoyable. Nothing at all like the real game, but a nice re-imagining of the theme.

Remix:

I honestly didn't notice much of a difference between this and Twister.

Mouse Trap:

A very, very slow game with lots of pointless camera pans and zooms and cut-scenes involving the trap being constructed/operated. Camera doesn't even cover the trap mechanisms properly leaving you wondering how exactly it is supposed to work. With 4 players you can be waiting a long time in between shots. Certainly the most repetitive and boring game of the bunch.

Remix:

Largely incomprehensible. The playing area is an eyesore are the rules are poorly laid out. Feels not so much a remix as it feels like some kid has ripped apart the original game and put it back in a nonsensical order.

The entire package has its ups and downs but is still worth playing if you want a relatively easy Platinum (save for a couple of nightmare trophies). The graphics are of Gamecube quality and the music is nothing but inoffensive fluff which repeats itself far too often. Pick it up cheap and try to play it with a few pals.

Graphics C

Sound B

Gameplay B-

Lasting Appeal B-

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Brings a whole new meaning to game night. The first time we used it, we were just going to play a quick game to try it out. We ended up playing all day long and didn't even realize it. Awesome way to play old family favorites. Pass one controller around for up to 4 players.

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This game is horrible, I cannot believe it has Hasbro's name on it. You have two options in each game: Original and Remix. You would think that original would be exactly like the real game wrong. It has a stupid mini game in each one. In Twister, it's nothing like Twister at all. It's more like dance dance revolution and the characters don't even do "left foot red" or anything. In the Game of Life, they really should have just adapted the first version of the game they made for PS1 because it was a thousand times better. This one is lame and just about every 7th spot on the board is some lawyer game where you have to argue your case by flicking the left trigger back and forth. It's annoying. There is no such thing as "have tattoo removed" or anything similar to the real Game of Life. I can't even figure out how to play Clue...where are the cards that you check off? You have to earn something called Rumor Points to be able to make an accusation. Mouse Trap is probably the only one similar to the real game but there is this mini game you have to play pretty much every turn that I just don't understand the point of. It kind of just throws you into the mini game with no real explanation of what to do or why. Yahtzee...moves so quickly I don't even understand it. Again, no real instructions. I know I played that card game before but I couldn't remember how and the game on here doesn't make it any easier.

This was really a sad attempt at a game. The graphics are better than the original Family Game Night, and I'm sure kids will still love it but if you are looking to buy this for nostalgic reasons...don't bother.

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We bought this game with the expectation that these games would be like the board games, a.k.a., "fun". It is unfortunate that Hasbro would use the titles of some of the most well-known board games on the cover, only to regurgitate them into some bastardized and half-baked versions of their former selves.

But all is not lost. "Life" was pretty good, actually. Below I'll explain our experience with each game:

Life This one was probably the biggest motivator to purchase, and thankfully for the most part it is a video game version that is pretty true to the original game of Life. There are some silly mini-games included for things like getting married or getting sued that are a little slow but pretty well executed. This one was well done, and I would give it 5 stars. It was the first one we played after we purchased it, so we were pretty excited to try the others, but unfortunately, I think our expectations were a tad too high.

Clue Next we tried a game of Clue. Well, this isn't much like the original at all. You move around the board and into rooms where talking with a Clue character reveals a portion of a card. Granted they're trying to get around the requirement of the need for "privacy" in the original game (you have to keep your clue card private so you can actually win), but what happens is you're just mindlessly taking turns walking around the board. Computer players? Not a chance they'll do anything useful. Our AI opponents just roll the die and then walk in whatever random direction they choose to without actually trying to attempt winning. ZZZzzzz.....

Mouse Trap This is one of those games as a kid that was only enjoyable because you could set up its one-hundred parts to make a marble roll down and do it's "Incredible Machine"-like process. As a child I'm not even sure I cared much about the game itself, and no wonder why it sucks. And this one is no different. What you pretty much do is go around the board and get pulled into the same mini-game after every roll which is a sort of mouse-trappy version of the old video game "Pipe Dream". The music is repetitive. The game is repetitive. If you lack patience you probably won't last a full game before getting bored and wanting to quit.

Twister This is a button-pattern game. You follow the button patterns on the screen and repeat. And repeat. And repeat. And repeat. Until your opponent either messes up or stabs his/her eyes out from boredom, because after playing Life you realize this is the EXACT same game as the mini-game in Life when you get married. The music sucks and the sound effect over the top of the button-pushing is distracting. Twister is meant to be played in college dorms as an excuse to touch each other. How, and why, would they take something like Twister and make it so un-fun?

Yahtzee The next night, we decided to give Yahtzee a try. Unfortunately we had the expectation that the word "Yahtzee" on the title meant "you roll the dice and pick your combos in an effort to beat the other player at the end with the best score". But here is the problem: Hasbro defines "Yahtzee" as "a bastardized co-branded card game called Hands Down that is nothing like actually playing the game of Yahtzee". Yes, the Yahtzee featured on the title of the game has nothing to do with rolling dice. It's a card-swapping game with cards that FEATURE dice.

This stuff is probably fun and simple enough for very young kids to enjoy. They'd like the generic pop-punk soundtrack, the super bright colors, the cutesy 3D animations. They may even enjoy the ultra-repetitive game play on these revised versions of classic board games that Hasbro has shamelessly re-defined into a rather boring video game.

So, just don't buy this expecting the original games. With the exception of Life, none of these games are true to their names, or even remotely as fun as busting the board game out of your closet, dusting it off and playing the actual games with the family.

Thankfully, Life was pretty spot on. For this reason, I'll give it two stars.