61 out of 61 people found this review helpful.
Great Game for Company
Date of Review: Jan 19, 2000
Find yourself arguing with other players about the rules in the board game version of LIFE? The Game of Life CD-ROM game is a great way to learn the rules to the regular board game. Sit up to six players around your computer monitor and enjoy the interactive display before you. There are two versions to enjoy, Classic and Enhanced. Pick your character, choose a car, and start your life.
I own the board game of Life and found the CD-ROM version for $10 at the store. The CD version is better in that all the banking is done automatically, there are no pieces to lose, and the rules are final. The thing missing with this game is the traditional dinner table setting where all players are circled around the board and interact face to face. This CD version focuses your attention more on the monitor because of all the visual candy. Players play with their backs hunched, their heads tilted back, and their jaws drooping down. Maneuvers are done easily using the mouse. Don?t expect to burn a lot of calories playing this game.
Put in the CD and click run. A Simpson?s-type intro begins the game. The characters of Life are 3D animated with heads as big as their bodies. The kids look exactly like their parents, just a smaller scale. There are two games to choose from. Classic or Enhanced. Classic uses the same rules as the board game, giving you Life Tiles along the way to retirement. The enhanced version is similar but basically small games are played in the place of Life Tiles. These fun little bonus games give you the opportunity to get some more money. The enhanced version also has a few other twists to the classic game such as Revenge, where you land on PayDay and then choose which player you are going to take your salary from. There is more competition with other players in the enhanced version.
The board is quite a jungle. There are a ton of events and creatures on the board. It really brings it to life. After spinning the wheel a window appears onto the screen. Your are move from space to space as if you had been shrunk down to the size of an ant. There is a multimedia cartoon short for each space. This feature can be turned off to save time. A single click will spin the wheel; there is not a power meter or anything like that. There are six decades to flow through. Each decade zone provides you a car and music to match the era. The entire board looks like a page out of a Where?s Waldo book.
Get married, have kids, live happily ever after. It?s not like Oregon Trail where family members drop dead from the measles. This is a game for all ages to enjoy. One to six players can play a game. At least one computer player must be selected when only one human is playing. If your friends and family are too far away to be with you, play them online. Just enter everybody?s IP address into the fields provided. I just want to add that this game features animated characters of different races. When you get married the computer automatically gives you a mate that matches your race. I bet (and would hope) that these type of occurrences will fade out in games of the future. I would like the game better if I got to pick which wife I wanted from a list.
It takes about ten minutes per person to play a game without the dynamic animation feature selected. A six-player game will take about an hour. Add three minutes per person with the animated feature on. I recommend playing this game with as many players as you can for the best entertainment.
Minimum System Requirements (Recommended)
Windows 95 (Windows 95 or 98)
Pentium 90 (Pentium 200+)
16 MB RAM (32 MB)
36 MB Free hard drive space (64 MB)
4X Speed CD-ROM Drive (8X Speed)
1 MB SVGA Adapter (2 MB)
28.8 Modem (28.8+)
DerectX 5.0 or higher
This game is a great to play with your friends and family. It doesn?t have high scores to break or much of show for the winner but it does put some new flavor into the board game. I got this game at K-Mart and it included Ultimate Yahtzee for free. If you have a lot of people who visit your house or live with you then I recommend this game to you. Other people cooped up out in the boonies may want to play their friends online. There is really no reason to buy this game if you are alone and play the computer every time. You will get bored with the game in two days. I enjoy playing this game with my fiance. My favorite part of the game is that there is nothing to clean up when the game is over.
