Game of Life
by Hasbro Games
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Toys and Games Reviews of Game of Life
Customer Review: A cheap "gimmicky" version of the original
Summary: 2 Stars
First of all, what made the original fun to play, when I was a kid, was imagining being an adult, making all these adult choices, and personalizing whatever mostly random set of experiences the game said we would have.
The game just seems cheap and gimmicky now, like some soulless executive said "make it cost half as much to create, and throw some hooks in to make up for it"
examples:
1. The plastic pieces now fall off the board, we had to fix the spinner several times.
2. The life cards are smaller, give less money (like 10 or 20k instead of 100 or 200k), an ugly yellow colour, and worst of all, don't say what they are for, we used to always read them at the end and ooh/aah/giggle depending on what the card was for, and how well it would fit the person who got it, but now it's just a number
3. The people don't stay in the cars any more, if you pick the car up by the person, they all fall out (this occurred frequently enough that we nicknamed it "Godzillaing"); there are all these cards called "share the wealth" like 30 of them, I think there are as much "share the wealth" cards as all other cards combined, but between the three of us, we only ever got one of these cards.
4. The new one turned the entire thing into an enormous cartoon, every image is cartoony and cheap feeling. The money doesn't look like money, the characters are all childish looking, you can't look at the houses and actually care which one you get, because they all look horrible (okay, the mountain cottage was decent).
5. They added roulette to the game (I kid you not), and built this whole thing around "spin to win" where your kids can learn to gamble.
But it's not all bad, there were some things I liked about it
1. They got rid of trading your salary, which seemed to always go against me.
2. I liked the job raises you could get, and that the salary is now tied to the job instead of a separate card.
Okay, that's pretty much it. Overall, I felt like I was just lining some corporate goon's pockets by buying the game.
Customer Review: Phenomenal disappointment from the original!
Summary: 1 Stars
Just got the "new and improved" Game of Life, played it once and I'm still seething at the way the game has been dumbed down and turned into a politically correct self-esteem lesson with an almost completely random outcome. There's no value in going to college, and you're forced to pick up loans to boot. Heck, you can be an artist and if you get the right random pick you can still pull down $100K a year. Meanwhile the doctor might wind up making $20K. I guess it's not fair to teach the kids that a college education makes an actual difference in earning power in "real" life. In the first game we played, my son randomly got $100K a year and I got $80K. The rest of the family went down from there. Guess who won? Him. Next? Me. Right down the line. The old game just wasn't like that. Want to be a Computer Consultant? No college degree required. Huh?! There are almost no actual lessons of life here. Pay a chunk of money for a nice house so you can build equity, right? Wrong. Your home doesn't build equity, and you can't even count its value when you cash out at the end. You're better off buying the mobile home than a nice home that will appreciate. What are we teaching here?Besides all that, the quality of the materials is lower, the board has to be set up every time, the hills don't stay put, and the spinner jams in the hands of little kids. Last (but not least) the little pink and blue people just won't stay in the car. They seem to leap to their deaths at every turn, perhaps jumping out of sheer embarassment at being associated with such a watered down imitation of a once fabulous game.
Next time I play I'm skipping college entirely, becoming an artist, buying the mobile home, and pulling down $100K. You know who's gonna come out on top! What wonderful lessons for life...
Customer Review: Luck is critical, but allows anyone to win.
Summary: 4 Stars
The game of Life is a great equalizer for family members. Because there is so little strategy involved, an 8 year old child may win as easily as a 30 year old adult, assuming the 8 year old gets a minimal amount of guidance.
In some respects the game has similarities to Monopoly, but is much less complicated. Also, the game has a much shorter time limit since you follow a preset path from the beginning to the end, with the exception that you can choose between parallel paths in some places.
The game does introduce some basic adult concepts, such as insurance, taxes, and paydays. Essentially many of the things that can happen in real life can happen in the game of life. You can even get married and have children! We have also tried variations, such as playing multiple cars.
While the game is great for families where there is a tremendous age difference, for older teenagers and adults the game may not be that much challenge and thus may be boring. The spinner is not of the greatest quality and we have had some problems with ours. We have had some minor problems with keeping the pegs in the cars. I suspect that people with large hands may find moving the cars about the board to be difficult.
I have played many games of Life with my wife, my brother and sisters, and my children. While there are times when we argue about the results, we kept on playing the game because most of the time it was fun. Perhaps one of the most important things that anyone can learn from this game is that no matter how much you plan, sometimes chance can be an important factor in Life just as in real life.
Customer Review: Was looking forward to a classic game, but was disappointed.
Summary: 3 Stars
I've recently been purchasing board games to play with my girlfriend and my first-grader daughter. I've been looking for fun games that have an educational value, especially about the value of money. I never played The Game of Life as a kid, but remember the advertisements and I seem to recall other people saying that they liked the game, so I was looking forward to acquiring and enjoying a classic! I was very disappointed. The whole game play seems to be based only on chance. There is very little control and strategy involved. You just go around the board and collect a ton of money and "Life tiles" and pay some bills here and there as dictated by the spaces you land on. You must get married -- there is no choice -- and there is no corresponding financial reward or penalty. And so it goes with other life events. The worst part is at the end of the game when you add up your money and your Life tiles (which are random large dollar amounts), the Life tiles have such large amounts that they pretty much dictate the winner of the game no matter how well (or how badly) you played the game.Other reviewers have described an earlier edition (60's, 70's) that seemed to be more strategic and more fun.
Also detracting from the game is the fact that the people-pegs constantly hurl themselves out of the mini-vans and the spinner completely sucks.
As an educational game, it let me down. I would prefer a game that has more decision making and associated consequences. As far as a fun game, my daughter says "it's OK, but kinda boring".
Customer Review: Hard Knock Life -- Not the game you loved as a kid
Summary: 2 Stars
This game has become legendary in our house as the game that turned Daddy into a monster. My daughter got the game for Christmas and I have to admit I was excited to play this light game that I remembered so well as a child. Life was sort of the anti-Monopoly, not too taxing, fun to play, and could be completed in less than a week. She and I put the board together and I got even more excited, remembering the fun of jamming your car full of pegs, driving the silly car all over the board, and spinning the wheel and hoping it would come loose and wipe out someone else's car and pegs.
Then I realized that the game I loved didn't have any of the parts or spaces I remembered. No insurance certificates. No cool money that looked a lot like the real thing. Instead there were career cards, house cards, pay raise certificates and tiny life cards, as well as loan certificates and more. The poorly written rules had become a complicated mess of choices, alternate paths, and far too much to keep track of compared to the game I had in the 70s and 80s. And the game itself was of a much cheaper quality, with awkwardly made people pegs that were incredibly difficult to slide into the ugly new minivan tokens and a spinner that wouldn't stay put.
Once you read the rules and get over the disappointment, your child will probably still have fun playing this game, but the rule changes have done nothing to make the game more fun or interesting. Overall, it was a tremendous disappointment for the kid in me.