Hasbro have had a lovely little run going with their game nights series. However Game Night 4 certainly drops the ball across the board (boom-boom) with their swap to smaller motion based titles and rehashing previous entries.
The biggest disappointment choice wise is that 3 and 4 player modes have been dropped. It’s hardly a family game night now if only two can play! Similarly whilst the optional motion control is well implemented, the games themselves are uninspired. Connect 4 is now a basketball game which is fun but over in 30 seconds. Bop It! becomes a Simon Says game where the AI team fail straight away. Sorry Sliders returns in a much smaller, poorer version from the original game night with less modes and only two sliders per team. Yahtzee is a bowling game and is utterly random. Boggle continues to be the same word game as usual – entertaining but again over very quickly.
There is however a massive game play flaw and that’s Mr Monopoly Cash Machine. Each game wins you a ticket to feed into the machine at the end. You then get credits based given to you per win. The problem? These credits are utterly random and one is usual a massive amount. Several times I’ve won all five games and the credits do not add up to the amount you get from the freebie ticket given at the start of the game! It renders who wins each game utterly pointless and redundant. Well done there game developers…
Positives
~Good motion controls
Negatives
~Awful sound quality
~A much poor cousin of the rest of the series
~No longer 3/4 player modes available
~Monopoly Cash Prizes ruin the entire experience
Conclusion
What a step back. Poorer conceived, stupid game mechanics and frankly not enough to do. What is there you can only play in pairs with now too. When you look at the series as a whole, this is by far the black sheep of the group. I have not seen such a blatant downgrade in a game series in a while. Avoid.
Also available for Wii/Xbox360