Monopoly Here & Now

I've invented a test to judge just how accurate any Monopoly video game is. It's called the Idiot Test, for reasons that'll become clear. It involves moving heaven and earth to buy Old Kent Road and Whitechapel Road as quickly as possible, and sticking a hotel on both. Then getting carried away and buying another full set (trading over-the-odds with fellow players if necessary) and sticking hotels on them too. Then running out of money, landing on someone else's hotel, and going bankrupt. It never fails in the real world, unless I'm playing a bigger idiot than myself.

The good news is that EA Mobile's new version of Monopoly Here & Now passes the Idiot Test, rumbling my tactic quickly and sending me off to the mortgage-broker in tears. The only difference is that Old Kent Road and Whitechapel Road are now Bishopsgate and Brick Lane, what with this being the new-fangled 'Here & Now' version of Monopoly.

I know what you're thinking. Monopoly Here & Now's been out for a while on mobile, right? Well, yes. But due to the licensing rights being transferred to EA Mobile from Glu Mobile, EA has developed an all-new version of the game. Glu's version was pretty impressive, but EA's edition steps into its shoes with aplomb, and with a few tweaks to boot.

Actually, the boot is one of the things that's been tweaked. It's now a modern-looking trainer. And it's joined by a labradoodle, a mobile phone and a Hybrid car. There are no fancy extra modes thrown in, though, just pure Monopoly. That said, you can tweak the House Rules to suit your own preferences, covering everything from how many apartments make a hotel, how much cash you start with and get for passing Go, and how property auctions work.

The game's for one to four players, who can be human or AI – with three difficulty levels of the latter, and a pass-the-handset play for humans.

The thing about a mobile boardgame is it has to be as quick-fire as possible, since they're invariably played to while away dead time of some kind, whether on the train or on the sofa. EA Mobile has got this right, with rapid gameplay letting you crack through a game with the minimum of fuss. You can even speed up the AI opponents' counter moves by pressing down the '5' key to make things go faster.

The game is really well thought out, too. Being able to see the whole board onscreen at once before every go, rather than zooming straight in to where your counter is placed, is handy. Meanwhile, the screen to trade properties is neatly laid out, giving you an instant view of who owns what – I found myself using it to remind me of my properties, even when I had no intention of trading.

Buying, building and (sob) mortgaging your properties is also simple, making for a minimal learning curve. As you go, you'll appreciate the little touches, too, like the animation on the counters, which adds character without getting in the way.

All in all, it's excellent, even if feature-wise it's not really different from Glu's previous version – a mark of how both firms stayed faithful to the boardgame. The devil is in the detail, though: the new Monopoly Here & Now is super-slick to play, and offers everything a modern-day Monopoly fan could want.

Well, almost everything.

The mobile game focuses on London streets and locations, yet as far as I'm aware, the actual modern boardgame has UK place names. It's truer to the spirit of the original Monopoly, I guess, but might alienate fans of the new version, especially those outside the M25. (It's worth adding here that if you're elsewhere in Europe, the game will be focused on local haunts, not London – it's fully localised.)

That aside, Monopoly Here & Now has us hooked. If buying and selling paper property is your thing, you won't get board (sorry, sorry, sorry) of this quickly.