Hasbro Family Game Night does just what you’d expect it to do and not an ounce more, offering the user six Hasbro favourites, each with a few game variations, and not a lot else, which is an absolute abomination considering that when it was released it cost full price and even now its being sold for a ridiculously high price.

The bare bones of this package is abundantly clear from the start, when you’re asked to enter your name and are offered a few minimalistic avatars straight out of a Windows log-in screen to affiliate yourself with. The first name you enter is also stuck-on as Player 1 from that point onwards, which is simply ridiculous, meaning if anyone else wants to play a single player game or host a party game without you, they will be stuck with your username and there isn’t a damn thing they can do about it.

Once you’re past the player selection screen you can choose from one of the six games, each displayed in their original boxes, which is a nice touch, I guess. The games are Battleships, Boggle, Connect 4, Sorry! – which is almost an in-build message for spending the money you have – Sorry! Sliders and Yahtzee.

There is no word more fitting to describe this game

As you can see from the picture above, Mr. Potato Head is the front for the game, who is the perfect family-friendly image that Hasbro were probably looking for. It’s kind of ironic though, that something that gauges its own eyes out could be such a metaphor for what you feel like doing come the end of play.

It’s not that the game isn’t fun to play, but the games offered here don’t really transcend well into the video game world. Connect 4 for example, is something you’d see in a full game as a teeny-tiny minigame hidden away in the depths of a level, as it really is just matching four counters in a row and little else. They’ve tried to spice it up with ‘advanced’ variants, which see you racking up scores with multipliers and such, but when push comes to shove, it’s still Connect 4.

In my opinion, instead of drawing the most money possible from their brand by spacing out these games over numerous editions, they should have took ALL of them – board game or otherwise – and stuck them into one huge package, only at the same price, which would be far more justifiable.

Sorry! While fun in board game form, feels drawn out here

Boggle actually seems to work better on the big screen, and picking out words from the grid – while a little annoying in deciphering whether you’re selecting a letter or confirming the end of a word – is actually quite a competitive experience. Scrabble works quite similarly, but is only available in the North American version as a bonus seventh game. It’s also probably the best game, so it’s a little puzzling as to why they chose the exclusivity route.

Yahtzee is a bit of a mixed bag, in that it takes away what makes the original fun, but makes it fun in other ways. The rolling of the dice is still satisfying, as it can be in its physical form, and as it keeps a running tally for you it negates the need for the endless jotting down of scores with a pencil. Plus, it’s better for the environment I suppose. Clutching. Straws.

Sorry! Sliders is just pure mayhem; flicking your analogue stick back and then thrusting it forward in order to aim for a target in the centre of some satanic criss-crossed board. Taking turns of piece each of the four players’ attempts to fall between the markings, but it results in utter chaos in the middle – game pieces flying all over the place, knocking into each other and propelling off the board on tangents. With all this going on the scores are pretty hard to follow, but if you’re looking for the simplest form of pure, random, and utterly hilarious insanity then this is it.

You sunk my Battleship, and my reason to live along with it

Battleships offers up some satisfaction, hearing a pleasing thud as your opponents’ ship sinks into oblivion, and the variations here aren’t bad at all. Providing you with an array of weapons, such as torpedoes that take out entire columns, to speed the process up a bit – which is definitely welcoming.

The games that are able to accommodate four players can be played by that number either locally or online, but sometimes it is hard to find others, whether that’s down to games taking their time, synchronicity issues, or people simply not devoting their time to Hasbro Family Game Night, it’s currently undecided, but if you are mad enough to make the purchase it’s better played with friends and family anyhow – personally I prefer to experience it with alcohol, not that I’m promoting such behaviour of course.

Don’t take my sarcasm the wrong way though, this isn’t the worst game in the world, but it certainly isn’t up to a standard that is expected from a modern game, whether it’s minigame orientated or not. You only need look at the Wii, which has no shortage of minigame collections, that take simplistic ideas and turn them into extremely fun concepts, whereas this lulls in comparison.

Craig Bryan, NoobFeed
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