College or career? Safe route or risky?
Hasbro’s The Game of Life: zAPPed Edition for iPad is the newest version of the classic family board game. The bulky, plastic buildings and bridges are gone. There’s no clicking spinner that always came loose. The cards and tiles are also absent. What happened? They have all been replaced by your iPad.
All you need to do is pass out the money, place a peg in your car playing piece, start up the free Game of Life zAPPed iPad app (make sure your battery is fully charged), and get ready to play. I’m glad the set-up was so easy because my daughter was anxious to start playing. We followed the prompts on the iPad to create our characters and ‘spun’ the virtual wheel to see who started.
Most of the gameplay is the same as in the original but it’s nice to have the app remind you when it’s your turn and how much to collect for your salary. The animations included for choosing what type of wedding you want or the career you’d like are a nice addition. I was a bit surprised when it asked if you want a ‘pink’ or ‘blue’ peg to get married to though. I really liked that you could press the ‘rotate’ box in the corner so it was easy for players when sitting across from each other.
Landing on certain spaces will require you to tap one of the five icons on the iPad screen. One will pop open a mini-game while another will start a short clip from America’s Funniest Videos. Now I love this show and was looking forward to seeing which ones were included. Unfortunately, this was a good idea gone bad. The selection of clips used were horribly UNfunny and half of the time didn’t even make any sense. One even had a word bleeped – not the best choice for a family game, in my opinion. The only funny clip was of a guy getting a high-five from a fly.
My absolute favorite feature is at the end. After a long game, it’s always a pain to have to count everything up and calculate all the other factors to see who won. With this, the app does it for you! Just input how many of each bill you have and all the other items are totalled up for you.
My daughter has been asking constantly to play again. The concept of using the iPad has made the whole experience so much better, especially with today’s techie kids. Even though Brooke Burke-Charvet, co-host of ABC’s “Dancing With the Stars” was spotted picking one up for her kids at her local Toys”R”Us, the game is a reasonable $24.99. Overall, it’s a great game to add to your Family Game Night collection.
