Take 2 big brands, stick them together, shake them up a bit, make a computer game, and what do you get? In this case Monopoly Star Wars. Just from the title you could guess what this game is all about and your guess would be pretty much spot on.

Developed by Artech Studios for Hasbro, this game takes the standard Monopoly game and gives it a lick of Star Wars paint. The game is played on a 3D board where most of the property squares have been changed from streets in London (or Atlantic City) to locations in the Star Wars Universe, specifically the locations in Episode 4 and later. Each block of coloured properties representing one planet with different locations on the planet being used for the property squares. Everything is given a Star Wars livery apart from the corner squares like 'Go' and 'Free Parking', they were presumably retained for branding reasons but they are left looking a bit out of place.

You can choose to play as a variety of characters including Han Solo, Darth Vader and Boba Fett, this changes some of the animations you may see but, obviously, doesn't affect the game play. The animation used throughout the game is actually reasonably decent given the age of the game. Instead of relying on real-time 3D rendering all the animation is prerendered then overlaid onto one of the views of the game board.

Although the animations are fairly decent they also contribute to what I see as the game's greatest problem and that is the amount of time it takes to play. If you play with the animation options set to maximum then you have to sit through the animations not only for your own player but also for all the computer controlled players, this can become very time consuming and can really cause a game to drag on. Fortunately you can disable most of the animation through a variety of options which picks up the pace significantly. However even with the options disabled you can be looking at a few hours playtime to play a single game. Whilst this may mirror a real-world game of Monopoly if you're just playing against the computer you feel that it shouldn't take as long to complete.

If you'd rather involve some social interaction in the game there are a variety of multiplayer modes available, including the basic 'hot seat' mode where players take turns on the computer, now mostly defunct modem and IPX options, and an 'Internet' option which enables play across the Internet or on your local TCP/IP network. You can choose to host a game or join an existing one, each player will require a CD to play. At release it was also possible to play games on the MSN Gaming Zone, however it has subsequently been withdrawn from the Zone.

The game rules are customizable to a degree and so you should be able to tweak the game to fit your usual rules, for example the 'Free Parking' cash distribution rule or whether you're going to enforce a even building rate across a block of properties. Have a look at this screenshot for a full list of the tweakable options.

During the game your can ask, or will be asked, to make trades with other players, you can trade properties, cash and items like the 'Get out of Jail Free' card. You have the chance to either reject or accept the deal or if you wish you can counter with a deal of your own. If you install the patch (recommended) you will also have the option to trade futures (future rent on a property) and immunities (protection from rent on a property). Unfortunately the computer AI was not updated in the patch to include the futures and immunities so you can only trade these with other human players. The trading generally works okay but when trading with a computer player it can be a bit frustrating as it will often turn down a deal that would clearly be in its own best interests.

C3P0 plays the banker in the game and narrates the action. Apparently voiced by Anthony Daniels himself this doesn't prevent the voice over becoming annoyingly repetitive, there's only so many times you can hear '[player name] pays [other player / banker] for [property / rent / etc..]' before it really starts to grate. The music track is MIDI based which seems an odd choice for a CD based game, it wouldn't be so bad if the track it was playing rotated automatically but instead you must navigate the configuration options to change the music track, this ends up with it just being disabled.

Monopoly Star Wars does exactly what it says on the tin, however that isn't really enough to recommend it as a game. Although it's a faithful transfer of the board game it suffers from a lack of pace and it's just not as enjoyable as playing the real thing. If you like the idea of a Star Wars branded Monopoly game then several versions of the physical board game are available, I'd recommend you pick one of those up instead.