Hasbro Family Game Night

Hasbro Family Game Night

The presents are unwrapped, the turkey bones sucked dry and the Queen’s speech fully digested. Time to see out Christmas dozing off in a deep armchair, right? Wrong, at least if Hasbro is to have anything to say about it. Family Game Night is a compendium of five of the boardgame maker’s best loved titles, digitised and presented on the Wii, the perfect platform for some lazy festive family entertainment from the comfort of your sofa.

Connect Four, Boggle, Yahtzee, Sorry! And Battleship squish together on the disc to provide a classic selection of challenges. Mr Potato Head hosts the package but, even with his ebullient charms, if you haven't got some other players around to rope in then this is going to be a lonely experience. As with all boardgames, most of the fun takes place in the room, not on the screen, and so Family Game Night is best enjoyed, indeed, perhaps only enjoyed as advertised: on a family game night.

Connect Four is a token stacking game in which you attempt to complete a row of same-coloured chips horizontally, vertically or diagonally while blocking your opponent from doing the same. It’s a straightforward but deep game and one that’s well-presented here.

Boggle is, of course, the fast-paced word search game in which players race to find words in a collection f upturned letters. Arguably the translation to small screen has been tricky. In the boardgame version everyone has a pen and paper, a luxury not afforded here and, as all the other players can see the words that you’re typing in, the rules have been changed slightly. Now the game is a simple race to see who can find each word the fastest, removing some of the thrill of the original.

By contrast Yahtzee, the dice rolling game in which you try to score as highly as possible in 13 different categories works very well on the console. While it's essentially a game of chance, the game’s alternate rules options allow for some pleasing variants that let you, for example, try for the lowest score instead of the highest, block out categories from your opponents and so on.

Sorry! is the pawn-moving game in which you draw cards and send your piece around a board in a race to the finish line. It plays out exactly as expected although, the lack of depth in the game design ensures it’s perhaps best played with younger family members.

Finally, Battleship is the classic, naval-themed strategy game in which you try to torpedo five of your opponents’ unseen ships as they try to do the same. In order for the game’s well-established rules to work you’ll need to look away from the screen during your opponent’s turn, not the best solution but one that works if everyone’s honest.

The game’s at its best when the controls and on-screen rules don’t get in the way of the original designs’ elegance. On the whole the Wii collection manages this and, for space saving convenience (no need to haul out five board game boxes anymore) it’s a worthy addition to any family game library.

3 out of 5