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I am a fan of the Monopoly board game going way back. I think I was younger than my daughter is currently. As I child, I used to make my babysitters play Monopoly with me. Even if they went bankrupt, it didn't end. I just made them go into debt. Apparently, I was envisioning the modern credit card experience, but I digress. What I've found in recent years is that it's not so easy to find a decent Monopoly pick-up group. Sure, I've tried different computer Monopoly games, but the results have always been disappointing ... until now.

For those of you from another planet and who have never heard of the game, Monopoly is a real estate board game. You buy and sell properties. You collect sets of like-colored properties as quickly as you can. When you get a full set, you get to start building. You build houses first and then finally hotels. You want to do this, because the more you've developed a given property, the more rent another player owes you when they land on that property. You move clockwise around the board, with the properties available increasing in value until you come all the way around. The highest priced spot on the American game used to be Boardwalk. Now, you'll find that it's Times Square. Your objective is to get rich, see your enemies driven before you, and hear the lamentation of the women ... wait, that can't be right. I'm thinking of Conan. Actually your objective is to get rich and drive your competitors to bankruptcy; so, it's kind of like Conan.

Monopoly Here and Now allows up to four players at a time. It's up to you whether you're playing against other players, pretend to be other players or play against the computer. If you choose computer players, for each of them, you get to set whether they are a first-time buyer, an entrepreneur or a tycoon. I have to tell you that while the latter classifications are tougher about what trades they'll make, they don't necessarily have much bearing on who is going to win the game. In the last game I played, the entrepreneur declared bankruptcy first, the tycoon declared bankruptcy next, and I finally succumbed to that fiendishly lucky first-time buyer.

As you choose each player, you'll select which token to use. The token selection is updated for the times. Your options are a coffee cup, a laptop computer, a thing of French fries, a cell phone, a small dog, a hybrid car, a running shoe or a jet. Each token has its own little animation when it's the active token. The little dog runs around the track. The cell phone beeps. The laptop opens and closes and flashes, "ready" or "done" across its tiny screen.

After you have all the players set, you have the option to customize the rules. The developers have included some of the most popular "home" rules for customization. If you're like most people, there was always a sweet little cash allowance to be gained from landing on Free Parking. If you're a traditionalist, you can leave it as just a free spot to land on. If you want cash, you can set two different direct cash options, or set that only the bank's tax revenues go into the pot. You can control such things as how many houses it takes to make a hotel, tax rates, starting salary, what happens if you land on Go, how many turns you can spend in jail, whether the players start with random property - and if so, how much - how bankruptcy is handled and how much it costs to bail yourself out of jail, just to name a few. If you finish customizing and don't like the results, just click the button to return to default rules.

One of the biggest things you'll notice with Monopoly Here and Now is that there's been a lot of inflation. In the standard game of Monopoly, you had bills for $1, $5, $10, $20, $50, $100 and $500. Now, everything is done in millions of dollars (and you don't have individual bills - it's all electronic transfer).

The Chance and Community Chest cards have the same feel (and old standards like property tax assessment and Get Out of Jail Free cards are there), but there are some funny new twists. It used to be you could win $20 for 2nd place in a beauty contest. Now you get $100,000 for being runner up on a reality TV show.

As with the standard game, if you land on Go to Jail, or roll doubles three times in a row, you go to jail (do not pass Go, do not collect $200 - or a couple million in this case). Now, though, a police SUV with flashing lights and sirens races around the board, loads your game piece into the back, and speeds back to jail to deposit you there. On the player roster, your little playing piece is behind bars. I love the jail animation. It's like being arrested by a little Hot Wheels car.

It's very easy to set up trades between yourself and another player. At any time during your turn, you can click the Trade button. You select the other player, and the trade screen opens. You'll see a listing of all the properties held by each of you, as well as a cash listing. Just click on the properties you're hoping to trade and then sweeten the pot with cash if you want. When you're ready, click the button to offer the trade. If the other player wants it, the transfer happens immediately. If the other player rejects the trade, you'll get a little window to that effect. The main way this is more restrictive than playing with live players is that you can't broker a three-way trade at one time. I had a few sets of three properties where I had one, the hybrid car had one and the running shoe had the other. Ideally, we could have shuffled things around so everyone ended up with a Monopoly. That's a little trickier with computer players, since you have to do the trades in stages. I think the trading screen is where you really see the difference between the three types of computer players. It has to be a truly awesome deal to get the computer tycoon to do a trade. The first-time buyer is much easier to work with.

The soundtrack of Monopoly Here and Now is a jazzy improv-sounding piece. Sometimes the song blends into the background, and sometimes it gets a bit repetitive. If you get tired of it, go to the Options menu, and it's easy to mute. Sometimes when I play, I enjoy all of the little animations, and sometimes, I want things to hurry along faster. I've found that if you click the board with your mouse, it will skip the current animation and move things along.

I really like how the game interface is laid out. The left side of the screen is the game board. The right side has little pull-down menus for each player and the bank, as well as a running account of every action in the game and a read-out of how long you've been playing. Each player shows his token, cash on hand, all properties owned, quantity of houses and/or hotels owned, and any Get Out of Jail Free cards. If you click on the bank, you'll see all properties still available and how many houses and hotels are still available.

I find it amusing that the old Luxury Tax spot is now interest on credit card debt. I like that the other players all snicker when they land on someone else's mortgaged property. Mostly, I love winning and beating the snot out of those smug computer players. (OK, maybe I'm projecting a little.)

If you enjoy the game of Monopoly, give Monopoly Here and Now a try. If you've never played Monopoly, you can still give it a try. It's easy to learn the basic game, and you'll pick up on strategy as you go along. My best piece of advice: If you can get the orange monopoly, go for it. Sooner or later, everybody goes to jail, and when they get out, your hotels are ready and waiting just up the road. I've had a great time playing Monopoly Here and Now. Enjoy!