Hasbro Family Game Night 3 Preview

For a few years now, Hasbro has been bundling together a number of its popular board games into compilations called Hasbro Family Game Night, each containing different popular titles. After two iterations, one would think that they would be scraping the bottom of the barrel for content, and that the upcoming Hasbro Family Game Night 3 would be weaker than the previous versions. This is not the case, and it’s obvious that there’s still plenty of retro goodness to be found in Game Night.

In the past, simple, yet wonderful games like Boggle and Scrabble were offered. This time, however, some of the games are much more complex. While there are some that will likely be simple, like YAHTZEE Hands Down and Twister, others, like Life, Clue, and Mouse Trap, are much larger, and will definitely help justify purchasing the game in stores for the Xbox 360, PS3, and Wii. Sadly, it’s only going to be available in disc form for all platforms, meaning that EA is likely abandoning its Family Game Night platform on Xbox Live.

Being disc based does allow them some benefits, though, such as much more visually appealing and complex games. At a recent press event, EA was showing off the game, and displayed a few minutes of The Game of Life for all to see. Besides looking great and playing like Life always has, it featured mini-games at different points, meaning that the game was almost like Mario Party in execution. Players would also be able to use their Avatars or Miis as drivers, further expanding the integration. Other games, sadly, were not shown off, though it’s easy to see how much of the games would work in the package. Then again, with each game coming with at least one variant game type, even the simplest Hasbro title might be remade in the bundle.

We’re not going to lie – we’re upset that the games won’t be offered as downloadable upgrades to the already released Family Game Night platform. That said, it’s not going to get in the way of the game’s target audience (see: families) from enjoying the title when it releases this fall.