Other than the ruined Monopoly experiences, I had a lot of fun with the other three games.
Boggle was actually the main reason why I wanted to play this in the first place (I am a sucker for word games after all). There are four types of single-player Boggle: Classic, Time Attack, Word Count and Word Find.
Classic gives you 3 minutes to find as many words as possible. Time Attack is the same as Classic, but you can pick your time limit from between 1 to 5 minutes. Word Count is like Classic but without a time limit. Word Find gives you a list of words for you to find on the cube and a time limit to do so.
Boggle scoring rules apply to all of the game modes: larger words are worth more points, letters must be adjacent to others to form a word. There is also a multiplayer option for up to 4 players in either Classic or Time Attack, via single card play or wi-fi.
Yahtzee is a game I used to play a lot with a cousin, whenever we went to the beach or the swimming pool. We usually ended up losing at least one of the dice somehow. You need five dice to play and each player gets three rolls to try and obtain the best possible scoring combination on the list (i.e. full house, three of a king, aces, twos, etc.). Obviously, this DS version is much more convenient to play: there are no dice to lose track of, no need for paper or scoring cards, no need for a pen, and no need to add up the values in the end. There are also six themed backgrounds to make the game a little more fun: Classic, Hamster, Haunted, Lava, Lunar and Pisa. They're all worth trying, even if just to see the little animations and the environments.
Yahtzee also has a multiplayer game for up to four players (either with AI or real players) in three difficulty settings.
Next in line is Battleship, which I thought would be a little boring, but it turned out to be pretty cool. I've never played it other than with someone else, with pen and paper, so I find the different game options very creative and entertaining.
Although the fleet is different from what I was used to (no single-tile submarines, no t-shaped carrier), I like how there are several styles to chose from: Classic, Viking, Pirate, Underwater, Modern and Sci-Fi.
There are three game modes with different rules. Standard is the classic gameplay we know Battleship for. Speed War gives you an extra shot every time you hit your adversary. Ultimate is like Classic, but you get an additional five mines to deploy before you ships.
I particularly like the music, sound effects and voice in Battleship. The explosions, the cheering when you sink a ship, the water hits, all sounds very realistic and clear. The voices vary according to your fleet type, as do the lines that are said. "Incoming!", "Fire!" and "Abandon Ship!" will be stuck in your subliminal library pretty quick. With a pirate accent, on top.
Graphically, Battleship turns a simple game into something very cool and pleasing to the eyes. The visual style of the different fleets is really nice and there is a good amount of detail on the ships, cannon shots, smoke trails, explosions and debris. Seeing a ship sink or fire is quite entertaining, be it your ships on the opponent's.
Last but not least, there's Monopoly, which was the game I ended up playing the most, but the only one that gave me a hard time. The classic board game is all there, complete with a save feature and the option to have up to three other real or AI players.
Unfortunately, bugs and errors kept ruining my games. At a certain point in a given game, one of the AI players kept going around the board endlessly on its turn. On other occasions, the game would freeze on the auction or trade screens. One time, I couldn't bid on auctions, even if I had the money to do so. The last drop was a corrupt save file that no matter how many times I tried to load my game, all I got was a black screen and an annoying sound. I also noted a mistake on the scrolling text where the information didn't match the event. "It's your birthday, receive $10 from each player" would scroll as "[Player] has received $50 from everyone." When you only have 4 players on the board, that would be mathematically impossible.
Other than the ruined Monopoly experiences, I had a lot of fun with the other three games. But I should note that I borrowed this game, because I wouldn't buy it for its retail price. A bit too much, if you ask me. Review text part of Grrlgamer.com. Full text and screenshots at http://www.grrlgamer.com/review.php?g=monopolyboggle