According to new, and I should think absolutely unimpeachable research from Tesco, of all the toys and games on offer to children this Christmas, Hasbro's new Monopoly City offers the best value for money. Its £15.97 price means that it costs on average just 7p per game. The Transformer Leader Figure Megatron (£29.97) was the worst value, at 64p per play.

I can't speak for the Megatron experience. But I can offer a note of caution about the apparent good value enshrined in the latest edition of the Hasbro game, which has already been sampled by the Mangan family.

Monopoly City is to ordinary Monopoly as chess is to noughts and crosses. Everything is ramped up, from the money (which now goes up to 5m Monopoly pounds, or "M"s) to the buildings (now inches tall) to their regulations. Oh, their regulations! Gone are the gentle days of gathering an entire set before you could raise a decorous green maisonette or two. Now, as soon as you buy a property (or "district" as they are now known) you can start to build as many blocks as the electronic building button allows.

The instructions do not tell you to start drinking heavily at this stage, but it is advisable. You can build residential or commercial property. The former is cheaper but – we eventually work out after eight re-readings of the instructions, four fights and one attempt at self- mutilation with the new Rent Dodger card – it can be rendered worthless if another player lands on a planning permission square (which has replaced – O tempora! O mores! – the Community Chest) and builds a hazard (sewage works, nuclear reactor, etc) in your district.

Still with me and/or still drinking? Then, onward. When – roughly 48 hours of play later – you own an entire set of districts, you can build a skyscraper, which doubles the rent you can charge. Own two sets, and you can build a Monopoly tower and players start having to pay you in real money. We think. An auction button, and a thick fog of venality and corruption hanging heavy over the intensified game, soon banish the last vestiges of old-fashioned fun.

It is not a Monopoly game. It is a governmentally approved psychometric testing kit to find a replacement business tsar. Who is not to be found in the Mangan household. We are now a battered, broken family.