Hasbro Connect 4

As many of you may already know I do like my son to have lots of games that we can play as a family because I think “games night” is a way of spending quality time interacting with your children and having fun as well. As such my son has a massive amount of games as he often receives them for Christmas and birthdays and one which he received last Christmas was Connect 4 which is made by Hasbro.

What is it?

Connect 4 is what I would call one of the classic games! I certainly remember playing it when I was younger and so it was natural that I would want to purchase it for my son. He actually had a Disney store equivalent for a couple of years but last Christmas if you spent £20.00 on Hasbro games in toys r us you received Connect 4 free and so it made sense to give it to my son.

The game comes packed in a tough cardboard box which the lid lifts right off to reveal the contents. I would say the box would be able to last many years as long as you treat it with a little care as it does feel quite hard wearing. We are told on the front of the box that the contents are “the original game of Connect 4” and there are pictures of a red and yellow counter playing the game against each other. The game is suitable for players aged six plus according to the box and for two players.

The concept of Connect 4 is simple really in that you take it in turns with one player playing as red and the other as yellow to place counters in the grid and the first player to get four in a row wins. What is different with this version of Connect 4 though is that there are five ways in which you can play this came including the original, pop out, pop 10, 5 in a row and power up. Some of the games are in my opinion a little pointless but some are worth playing.

Opinion

Initially when you first play the game there is a little bit of setting up to do but after the first time you are pretty much ready to go from the onset. The game is simple to set up and the blue plastic grid feels really solid. A nice touch on this game is that there are locking mechanisms on both the top and the bottom of the grid and so in theory you can store all of the counters in the grid and carry the game around using the base which doubles up as a handle. I say that this is a nice idea in theory as sometimes the bottom lock shifts very easily and all of the counters fall out which my son finds hilarious and I am sure he tries to do it on purpose! The game does feel very well made though even down to the counters which are solid and shiny and so just look good quality. I like the fact the game seems so well made because this is the kind of game that you keep forever almost as I know that adults love challenging each other to this game in my family too so it isn’t just for children.

As I mentioned there are five ways in which you can play this game but my son and I tend to play the original, five in a row or the power up game and so my review will focus on those. The other two options tend to focus on removing counters from the bottom of the grid instead of placing them in and it all gets a bit confusing and so we prefer to keep things relatively simple.

Now of course the original concept of Connect 4 is pretty simple in that one player uses red counters and the other yellow and takes it in turns to place counters in the grid and get four in a row whilst also trying to stop their opponent from achieving their target! Five in a row is played by slotting on some cardboard slats on to the side of the grid which has pictures of red and yellow smiling counters on them which you can use to complete your five in a row. This is slightly trickier as you need to really think about where your counters are going to land in order to best make use of the pictures.

The power up game is the one which my son and I tend to opt to play the most because I think it requires the most thought as you play to be honest. In this game you have four power counters which can be used to achieve certain results and so you need to think quite hard about when you use these ones! The counters are as follows:

Anvil: When you play the anvil you pop out all of the counters under it so the anvil sits at the bottom of the row.

Wall: When you play the wall you can play a normal counter straight afterwards but the normal counter must not complete a four in a row!

X2: When you play this counter you can play another counter straight afterwards and on this occasion you can complete a four in a row with your normal counter!

Wrecker: On this turn you choose one of your opponents counters to knock out of the bottom of the grid.

My son and I regularly seem to get tripped up by the other one using their power counters as we never seem to fully judge what could potentially happen on the others next turn. We find this option really fun and my son will often say “you didn’t see THAT coming” to me as he happily beats me! The power up game is our favourite because of the fact that you can trick your opponent and it requires a little more thinking than normal but we do enjoy playing the original version as well because it is fun and we all do get quite competitive with it.

I would say that with this game I am no better than my son at predicting the outcome or working out how to place my counters strategically and so it is quite a level playing field! Even when he had the Disney version of the same game he regularly beat me, my sister, my mum and my dad too and he would have only been four or five at the time and so he is pretty good with this game! Whilst I think the age guidelines on the box are possibly sensible I would say that you know your child and their abilities and so I would think that children younger than six could certainly have a go at the basic rules Connect 4.

What my son really likes about this game is the fact that on the grid there is a small slider in which you can keep track of your scores. As I said we do get quite competitive and so it is fun to keep track of scores in this way! The slider can be quite tricky to move along though in my opinion and this does feel like the most flimsy part of the game to be honest but I am not too worried about this as it isn’t essential to game play it is just a nice extra really.

You can currently pick up Connect 4 from amazon for £6.95 and I think this is a brilliant price for a game which all of the family are sure to enjoy and which you will get many, many years of fun and play out of. I would totally recommend this game for children aged around five upwards and do think that all children will enjoy it.

Thank you for reading my review!