Monopoly is about fucking everyone over.

That's all its ever been about, and if you try to play the game in a fair and reasoned fashion, that's a good way to find yourself in the fifth hour of self-induced Monopoly coma, politely rolling dice, shedding skin cells and letting loose successively larger and larger yawns until you, your brother, your cousin, and gramma are unhinging your jaws like somnambulistic pythons, expelling aerated sleep as you numbly nudge a fucking thimble around the table for the 300th time.

Monopoly is supposed to end with angry people, hurt feelings, flipped tables, and gramma spitting her dentures and the c-word across the room at the ungrateful children who dared screw her out of Marvin Gardens. The winner should be smug, self-satisfied, and secure in the knowledge that they are smarter, slicker, and oh-so-ruthless. Their smile should be oil, their eyes glittering, razor-sharp obsidian.

But even knowing this and playing accordingly, sometimes games can take up to two or three hours at minimum, which is still way too long for a Monopoly game. Luckily for you, I've fixed this. Print this out, stash it in the box, and from now on, these rules are the rules, and I guarantee Monopoly becomes something you might actually enjoy at a family gathering, instead of something you volunteer to be played as a means to make everyone either leave, sleep, or die.

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Games designer/theorist Jane McGonigal wrote a great book a while ago called Reality Is Broken, which argues that the reason humans spend three billion hours a week playing online games is that games are better and more engaging than reality as most of us experience it, in part because games tap into the best parts of us. She's interested in ways gaming and its principles can be applied to real-life scenarios—she's also a fascinating speaker, and I've got three pairs of tickets to see her speak Thursday night at Concordia. To enter to win 'em, just email me by 9 am tomorrow with "epic win" in the headline, and your full name in the email. Winners will hear back tomorrow by 10 am.

UPDATE! This post originally said the event was tomorrow night—it's Thursday! Sorry :(

• Blizzard Entertainment

Let's assume you're a fan of Blizzard Entertainment's Diablo series, but just don't have the patience to wait for the May 15 release of Diablo III. Now that I type it all out that's a pretty likely scenario, so it's probably a good thing that as of an hour or so ago, the company has opened up the Diablo III beta to anyone with an internet connection, a (free) Battle.net account and either a Mac or Windows computer capable of running the title.

Excited? You should be. I've been playing the beta for a few months now and it's awesome. The company has tweaked a few things and made some interesting additions to the series, but I can say with total honesty that if you loved Diablo II, you will also love Diablo III.

So how do you get in? Simple. Head over to Battle.net, sign in (or register a new account), then download the client from Blizzard's servers. Though the company's hardware is likely taking a pounding from the massive crush of people trying to get into the beta, their client downloader is bit torrent-based, so the multi-gigabyte client download shouldn't take too long.

Once complete, you have until the stroke of midnight on Sunday to explore Blizzard's latest massive hit. Hope you didn't have any other plans this weekend.

• Microsoft
• As long as there's money to be made, this guy just will not die.

Like the headline says, this morning Microsoft officially announced the release date for 343 Industries' Halo 4.

We still don't know much about the game's plot or what it will add in terms of new gameplay concepts, but expect aliens, guns and oversized military vehicles with the handling characteristics of RC racers.

Strangely, tonight's episode of Conan features a segment trumpeting the announcement, because apparently simply telling the gaming media about this sort of thing is passé. Or maybe TBS is the network of choice for trigger happy teenagers. Who the hell knows?

You remember Max Payne, right? It was that film noir action game that Rockstar developed in between Grand Theft Auto sequels that introduced bullet time to gaming in the short time period between The Matrix making that sort of thing mind-blowingly cool and every single media property overusing the gimmick until it was a tired cliche.

That game is now available on the iPhone and iPad for only $3, and despite my reservations about how its made-for-PC control scheme would translate to devices that are completely devoid of useful buttons, it's fantastic. Actually, it looks and runs a bit better than it did in any of its previous incarnations, so once you get used to the control scheme's short learning curve, you'll be playing the best version of the game to date.

Plus, there's some part of the primal human brain that really gets off on diving through a door in slow motion, akimbo pistols blazing, like some kind of John Woo-directed wet dream. That's worth the cost of admission alone. All the hard-boiled noir detective stuff is just icing on a morally grey, hyper-violent cake.

• Atlus
• These two are way more endearing than their anime-trope design would suggest.

Two reasons: First, that $10 price point. You've likely got that kind of scratch between the cushions of your couch (and if you don't, you should probably look for a better couch).

Second, and more importantly, Persona 3: FES is arguably the best roleplaying game of the last two console generations. I'm willing to admit that its sequel (the aptly titled Persona 4) might improve on it in some ways, but this Wired review makes a solid argument as to why everyone with even the faintest interest in the genre should own the game.

Fair warning though, the game is long and incredibly deep. Expect to drop a minimum of 100 hours into it before you reach the end. And don't be surprised if, after playing, you immediately seek out the other half-dozen games and off-shoots in the series.

• thatgamecompany
• A billion grains of emotional resonance.

Statistically speaking, you're a smart, cultured lot, so I'm going to take it for granted that you've played (and thus loved) thatgamecompany's recently-released PlayStation 3-exclusive Journey.

Likewise, I'm going to assume that you were wildly impressed with the game's gorgeous flowing sand that piled up around your character's feet, was blown about by the wind and generated the most entertaining dunes since that one episode of The Critic where Jay gets stuck in Iraq.

If all my assumptions are correct, I urge you to read this post on the developer's forum that explains the tech behind that sand. It's a bit dry and hyper-geeky, but for any aspiring developers or fans of the game, it's a nice extra snippet of commentary on how thatgamecompany managed to create such a striking world.