Released: 1990
Difficulty: Just Right
Time Spent: 40 to 100 Hours
Headline: Monotonousness will arrive
Today’s review is Solitaire, this is a game about… wait, what?! Yes folks I kid you not, the standard pack in that’s been shoveled into every computer for more than 20 years. Why write a review for this, well there’s been around 50+ hours of my time wasted while playing it and I often write reviews about games that can only scrounge up 10 hours so, what the hell…
Over the years, Solitaire has adopted a number of alternate skins for you to dress the game up with. Even my version has 12 different card labels.
Solitaire, it's a you versus the cards (or I suppose computer); you’ve probably played a game of Solitaire before, in fact you’ve probably played ‘this’ game before but here’s brief rundown of the game:
-You are given 7 random set of cards, the first pile has 1 card, incrementally increasing to the seventh pile with 7 cards. First you uncover the cards at the top of each pile to figure out what other cards you need.
-The cards you need are in descending order. If you have red 6 (Heart or Diamond), you need a 5 but not just any 5, a dark 5 (Club or Spade), then you need a red 4, and so on.
-You find the cards you need in a pile of randomly sorted cards; you’ll commonly need to find a place for another card before you get the one you want. By sorting the cards you were already given in your piles, you can find some of what you need there as well.
-The underlying goal is to uncover the Heart’s, Spade’s, Diamond’s, and the Club’s ‘Ace Card’ and ascend stack each of their respective card type on top of each other and in order to the top (2-10, Jack, Queen, King). The game also throws in a scorer that’s mostly based on making your moves in a timely manner.
-You can back build (bring back down cards that have already been ascend stacked to retrieve lower level cards that you didn’t get before) if you need to. However, it is dangerous as you may lock the card up in behind and lose the ability to retrieve the previously stacked card.
Here’s a good challenge: win a round in less than 100 seconds
With Solitaire you can in fact beat the game; but usually, you will not be able to complete the game due to a likelihood of lock up with the set of the cards. This can happen even if you didn't make mistakes (and it's not a glitch of any kind) and you’ll always end up with a score or time but, there is nothing here to beat over then just the game. It would have been better to have the option to play solitaire in the classic way or choose a match where you can actually end up winning. The gameplay can become very repetitive; though excellent for coming back to sometimes, you are going to get bored after the fifth game. A nice inclusion is the right-click feature that allows the computer to ascend stack cards (instead of you); but that's only after you uncover an Ace.
Also absent is sound, there’s no effects, music, nothing. I hear…barrenness. The visuals are limited, but there is a little glimmer on this 1990 originating board game; you can change the cover of the card deck and every card has a pixel accurate representation making the King, Queen, and Jack cards look especially impressive. If you beat the game, you can watch a multitude of the same card for every card lope off the green background which looks great and smooth but that's all for the visuals.
Overall, it's lacking but it's what it is, a computerized version of a great game and nothing more, it's also free, and a always packed in with computers.
6.5/ 10 FAIR (PC)
+Great concept with a strong pairing of skill and randomness
-Could do a lot more with a few tweaks and basic additions
TWiSTEDmerc
Difficulty: Just Right
Time Spent: 40 to 100 Hours
Headline: Monotonousness will arrive
Today’s review is Solitaire, this is a game about… wait, what?! Yes folks I kid you not, the standard pack in that’s been shoveled into every computer for more than 20 years. Why write a review for this, well there’s been around 50+ hours of my time wasted while playing it and I often write reviews about games that can only scrounge up 10 hours so, what the hell…
Over the years, Solitaire has adopted a number of alternate skins for you to dress the game up with. Even my version has 12 different card labels.
Solitaire, it's a you versus the cards (or I suppose computer); you’ve probably played a game of Solitaire before, in fact you’ve probably played ‘this’ game before but here’s brief rundown of the game:
-You are given 7 random set of cards, the first pile has 1 card, incrementally increasing to the seventh pile with 7 cards. First you uncover the cards at the top of each pile to figure out what other cards you need.
-The cards you need are in descending order. If you have red 6 (Heart or Diamond), you need a 5 but not just any 5, a dark 5 (Club or Spade), then you need a red 4, and so on.
-You find the cards you need in a pile of randomly sorted cards; you’ll commonly need to find a place for another card before you get the one you want. By sorting the cards you were already given in your piles, you can find some of what you need there as well.
-The underlying goal is to uncover the Heart’s, Spade’s, Diamond’s, and the Club’s ‘Ace Card’ and ascend stack each of their respective card type on top of each other and in order to the top (2-10, Jack, Queen, King). The game also throws in a scorer that’s mostly based on making your moves in a timely manner.
-You can back build (bring back down cards that have already been ascend stacked to retrieve lower level cards that you didn’t get before) if you need to. However, it is dangerous as you may lock the card up in behind and lose the ability to retrieve the previously stacked card.
Here’s a good challenge: win a round in less than 100 seconds
With Solitaire you can in fact beat the game; but usually, you will not be able to complete the game due to a likelihood of lock up with the set of the cards. This can happen even if you didn't make mistakes (and it's not a glitch of any kind) and you’ll always end up with a score or time but, there is nothing here to beat over then just the game. It would have been better to have the option to play solitaire in the classic way or choose a match where you can actually end up winning. The gameplay can become very repetitive; though excellent for coming back to sometimes, you are going to get bored after the fifth game. A nice inclusion is the right-click feature that allows the computer to ascend stack cards (instead of you); but that's only after you uncover an Ace.
Also absent is sound, there’s no effects, music, nothing. I hear…barrenness. The visuals are limited, but there is a little glimmer on this 1990 originating board game; you can change the cover of the card deck and every card has a pixel accurate representation making the King, Queen, and Jack cards look especially impressive. If you beat the game, you can watch a multitude of the same card for every card lope off the green background which looks great and smooth but that's all for the visuals.
Overall, it's lacking but it's what it is, a computerized version of a great game and nothing more, it's also free, and a always packed in with computers.
6.5/ 10 FAIR (PC)
+Great concept with a strong pairing of skill and randomness
-Could do a lot more with a few tweaks and basic additions
TWiSTEDmerc
