Freecell

"Good things come at a price. That's why this game is free."

Honestly, I'm a bit biased against most free PC games. I don't like them, and this is no exception.

Freecell is like a carefully thought out ripoff, backwards game of Solitaire. There are 8 spaces. 4 are your free ''cells''. The other 4 is where you put 4 aces, then 2s, and so on just like Solitaire. You get dealt out the entire deck face up in columns. You must try to free the cards from the bottom of each column to place at the top where the 4 piles in order are by placing red cards on black cards, black cards on red cards in the order or King at the bottom and 2 at the top. You can usually move one at a time depending on the free cells. If you happen to get stuck, you can move cards into your free cells and continue on from there. You win when you get all the cards in the 4 spots which are not your free cells.

I admit, this game is very challenging and difficult. There are many, many different games and it's hard to just win one of them. It takes time and brains to plan out each move so that you can get some cards out that you need. However, it can get repetitive since all you do really is move cards around.

The graphics are rather bland. It's nothing special for a card game, not much effort seems to be put into it. There's a green background, and then a King in the middle of the 8 cells the separate them. The cards look just like every other computer generated graphics. I feel that the creators could have brought out more than just green. But of course, they decided not to and just stick to lazy standards. That just faults the game more.

There is no sound or music in the game. I suppose that can be a good thing since you can listen to your favorite music pieces while playing the game. But then again, you can do that with most games.

For a final recommendation, I think that most people shouldn't get it. Unless you like a real challenge and don't need bright colors and catchy music, I recommend that you don't play this game. There are much better free games out there and you're better off playing them or just getting real cards and playing your friends. If you do like the game however, it will last a long time with so many different combinations.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 04/28/04