"Yeah that's right. I reviewed Solitaire."

Although Solitaire is a very well known and popular game, it's not that fun and is only good to play every now and then. There are some things that are frustrating about playing like the game not telling you right away when there are not any more moves available or just the fact that some games are made to be un-winnable. It's nothing special, but it's not too bad either.

Well if you don't know what Solitaire is I'm not sure where you've been for the last few eons but I'll explain it anyway (the popular version found on windows is the one I'm talking about in this review). It's a card game that's played by yourself and the goal is to get all four card suits from Ace to King out of the game in order. Basically the game starts you seven card piles with the first card face up in each pile and the rest face down with one card in the first pile, two in the second and so on. You also have four blank squares in the top right where you're supposed to put all of the cards of respective suits in order from Ace to King. The cards you put in the top right come from the deck and your seven piles. The deck in the top left has random cards and you can move on to the next card in this deck by either bringing down the card from the deck to one of your piles, or placing it in the next order in the four squares on the top right. Placing the cards from the deck and maneuvering them is different then placing them in the top right though. Face-up cards in the piles on the bottom have to have red suits then black suits then red again in downwards numerical order. If a pile is empty a King can go in the blank space.

Now that might seem like a hefty explanation, but once learned the game is incredibly simple. That's one thing about Solitaire, it's got a very quick learning curve and the games themselves also go very quickly. You can also do other things with the gameplay like changing the way scoring is done, timing your games, or changing the amount of cards you draw from the deck from one to three. Whenever you win a game, you get a short animation that's changed depending on what version of the game you're playing.

You might be thinking “what problem can there be with such a simple game?” Well to start, some of the games simply cannot be won. There doesn't seem to be much that can be done with this and it's not something that can be pinned on the developers considering that's just how the game is. But that doesn't change the fact that it's really annoying. Another issue is the hint function. You can use the H button and the game will highlight a possible move. Sometimes though, the game will repeatedly highlight the deck for you to draw over and over again even when there are no more possible moves. Normally when the game has no more moves a little window will pop up telling you that it's over. But sometimes you'll have cards that can be moved down from the four spaces in the right that would allow cards from the deck to be placed down. The hint function will never tell you to move down those cards and will keep highlighting the deck over and over again. To make matters worse sometimes bringing those cards down from the top right after you finally figure out what the game wants causes the window to come up telling you there's no more moves! Just something simple like letting the hints highlight the cards in the top right to tell a player to move them down would make the game a lot less irking.

Although there are small annoying things that make Solitaire annoying, it can be pretty addictive when you're bored or you're waiting for your internet connection to bridge back up. However, it's nothing special and too simple for it to get a better score.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 01/04/10

Game Release: Solitaire (US, 05/22/90)