Section 7.18. Games: All Versions | Windows Vista: The Missing Manual

7.18. Games : All Versions

Even if you have a corporate version of Vista, like the Business or Enterprise version, you still get a bunch of games, for your procrastination pleasure . Three of them are new in Vista (Chess Titans, Mahjong Titans, Purble Place), and one (Inkball) used to be available only on Tablet PCs.

Unfortunately, the Games folder may present a striking disappointment to Windows veterans : Microsoft's games can no longer be played against other people on the Internet. Evidently Microsoft closed that entertainment channel in its pursuit of Internet security.

Here's the Vista complement of games, all of which are listed in the Start All Programs Games submenu.

Tip: Complete instructions lurk within the Help menu of each game. That's fortunate, since the rules of some of these card games can seem elaborate and quirky, to say the least.

7.18.1. Chess Titans

It's not just chessit's computer-generated chess on a gorgeously rendered board with a set of realistic 3-D pieces. You can rotate the board in space, as described in Figure 7-19.

Figure 7-19. How did this chess board get rotated like this? You can right-click a corner of the board and rotate it in 3-D space to study your situation from a different angle. (It snaps back to its original angle when you let gounless, of course, you choose Game Options and turn off "Rotate board back after free view.") Cool!

When you launch Chess, you're asked what difficulty level you want. Then you're offered a fresh, new game that's set up in Human vs. Computer modemeaning that you (the Human, with the light-colored pieces) get to play against the Computer (your PC, on the dark side). Drag the chess piece of your choice into position on the board, and the game is afoot.

If you'd rather trade piece colors with the PC, no biggie. Choose Game Options and select "Play against computer as black."

Tip: Click a piece without dragging to see where it's allowed to move, courtesy of light-up chessboard squares.

If you and a buddy are looking for something to do, you can play against each other. Choose Game "New game against human," and enjoy the way Windows rotates the chessboard after each persons turn.

7.18.2. Freecell

You might think of this card game as solitaire on steroids. When you choose Game New Game, the computer deals eight piles of cards before you. The goal is to sort them into four piles of cardsone suit each and sequentially from ace to kingin the spaces (the "Home stacks) at the upper-right corner of the screen. (To move a card, click it once and then click where you want it moved to. You're allowed to move only the bottom card from one of your eight stacks, or the cards in the free cells , described next .)

You can use the upper-left placeholders, the "free cells," as temporary resting places for your cards. From there, cards can go either onto one of the upper-right piles or onto the bottom of one of the eight piles in the second row. However, when moving cards to the eight piles, you must place them alternating red/black, and in descending sequence.

UP TO SPEED
In Every Game, a Gem

Many of the games in Vista bear the same names as the ones in Windows XPbut they're actually all new. All nine have a consistent look, consistent menus , and consistent options.

Each has two menus, Game and Help. The Game menu always offers a way to start a new game, plus these intriguing options:

Statistics reveals your personal game-playing history: how many times you've won, and so on.

Options lets you turn animations and helpful pop-up tip boxes off if you find them annoying or insulting. Here, too, you'll find checkboxes for "Always save game on exit" and "Always continue saved game," which can help lend a through line to your otherwise fractured, chaotic life.

And Change Appearance lets you redecorate your game world. For example, if, in Chess Titans, you choose Game Change Appearance, you can choose all kinds of wacky materials for the look of your piecesWood, Porcelain, or Frosted Glassand for your game board (Porcelain, Marble, or Wood).

Use those options if you don't have enough variety in your life.

7.18.3. Games Explorer

It's just a standard Explorer window containing all nine of Vista's bonus games.

7.18.4. Hearts

The object of this card game is to get rid of all the hearts you're holding by passing them off to other players. At the end of each round, all players counts up their points: one point for each heart, and thirteen points for the dreaded queen of spades. The winner is the person with the fewest points when the game ends (which is when somebody reaches 100).

What makes it tricky is that even while you're trying to ditch your hearts, somebody else may be secretly trying to collect them. If you can collect all of the hearts and the queen of spades, you win big-time; everybody else gets 26 big fat points, and you get off scot-free.

You can play Classic Hearts only against Windows, which manages the hands and strategies of three other fictional players to play against you (named North, West, and East).

7.18.5. InkBall

This game is really designed for Tablet PCs, but you can get by with a mouse. You're supposed to draw ink strokes on the screen, frantically building temporary "bumpers" that bounce the balls into matching color -holesand stop them from going into different-colored holes (Figure 7-20). You have to act fast, because (a) you're racing the clock and (b) each line you draw vanishes if a ball hits it.

Figure 7-20. In Inkball, the different colors are worth different numbers of points, ranging from red (200), blue, green, and finally gold (1,600). Gray balls don't win you any points; on the other hand, they're allowed to go into any holes without penalty .

7.18.6. Mahjong Titans

Here's yet another kind of solitaire. (Naturally. Now that Microsoft has removed the playing-across-the-Internet features from its games, what other kind of game is there but solitaire?)

In Mahjong, though, you use tiles instead of cards. When the game begins, click the starting tile pile you want to work with. The idea is to click pairs of matching tiles to make them disappearbut only free tiles (not pinned under any others) can disappear.

Most of the time, the tiles have to match exactly , both in pattern and in number. Flower tiles let you off easy, thoughany flower is considered a match of any other. Season tiles, same deal; any matches any.

Tip: If you get stuck, press the letter H key for a hint. Well, not so much a hint as a blatant giveaway; the next pair of available matching tiles blinks at you.

GEM IN THE ROUGH
Why Mimesweeper Didn't Make the Cut

Vista is the first version of Windows to be written in the age of blogs (Web diaries )and Microsoft actually permitted its programmers to participate by keeping Windows fans updated on Vista's progress.

Most of the Vista blogs were pretty mundane, filled with programmery stuff. But Microsoft researcher David Vronay had PC nuts splurting their coffee in laughter with this fake posting:

"One of the most common requests I get from people is a list of features that didn't make it [into Windows Vista]. I thought it would be interesting for readers to hear about some of these things.

"As you may know, we have taken flack in the past for Minesweeper and the use of mines. Although we don't have land mines in the USA, in many countries they are experienced in daily life, and not something to make light of in a video game.

"So for Vista, we wanted to replace mines with something that people also wanted to avoid finding. Thus we came up with the concept of Mimesweeper.

"In Mimesweeper, you uncover street intersections on a black-and-white striped grid in which several mimes are hidden. Just like wandering around Paris, the goal is to figure out where all of the mimes are without actually encountering one.

"Unfortunately, beta feedback revealed a tremendous amount of controversy over the use of mimes. Although we do not have many mimes in the USA, apparently there are many countries where running into a mime is common occurrence and not something to make light of in a video game.

"In the end, we pulled the concept and replaced it with a garden of flowers."

7.18.7. Minesweeper

Under some of the grid cells are mines; under others, hints about nearby mines. Your goal: find the mines without blowing yourself up.

When clicking random squares, you run the risk of getting blown up instantly. If that happens, you lose; them's the breaks. But if you get lucky, you uncover little numbers around the square you clicked. Each number reveals how many mines are hidden in the squares surrounding it. Using careful mathematical logic and the process of elimination , you can eventually figure out which squares have mines under them. (To help keep track, you can right-click the squares to plant little flags that mean, "Don't step here.") You win if you mark all the mine squares with flags.

7.18.8. Purble Place

Meet Microsoft's nod to the next generation of Windows fans: Purble Place, which is geared toward the elementary-school (or even preschool) set (Figure 7-21).

Figure 7-21. All three of the games here smack of the games you find on educational CDs like Reader Rabbit .

Which game you play depends on which of the three Fisher-Price buildings you click first:

Purble Pairs . It's Ye Olde Memory Matching Game. Click any two tiles to reveal what's on their faces. If they match, they disappear. If not, they spin face-down again; as the game goes on, you have to remember where you saw that darned hat, or cake, or whatever. You're racing against the clock.
Comfy Cakes . The TV shows you what kind of cake the chef needs. As the naked cake moves down the assembly lines, you have to click the right pan shape, batter color, frosting flavor, and decoration by clicking the appropriate buttons below the belt. The idea is to make the cake match the one shown on the TV. As you get better, the conveyor belt speeds up (can you say I Love Lucy ?).
Purble Shop . Your mission is to build a Purble character whose features match the mystery dude ( marked by the question mark). Each time you assemble some features from the shelves (eyes, nose, mouth) and click the checkmark button, the game tells you how many of these features you got rightbut not which ones. Through trial and error, you're supposed to deduce what the mystery dude actually looks like.

7.18.9. Solitaire

Here it is: the program that started it all, the application that introduced millions of people to the joys of a graphic interface like Windows. (Ask the advanced-beginner Windows fan to identify a good program-file code to type into the Start Run dialog box, and he might not know winword or msconfig but he'll probably know sol .)

In Solitaire, the object is to build four piles of cards, one for each suit, in ascending order (starting with aces). To help achieve this, you maintain seven smaller stacks of cards in the second row. You can put cards onto these piles as long as you alternate red and black, and as long as the cards go in descending order (a four of hearts can be placed on a five of spades, for example). Click a face-down card on one of these piles to turn it over. If it helps you to continue the red/black/red/black sequence you've started, remember you can drag around stacks of face-up cards on these piles. And when you can't find any more moves to make, click the deck in the upper-left corner to reveal more cards.

7.18.10. Spider Solitaire

If your spirit needs a good game of solitaire, but you just don't have the time or patience for Solitaire or FreeCell, this kinder, gentler, easier game may be just the ticket. Thanks to the built-in cheat mechanism, which suggests the next move with no penalty, you can blow through this game with all of the satisfaction and none of the frustration of traditional solitaire games.

You play with 104 cards. You get ten stacks across the top of the screen, and the rest in a pile in the lower-right corner of the screen (Figure 7-22). All you have to do is create stacks of cards in descending order, from king down to ace, by dragging cards around. As soon as you create such a stack, the cards fly off the playing board. The goal is to remove all of the cards from the playing board.

Figure 7-22. In the easiest level, there's no need to worry about color or suit, because the game gives you only spades. If you run out of imagination , just press the letter M or H key to make the program propose a move. And if even the game can't find a legal move, simply click the deck in the lower-right corner to distribute another round of cards, which opens up a new round of possibilities .

Sticking with the game to the very end delivers an animated fireworks displayand a tiny, budding sense of achievement.