7.2 Windows XP Games

7.2 Windows XP Games

Although the central concept of Windows XP ”merging what were once separate Windows versions for corporations and homes ”is a noble and largely successful one, a few peculiar juxtapositions result. If you're a corporate user , for instance, you may wonder what to make of things like Movie Maker (for editing home movies), Outlook Express (a stripped-down, free version of Outlook) ”and games. Yes, Windows XP even includes eleven games for your procrastination pleasure .

More interesting still, several of them let you play against other people on the Internet. At the Microsoft Game Center (http://www.zone.com ), players from all over the world gather to find worthy opponents. When you choose one of the Internet-enabled games, your PC connects automatically with this Game Center. An automated matchmaker searches for someone else who wants to play the game you chose, and puts the two of you together, albeit anonymously.

The game board that opens, like the one in Figure 7-8, provides more than just the tools to play; there's even a pseudo-chat feature. By choosing from the canned list of phrases, you can send little game exclamations to your opponent ("Good move," "King me!" "Bad luck," and so on).

Figure 7-8. It may look like a simple game of checkers, but you're actually witnessing a spectacular feature of Windows XP: instantaneous anonymous Internet gaming. Two Internet visitors in search of recreation have made contact, a game board has appeared, and the game is under way. The Chat window sits below the game board. You can even turn Chat off if you're planning to play a cutthroat game and don't want to fake having friendly feelings toward your opponent.

NOTE

The list of utterances available in your chat session is completely canned. For example, you can't type in, "That was uncalled-for, you sniveling roach!" Still, its canned nature has a virtue of its own: You can exchange platitudes with players anywhere in the world. Your quips show up automatically in the language of your opponent's copy of Windows, be it Korean, German, or whatever.

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

NOTE

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.

• 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 cards ”one suit each and sequentially from ace to king ”in the spaces 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 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.

  NOTE

  When you're stuck, move your cursor back and forth in front of the little king icon at top center. Watch his eyes follow your arrow as though hypnotized.

• Hearts, Internet 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 either against Windows, which conjures up names and hands for three other fictional players to play against you, or against people on your network. And if you open Internet Hearts, you can play against other similarly bored Windows PC owners all over the world.

• Internet Backgammon . This is classic backgammon, but with a twist: Now you're playing against people you've never met, via the MSN Gaming Zone.

• Internet Checkers . It's just checkers; once again, though, you can now play against random players on the Internet (see Figure 7-8).

• Internet Reversi . Like Othello, you play this strategy game on a chess-type board against another player from the MSN Gaming Zone.

• Internet Spades . Here's yet another card game, again designed for Internet playing.

• 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.

• Pinball . To start this noisy , animated, very realistic pinball machine (Figure 7-9), choose Game New Game. You get three balls; launch the first one by tapping the Space bar. (For a more powerful launch, hold the Space bar down longer before releasing.)

  Figure 7-9. Once the Pinball ball is in orbit around the screen, you twitch the flippers by pressing the Z and / keys. (Put your pinkies there ”this feels much more logical than it reads. Even so, you can reassign these functions to other keys by choosing Options Player Controls.) You can even "bump the table" by pressing the X, period, or up arrow key.

  

  NOTE

  The game becomes a lot more fun when it fills the screen. Press F4 to make it so.

• 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.

  If you win, an animated simulation of what's euphemistically called "52 Pickup" appears for your viewing pleasure.

  NOTE

  You can't play Solitaire over the Internet. Even Microsoft hasn't yet figured out a way to turn Solitaire into a multiplayer game.

• 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. By dragging cards around, all you have to do is create stacks of cards in descending order, from king down to ace. 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.

  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 key to make the program propose a move, accompanied by a heavenly sounding harp ripple. 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 confetti/fireworks display ”and a tiny, budding sense of achievement.