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Review: Top 5 PC card games
(IDG) • SolSuite 2001: Playing solitaire on a PC is a time-honored tradition for procrastinators. Sure, you'd love to finish that PowerPoint presentation--you just have a few cards to get rid of first. And this program will let you immerse yourself in some of your favorite games: Klondike, FreeCell, Pyramid, Golf, Busy Aces, and Monte Carlo, among others. What separates this program from others of its kind is its built-in game editor, which lets you change the rules of any game. You can also change the backgrounds of your card deck by using your own .bmp images. In the classic solitaire game Klondike, for example, you can specify how you want your cards to be arranged: sequentially in the same suit, alternating colors, or regardless of suit. The game features sounds that you can disable. You can also retrieve statistics, graphs, 3D charts (pies and bars), and tables to help you estimate your skill level. With over 9 trillion possible games to play, this program can help you kill a lot of free time.
• Casino Verite Blackjack: Blackjack games don't usually seem complex, but Casino Verite offers an amazingly sophisticated gaming engine. While most blackjack games generally contain a few dozen rule variations at most, Casino Verite includes a database with 895 rule sets and over 100 play variations that can create trillions of combinations. You can have your game appear to be set in actual casinos in Las Vegas, Kathmandu, Indian reservations, and cruise ships. (As if that were not enough, the game also includes three city and 17 state maps showing casino locations, statistics, and rules.) You can set the game to follow a real casino's rules, or you can define your own. The program offers other features such as tipping, dealer errors, and face-up or face-down dealing. • Hardwood Hearts: Hearts requires opponents who are good at bluffing, so that you never know when one is going to shoot the moon. And the strength of Hardwood Hearts is in the characters who challenge you: Not only are they intelligent, but they can appear in any number of ways. Among the characters you can choose from are princes and princesses, kings and queens, magicians, trolls, unicorns, and dragons. There is a definite Middle Ages flavor to the game, as it even features medieval-sounding MIDI songs to accompany your game play. You can select different color schemes, including clouds, pyramids, and mushrooms. In addition, you can tailor the characters' appearance. For example, we were allowed to choose a different color for the coat, hair, horn, and eyes of a unicorn character that we created. Your PC can play the other characters, or you can play the game online with people around the world. The game also lets you play some Heart variants, such as Spot Hearts or a game with the Jack of Diamonds rule. • Funpok Video Poker 2000: Why go to Las Vegas to play video poker when you can have the same mind-numbing excitement on your PC? This simulator lets you choose from 45 varieties of poker. Each game has its own database of statistics saved to disk, so you won't run across the same combinations. The game also takes great pains to appear realistic: After you "insert" bills or coins, for instance, you can actually work the coin return. You'll also hear the sound effect of quarters being deposited through the coin slot. Some of the effects may be cheesy, but overall they're funny. You get a variety of options for the card-back images, including a dog, a cat, a lighthouse, or a bikini-clad woman. You can also change the bet denomination, from a nickel all the way up to $100. • Pretty Good Solitaire 2K: Most of us are compulsive multitaskers, and that may account for the reason that solitaire games are so popular. What better way to get through long conference calls than by matching up cards of the same suit? Pretty Good Solitaire does an excellent job of exploiting the addictive nature of playing cards. It is claimed to be the largest collection of solitaire games available, with over 330 games. Included, of course, are the classics: FreeCell, Spider, and Klondike, the one you're probably already familiar with. You can make moves with a single click, and you can easily leave the program and come back later to the same game. Unlike with other solitaire programs, you're given an amazing amount of control. For instance, in many other games you must settle for one undo move, but in this game you have unlimited undos. You can play alone or fire up your modem and play against people online. You can also log your score on the author's site, and join fellow card players around the world. When we looked at the site, we noticed that Alberto, who lives in Portugal, currently has 38 wins and 38 losses in the Streets game. Will Alberto be able to turn that into a winning record by year-end? Download the file, join the community, and find out. RELATED STORIES:
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