Solitaires bigger, better and more fun brother (Freecell (PC))

Member Name: mjw92

Product:	Freecell (PC)
Date:	21/07/08 (52 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great, addicting gameplay. Always has a solution

Disadvantages: Can be hard to pick up. In the shadow of other games unfortunately

Freecell is one of the card games that comes free with the windows package and in a way is in the shadow of the more "well-known" or "popular" games such as solitaire, with many people saying it is due to the simplicity, however freecell is quite a simplistic game once you know the rules and provides a lot more entertainment than most of the other card games.

~~ Location ~~

For all players using windows 98 or above you use the start menu: accessories: games: freecell.
If you are using windows vista then it is simply start menu: games: freecell.
Also, by simply typing "Freecell" into google, just over 9million results come up and one of these has to be relevant to playing and so that is another alternative.

~~ Rules ~~

The objective of the game is similar to most patience games: you have to "shift" the cards into the four suits, starting with the ace, then twos, then threes etc. all the way until you have four piles (1 for each suit.)

At the start of the game, the cards are dealt face up into 8 columns, with the four columns furthest left containing 7 cards each and the four columns on the right containing 6 cards each, therefore all the cards in the deck are visible when you start the game.
On the top left hand side of the screen there are four slots known as "freecells" hence the name of the game and four slots on the right where you have to move your suits into order. At the bottom left of the screen is the number of the game you are playing.

(As a brief note here for all systems besides vista, before commencing a session of play you will have to click "game" and select new game in order to be dealt a series of cards.)

When you have your card setup, the game play is similar to solitaire, with you having to stack cards to obtain the cards you want. The cards have to be stacked in descending order with alternating colours. i.e. a black 6 can go onto a red 7. However, to help you out there are 4 free cells into which you can put a card into. These cards can be inserted whenever you want and also borught back onto the main game board whenever you want. Be careful how you use them though as the amount of open free cells determines how many cards you can move, (see below.)

There are sometimes limitations as to how many cards from a column you move, and this depends on the amount of open space on the play area and the amount of freecells still open. Normally you are only allowed to move 1 card at a time, however the game recongises that with all freecells open you could move a whole sequence of five cards by inserting all four into freecells, moving the last card and then re-assembling, which is why it lets you move all 5 in 1 go. If one freecell is taken you can only move four, and if you have no freecells open then you can only move the basic one card. The exceptions are empty columns. If you have an empty column you can move double the amount you could normally, so if you had only one spare free cell (2 cards allowed to move) and an empty column you can transfer 4 cards in one go. This is the rule that confuses many players however becomes natural to you after a time.

The game automatically shifts any card onto its ace (if the ace is there) if the card doesn't have anything to hold anymore. i.e. if the black twos have both been shifted any open red three that can be shifted will be as it can't hold a black two anymore. However you can shift a card at any time by dragging it onto the appropriate pile, or by right clicking, this sytem shifts all shiftable cards.

You win the game if all cards are shifted and if not all get shifted then you lose, however the beauty of the game is that as of windows 2000, there are 32,000 games and they all have a solution, so all are defeatable, in windows XP and Vista, there are 1000000 games and most people are presuming they all have a solution or windows would not have put them there.

~~ Features ~~

The game has several features which are customizable, and I am unaware of which levels of windows package contain what, however in windows vista you can:
Select game: choose a specific number game to play, which some people use to choose the starting numbers and play each game in ascending order as it can become this addicting.

Statistics: for those of us who like a bit of "vanity of our achievements" or people who are analytical in nature, the game keeps a statistics log of overall winning percentage and also the percentage rate of your current session. Abled players should look for about a 90% winning percentage rate, as I am a quite avid card player and my rate is 95%, however my rate is due o a lot of thought with games lasting upto or over 10 minutes each.

Layout: You can choose to changr the style of the cards, which albeit dont change much, but there are four different variations for those of us who like to add an unique sense to the game. As well as this the background is customizable, with six different choices, though my personal favourite is the default green felt.

Save Game: if you run out of time during play, you can always save a game and continue it at a later point, which a few people choose to do, however this is annoying as it will always ask you if you want to "continue saved game" at the start of every session.

~~ Miscellaneous note ~~

As an interesting note by typing any number between -1 and -4 in the select game option you can play two impossible to win games and two impossible to lose games.

~~ My opinion ~~

I believe that although freecell is slightly complex for the first couple of times that you play, it is a game you really get the feel for and can end up enjoying for long periods of time.
It is unfortunately shadowed by solitaire I think as it is the same sort of principle though in solitaire, the cards are random, meaning only about 1 in 7 games are actually defeatable, whereas freecell involves skill rather than luck.

I would definitely recommend playing about five times as a trial period, as once you have played about that many times you will either come to the conclusion it isn't the game for you or that you want to play more. If you struggle with the first few games don't worry as this is a game that the more you play the better you will become.

One last thing that in my opinion is good is that it is a non-scored game and therefore completion time is not an issue so you can flick between these and other tasks like msn or typing letters or whatever else you are busy with without affecting your potential hi-score.

I would have to say this is a 5* game as it provides great gameplay, which is constantly addictive and all players of solitaire will love it.

Summary: A great game I would recommend playing.