Watch that MIN.....KABOOM (Minesweeper (PC))

Member Name: lap dancer

Product:	Minesweeper (PC)
Date:	23/12/02 (506 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: hours of fun, quickens the reflexes, great if you're bored or have no social life

Disadvantages: hours of sleepless nights, frustrating, late to work/school in the morning

Minesweeper, surely the beautiful game of the computer. It combines, lateral thinking, quick reflexes, a steady hand and a cool demeanour.

Every bareably decent computer these days should have minesweeper already loaded on it along with freecell, solitaire and hearts. You can find minesweeper in the start menu. You then go to programs, accessories, games and then there it is, the beautiful game.

Once you are in minesweeper, you will see a screen with 8x8 squares in it. To start just begin clicking away. At the top of the screen you will see the tabs, game and help. The game tab will allow you to begin a new game, change level, see your best times, change the colour or hit the mark? button, not really sure what that means though. The help tab is rather self explanatory. Now, let's cut the small talk, let's get down to business!! THE GAME

When you first open minesweeper up it will be on the beginner level. This level has 64 squares and 10 mines. The whole object of the game is to complete the level by finding all the squares with no mines on them. You use the left mouse button to click a square. If you are lucky enough to not hit a mine then you will be faced with a number or a block with numbers on the outside. These numbers are important, so listen up. If the number is a 1, then there is one mine beside that square, either horizantally, vertically or diagonally beside it. Once you find out the first few squares, the lateral thinking comes into play. Because the initial part of the game is complete and utter luck. After that you have to advance out into the rest of the screen by working out which squares are mines and which aren't. To help you in this you can right click the mouse and put a flag on the square to show that you think it's a mine. If you right click twice then you can highlight squares which you're not sure about by putting a question mark on them.

Once you've mastered the te
chnique you'll be ready to move up to intermediate and expert levels.

The three levels arecompletely different in every way. Apart from having a different amount of squares i personally employ different strategies.

For the beginner level i like to flick round the corners and the top and bottom, in order to get as large a portion of the grid to pop up. This saves time but as you can imagine it doesn't always work. At the start there is a 15% chance of hitting a mine. My best time is 7 seconds.

For the intermediate level i like to click round the corners, top and bottom and sides agin trying to uncover as much aspossible as quickly as possible. There is also a 15% chance of hitting a mine at the start in this level aswell. My best time is 43 seconds.

The expert level is a level which requires absolute skill and speed of thought. There are 480 squares of which 99 are mines. This time there is a 20% chance of hitting a mine at the start. Once again i click around at the start trying to get a large chunk, then i work from there. However you can't be as greedy with this grid. You have to work most of it out and it'a very difficult. Despiteme playing for ages now i've only done this grid a few times and my best time is 164, and that was after staying up until 4 in the morning!!!! That shows the addictiveness of the game.

It's also very frustrating. When you get down to the very last few squares you can get to a point where you cannot work out which square is amine and which isn't. Then, it'sa pure guess and of course most of the time i lose from that position!!!

I see minesweeper as a combination of C&C (strategy) and doom (coolness under pressure). Minesweeper costs nothing, well you do need a pc but hey, it will give you hours of fun, but also sleepless nights. I also reccomend getting a group of people to have a wee competition as it adds a bit of competitiveness.


If you're a more mature minsweeperer then why not try the game without colour by hitting the colour tab in file, very difficult. Also there is a custom option where you can make up your won grid. The best thing about this is you can see a numeber 8, which i have to report is black for those who haven't seen it.

Minesweeper is the beautiful game. Why not give it a go.

By the way did i mention you need steady hands cos of you get near the end of an expert game and click the wrong mine by accident, i tells you, most annoying thing i've ever done

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