The Mac App Store has only been around for about two weeks now. One of the categories that has not been as prominent on the Mac App Store as it is on the iOS App Store is Games. Gaming is huge on the iOS App Store, and it is growing on the Mac App Store. As with the iOS App Store, the Mac App Store has both free and paid games. One of the free games that caught my eye was Solitaire Greatest Hits.
I’ve always enjoyed playing Solitaire games. I’m not sure if this is due to my nature or just that I don’t have to feel rushed to finish a game. Whatever the reason I decided to get this to see what it included.
Solitaire Greatest Hits isn’t just a single game, but a collection of 12 different solitaire games. These games are Classic Klondike, Single Card Klondike, Free Cell, Spider, Aces Up, Canfield, Forty Theives, Pyramid, Golf, Scorpion, and Yukon.
Each of the games is selectable by going to the ‘Choose Game’ button or via the Games menu at the top. Once you select which game you would like, you are given the board for the game. If you know the rules, you are all set to go and you jump in the game right away.
If you do not know the rules or just wish for a refresher, you can click on the ‘How to Play’ icon. Once you click this, the application will launch a help screen that stays on top of the game so you can read the rules as you play.
If you want to view all of the games and their rules you can click on ‘Help’ Menu at the top and you can find the game and read the rules and decide if the game is something you want to try.
I took this strategy with trying the game ‘Aces Up’. After reading the rules and playing the game a few times, I have determined that there’s almost no way to actually beat the game. Out of the 100 games I played, I only beat it once.
Once you do beat a game, you get a nice animated graphic that has the cards splayed all over the playing board. It’s a cool animation that adds to the satisfaction of beating a game.
Now, Solitaire Greatest Hits is a good game; however, it does have some issues. The first problem is that once you’re done with a game you have to click on’ Start New Game.’ Most of the time this is not an issue, but there are times when you beat one type of game and you want to go play a different game. Well, it’s not possible to do so without starting a new game first and then switching to the different game.
The second issue is that if you click on ‘New Game’ while the ending animation is going, you start a new game as expected, but the animation sequence keeps playing through. Once you have a new game board started, you are prompted to start yet another new game. This is just a bug in my opinion and can easily be fixed. Of course, it also leads back to my first complaint.
The last major complaint is that there is no tracking of statistics over time. This makes it somewhat difficult to keep track of how well you are doing, and if you improving your statistics with a game.
Those are the major issues. Overall, the game is a nice implementation of a group of solitaire games. It is available in the Mac App Store for the price of free. If you have 10.6.6 installed, and you like solitaire games, then this is a definite download. If you are on Leopard, then you can go to the game’s website and download the game for free there.
