Action Solitaire Review

REVIEW:
The trial version of "Action Solitare" lasts for 30 days, and comes installed with 70 card game variations. That said, among those 70, there are only about 14 actually different play styles. Those play styles are the bare bones basics: Blackjack, Freecell, Klondike, Yukon, Canfield, Spider, Fan, Forty Thieves, Gaps, Cruel, and Aces and Kings (and variations on those modes). Also making appearances are the standard memory match game, some modes where cards need to be matched with equal or adjacent
cards, and some where cards need to be added up to various integers.

It's obvious that this game runs the gamut of just about any solitaire-style card game you could want to play, which is really great in a lot of ways. Some might look at this game compendium and see endlessy-repeated tedium, but they wouldn't be fully right. Beneath all the game options that can confuse newcomers who don't know the terminology, and all the unhelpful help menus, there is a really solid control scheme in each and every game. You would think that by spreading themselves so thin, over 70 different (kinda different anyway) games, that the controls and gameplay might not always be up to par. But the gameplay is the section in which "Action Solitaire" excells. Once you figure out how to play, you can get lost for hours in the (mostly) easily-flowing controls.

I say 'mostly' flowing because some of the game modes are a little trickier to flow quickly in. Blackjack and Gaps in particular suffer from slow controls hindering gameplay. In Blackjack, the need to drag all the dealt cards to the discard, and then return to click on the deck for a new card, really hampers quick gameplay, which players familiar with Blackjack will recognize as a very bad thing. Similarly, Gaps goes quickly from seeming like a strategy-based game, to rapid-fire clicking on whatever card looks right. This is due to the need to double click to move your card, a process that will quickly wear down finger strength and patience.

Now, I did mention that the help menus aren't very helpful, and that might be a big deal to some people. If you don't know some basic terminology (tableau, foundation, suite, and so on) or need a bit of a walkthrough to learn by seeing how it's done... well, you're going to be disappointed, more likely than not. It won't hold your hand, and in fact, it will more accurately take your hand, slap a note with some basics on it, and then throw you headlong at the challenge while it watches in either silent
approval or disappointment.

Or at least, you'll wish it was silent. Another issue in this game is the sound. "Action Solitaire" seems to be somewhat stuck in the past, when the best way to show how unique your software was involved demonstrating all the 'crazy' sounds you could play. And nowadays... that doesn't really fly, and it does little more than make the game feel a little dated.

Another aspect that dates the game is its graphics. As with the sound, it's really good for the time period the developers seem to be stuck in, but not so much for a modern market. The game could seriously benefit from an update, and the game website even professes that paid users will get access to updates until 2012 (implying that there are updates to be had). But the closest thing to an advertised update is the option to download new skins for your cards if you paid to play. Not to make them less grainy, but more to put cats on them. This gives very few incentives to pay for the upgrade.

Despite that, the game is easy to get lost in, as I mentioned before. It's fun to kill time with, and even to play with friends and family. Before writing this review, myself and a family member spent a half hour trying to top each others Blackjack scores. It's a true testament to the addictive properties of solitaire games that it could cause an impromptu contest like that, and then further keep me playing Gaps, Freecell, Hidden Pairs, and Hidden Sums for a collective two hours.