News You Can Bruise for 2004 August 11

I was apprehensive about this entire class of game because to my mind the category-killer of card games is pysol, the Python framework that has swallowed hundreds of solitaire games. But there weren't a whole lot of them, so out of a sense of duty I went through them, and now I'm glad I did because they're not what I expected. So here are the reviews I wrote as I shelled pistachios for Pesto Pistachio (I should have bought them shelled; this I realize now).

• AisleRiot: Starts off as a slavish Klondike klone of the Windows 3.1 Solitaire that made "computer" synonymous with "productivity drain". Fortunately, can be turned into about 80 other card games a la pysol. Nice acronym, and by default uses the Knuth font for the card labels. As go attempts to tug on pysol's coattails, pretty good.
• Patience: KDE's attempt at a pysol type framework. Also starts up as Klondike. Not as slick as AisleRiot, and only has 18 games, including three difficulty levels of Spider. I like the card-flip animation though (but not the card-turning-over animation, which I find disturbing and smacking of witchcraft). Unlike AisleRiot, it can play games on its own (and is actually easier to watch doing this than pysol), though it can get into an infinite loop. Winner of KDE/Gnome pale shadow of pysol smackdown: Gnome!
• Blackjack: Actually, this one's not in pysol. And this is a good implementation. In a fit of anti-realism, will actually help you improve your blackjack game by showing you the odds and giving you hints in case you don't understand what the odds mean what with all the confusing numbers between zero and one. It even does card counting for you, and doesn't kick itself out (though I was able to crash it).

  Downsides: somewhat unintuitive interface requires that you click the dealer's hand to stand. Keeps your winnings (or losings) in some Gnome persistence cubbyhole so it's like one eternal round of blackjack your whole life unless you clear out the file or whatever gconf uses. Figures out the optimal strategy for blackjack every time it loads, which is a bit slow.

  Since you have an unlimited amount of credit, I was thinking it would be actually possible to do the thing where you double your bet every time you lose and thus have an expected take of zero no matter how long play or how unlucky you are. Unfortunately, a 500.00 (in a nod to internationalization, there are no units; but I assume it's not like 500.00 baht) per-hand limit stymied my plans, but I'm still 652.50 ahead after a few high-stakes rounds. This game is fun and glamorous and statistical, but I can't stop thinking about the dealer in the old BASIC blackjack game who would give lame excuses like "THE CARDS HAVE TURNED AGAINST ME" when he lost. Is there no place for heart in your cruel modern technology? The heart provided by lousy twenty-year-old technology?

  Oh, I forgot to mention that there are a lot of rules knobs you can tweak, but the rules are gathered into groups like "Atlantic City" and "Vegas Strip". You can't tweak them individually. Anyway, this is a good game and I wasn't expecting it.

• Freecell: I was worried this would be a whole nother program from AisleRiot, but it's actually just AisleRiot set up to run Freecell instead of Klondike. Good call, Gnome people. Next!
• KPoker: Can be played video-poker style or against one computer opponent. I won $82 off the computer, which I know it has because I paid several hundred dollars for this computer, but it won't pay up. Deadbeat computer! When you win, has a little screen-saver like wavy effect on the notification that you won which is a little queasy.

  Remember, you click the cards you want to keep, not the ones you want to discard. I traded a straight in for two pair by keeping the one card I wanted to discard. Also, the computer is not a real poker player--it never folds in response to an agressively played hand, or does anything besides match your bets and optimize its hand. So really it's just another type of video poker when you play against the computer. But still not bad.

• Lieutenant Skat: I think this was one of those wartime movies where Mel Tormé joined the army. Anyway, it's also a card game implemented for KDE with a splash screen that looks just like what you might see on the big LCD of a Vegas marquee in between ads for cheap surf-and-turf. I always thought it was a solitaire game, but it's actually a two-player game that is what War would be like if you tried to make it into an actual game with real strategy and kung-fu grip. Amusing German-sounding error messages like "This move would not follow the rulebook. Better think again!" add to the Teutonic flavor.
• xmille: I don't know if this still comes with systems, but it should. Consider it a bonus. Before KDE and Gnome and their big bundles of toys and games, there was a big bundle of toys and games that came bundled with X Windows. This game stood among them. Someone should write a modern GUI version of this because not everyone can stand the unadorned X widget set, but I love this game. It's Milles Bourne, which is a classic card game even though I've never played it with cards. It simulates a car race where both contestants are trying to sabatoge their opponents. It's a fun game, but a little weird, frustrating, and often capricious; as with running for president, you can win the race yet have thousands of points fewer than your opponent. Who wins? It doesn't say.

So, that's all the X games that come with your standard Linux install nowadays. Stay tuned for Games You Already Have Roundup V: The Final Toys.