World of Solitaire is not something I should enjoy so much. Despite the professional polish, it is really just a collection of the most popular patience games. There are no explosions when you strike a match, and the story is not hammered home. It is a collection of five card games optimized for console play. Finished with that.
If it were that simple, though, other games would have implemented it already. The Xbox Solitaire games are either awkward and do not make use of the controller, or they are as lifeless as a Ryvita with an ill-drawn Ace of Spades slapped on top. When I just want to chill out and play some worry-free patience, I usually reach for my iPad or PC instead of my Xbox. In addition, this is not the way things ought to be.
With swagger and a smoulder, World of Solitaire enters the scene. We have reached the point where playing patience with a controller seems at least passable. At last, one that is not completely devoid of any color and character. Five of our top picks are presented here. World of Solitaire doesn’t try to accomplish too much by including hundreds of obscure varieties from all over the world or by focusing too much on a single mode with an epic campaign. Exciting renditions of Klondike (known as “Patience” in the United Kingdom) Spider, FreeCell, Tri-Peaks, and Pyramid are provided.
When you think about patience, you probably image Klondike first. There are seven expanding columns and four end spaces to discard Aces into. You rearrange the cards in the columns such that the colours match and the values go down. Then there is FreeCell, the classic that came preinstalled on PCs in the late ’90s, in which you essentially do the same thing but with four ‘cells’ where you may store cards until you are ready to play them. In addition, our fav is Spider, where all the cards are hearts and you have to do to get rid of them is make a hand of kings, queens, and jacks. When you press RB, additional cards will be added to the columns.
Tri-Peaks and Pyramid seem alike at first glance. We do not like playing pyramid since it requires us to keep score. Pairs of cards from the deck or the Pyramid itself are needed to reach 13 (Kings count as 13 by itself and are discarded instantly regardless of where they were dealt). Our runner-up pick is Tri-Peaks, in which players try to clear out three “peaks” of cards by chaining together ascending or descending sequences of numbers. Got a 10? The removal of a 9, then a 10, and so on (perhaps up to a Jack, Queen, and back down to a Jack) is possible. You can take the card out as long as it is within one number of the target.
These are the five patience games that first come to mind when asked to list the most popular or enjoyable ones. There is a reason they are classics: they offer enough diversity to keep things interesting as you hop from one to the next. It is important to remember that you may switch things around inside each game as much as you like; for instance, in Klondike, you can choose between Classic and Vegas scoring and a one-card or three-card draw. They are not crucial and can be disregarded if necessary, but it is great to have the option.
Cards are physical objects, thus it was always going to be difficult to transfer these games to a gaming controller. However, the majority of the work has been completed by Baltoro Games. The highlighted card may be moved using the analogue stick or d-pad, and there is no clumsy cursor in sight. With the push of a button, you may do useful activities like using the Undo or Hint functions. You can pause the game at any time to Concede or Restart. The gameplay in World of Solitaire is straightforward and rarely causes any problems.
Mostly. We still have a list of items we would want to ask for stashed away somewhere. You cannot just click and drag an Ace to a foundation; you have to physically pick it up and slide it across several columns. We get that World of Solitaire does not want you to cheat by double-tapping everything, but the aces should have been relocated automatically. Just what else were those Aces going to do for you?
Having riddles solved automatically is sometimes unnecessary and frustrating. As an example, in FreeCell, once the cards are arranged in a neat grid, you may hand over the task to the machine. However, the cards used in the cells are not included. Before you can do that, though, you will need to manually remove the cards. Even if there are no barriers in place, Spider will not allow you to use auto-completion. Baltoro Games’ decision to make this feature unwelcoming is puzzling.
There is also the tediously slow process of shuffling cards into the desired stack. If you are used to playing with real cards, you may find that World of Solitaire is excessively sluggish. You are working your way down a stack of cards, one at a time. It cannot be helped, and no console version of patience has ever found a way around it. However, that does not make it any less annoying.
The thing is, though, There is no need to bother us, really. Simply because we have wasted time with a plethora of shoddy patience, games that fail to do the fundamentals well. In addition, World of Solitaire does a fantastic job with the fundamentals. It is just as robust as the chair Grandma used to use.
Even better, it has some minor role-playing elements that really set it off. No, we are not talking about obnoxious MTX-style superpowers that are superfluous. Scratch-off cards that present challenges or suggest activities are the topic at hand. You will be rewarded with an overwhelming number of card backs, card fronts, boards, and music tracks if you manage to complete all of these challenges. Everything is completely doable in a matter of games, and we never once felt that the difficulty was miscalculated.
The end has finally come. Many of us have been waiting for an Xbox version of Solitaire, and it finally arrived with World of Solitaire. It has five of the greatest Solitaire variations and easy-to-use controls optimized for the tablet. Add to it an innovative battle pass system (do not worry, there is not a hint of MTX here) and you have yourself some pure patience bliss.
Veronica Baxter is a writer, blogger, and legal assistant operating out of the greater Philadelphia area.
