- by Owen Morton
There are many things I’m dissatisfied about, as regular readers of this website will have worked out for themselves. Usually, these things are totally unimportant – the recent example of my complaining about Angel’s lack of legs springs to mind – but occasionally slightly more important matters will impinge on my brain. Examples in this latter category are my rant about the Great Britons programme. And since writing that article, I’ve discovered that Margaret Thatcher and even bloody Enoch Powell were on that list of Great Britons. (I have also found that Henry V was indeed on the list, which reinforces the point I made about him.) Margaret Thatcher ruined the economy of this country and destroyed relations between the workforce and the government. Why was she a Great Briton? And Enoch Powell was a racist who made no effort to even hide his views. Even thirty years later, when I read his Rivers of Blood speech as part of my History course last year, it sent shivers down my spine. It is a terribly scary document.
But this article isn’t here to go on about the Great Britons programme again (though having now obtained a full list of the top 100, I could do so at some length). Instead, I wish to talk about another important thing which has dissatisfied me recently. Those who seriously are addicted to this website may remember my little discussion about Spider Solitaire last January, in which I claimed that it was the greatest computer game ever. Well … I haven’t played Spider Solitaire since probably Easter. It just lost its appeal. I then went through a little phase wherein I played Classic Solitaire – on Vegas rules, of course – and then (thanks to my diary, I can pinpoint the date exactly) on 2nd May 2002, I discovered the pleasures of FreeCell.
Now, I realise that in my Spider Solitaire article, I claimed that, on the subject of FreeCell, “I don’t play this one. I’ve seen my sister play it, though, and it looks boring.” What a foolish thing to say! FreeCell is by no means boring, as I found as soon as I started playing it. It represented a real challenge, because I had no idea how to play it, so I was randomly clicking cards around and seeing what happened. Obviously, I lost more often than I won, but as time went by, I gradually gained an idea of the rules. It’s now almost seven months since I started playing, and I know how to play, though it has taken me this long to drag my statistics up to a 50-50 win-lose ratio. (Actually, now it’s a 51-49 win-lose ratio, and slowly increasing!)
So FreeCell has managed to keep me occupied for the better part of seven months, longer than Spider Solitaire did. Spider Solitaire was the game of choice for six months, after which Classic Solitaire took over for two months. It’s rather odd, actually. Classic Solitaire probably has the best ending sequence of all three, with all the cards bouncing everywhere. Spider Solitaire’s marvellous fireworks come in a close second, especially considering that little jolt of pleasure you get when you win a game, but FreeCell’s ending sequence is really dreadful. All the cards fly up, quicker than you can see (unless your computer is severely lacking in RAM, like mine is, in which case the cards will fly up a tiny little bit slower) and then you are rewarded with this picture:
I’m sure you now understand why I’m dissatisfied. FreeCell is definitely the most difficult of the three games (unless you play Spider Solitaire on the Difficult setting, which is something no sane person should ever try), yet the reward you get at the end is totally disproportionate to the effort you expend in attempting to win. Why should this be? I think it’s a cruel joke by Microsoft, just to spite us.
Therefore, I think that FreeCell should be given a much better ending sequence. What this sequence could be, I don’t really know. I welcome any and all suggestions. So long as they're better than this:
