2-in-1 Solitaire (Nintendo DS) Review

Whilst the WiiWare service has seen a whole slew of full-scale games from developers, DSiWare is fast becoming the home of bite-sized gaming goodness and 2-in-1 Solitaire is no different. What Nintendo is offering here is two variations on the classic card game theme - Spider and Klondike. Of course, many will argue that buying a set of cards for about 50p is a better option, but then again how often do you see people on the bus or train spreading cards all over in order to kick back, relax and have a game of what some still call 'Patience'? So the idea of paying around £2.50-£3.00 for this, which can be played over and over again to your heart's content for years to come, suddenly does not seem so ridiculous when thought of in such a manner.

This is no fancy package, though, just the basics - a simple menu screen tune and sound effects, bare-bone visuals and touch-screen controls for moving cards around, shuffling the pack, and navigating the menus ('Quit' to just simply exit, 'Save and Quit' to save your progress so play can be resumed later, or 'New Game' if a dead end has been reached and no more moves can be made). The aim of Spider is to arrange cards in columns of a single suit going from King, counting down to Ace. As soon as this is achieved, then that whole set of cards disappears from view and play must continue until all the cards currently in play and those remaining in the pack have been used up. As for Klondike, here the player must arrange all the cards into four separate stacks, one complete pile per suit, starting from Ace and working upwards to King. Three cards at a time can be dealt from the pack to offer options for moves, and cards can only be stored in the main playing field in numerical order, alternating suit colour - for example red King, black Queen, red Jack, and so on. Then once an Ace has been uncovered, the stacking process can commence...

In both modes, when a face-up card is moved from one of the rows leaving a face-down card behind, the first card will be flipped over to show its value/suit. Should you make a mistake, pressing down on the D-Pad or the B button will undo the last move made. It is not only single cards that can be moved around either - large groups can be placed elsewhere, where possible (such as when a batch of the same suit card is lined up together in numerical order). It should be remembered that cards cannot merely be moved to any location. The rules of the specific game need to be adhered to (for example, a five cannot be placed on a three as it does not follow the numerical rule, nor can two black suits be placed together in Klondike).

As well as being general time consumers that never grow old, there are some extras to unlock for those that find the basic playing modes of Spider to be too simple (Klondike comes in Normal and Hard only). That particular game has Easy (eight-card piles, one suit) and Normal (eight-card piles, two suits) modes open to start with, but Hard (ten-card piles, two suits) opens up when a game on Normal is won and completing a Hard game unlocks the Expert level (ten-card piles, four suits), giving more of a challenge to veteran card players. Considering the cheapest price on DSiWare is 200 Points, Nintendo has attempted to give gamers this package for the lowest cost it could, which is certainly commendable.