Microsoft has no clue what type of stats Minesweeper players are interested in, so they pretend it is Freecell. The game displays your win percentage, winning streak, losing streak and current streak for each level. It is sad to see the entry box go, but the inclusion of dates and a more complete highscore list is excellent from the viewpoint of evidence for rankings.Ī botched feature is the inclusion of stats. Beginner, Intermediate and Expert have separate highscore windows. Instead it automatically saves the score and the date for each of your five best scores on each level. Vista does not let you type your name when you set a new record. If you guess correctly you will be able to select the other two levels. To change a level you must select the menu and try to decide whether you need to change options or settings. Another nice feature is that unflagged mines are displayed differently than flagged mines, allowing you to analyse your style. This is important, as players start hundreds of games per hour and the delays imposed by animations will devour your playing session. Openings take slightly longer to appear due to the ripple effect, but the other animations can be disabled. (A meek explosion and a musical octave scale can be added to earlier versions by adding ‘sound=3’ to the winmine.ini file). As with XP and 2000, this can be turned off in the menu after the excitement fades.

Sound has always been a feature of Minesweeper.people who find it disable it immediately. Rumble is a significant improvement over the limited effects of earlier versions. A nice touch is that dead flowers resemble mines from the Windows 95 version! It is still an option to select the field with mines, but you might offend yourself.

Microsoft then formed a task force to study which countries would find Minesweeper offensive but decided it would be less expensive for users to toggle between the version of their choice. They succeeded in getting the Italian version of XP released with flowers. Blame the International Campaign to Ban Winmine, an Italian group that believes mines in computer games are offensive to landmine victims. Skins are an excellent idea, although it is disconcerting to find flowers in a game called Minesweeper. Minesweeper even has enhanced sound effects which include rumble for the Xbox 360 controller. You can set your options so the skin changes randomly for each game, or resize the window to a resolution of your choice. A laser beam inspects the field if you win. Mines explode and cascade across the screen, flowers leap and spin before turning a dead shade of grey. Openings ripple instead of instantly appearing. Minesweeper has skins for the first time, allowing you to choose between water or grass, flowers or mines.

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