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Mahjong Titans
Mahjong Titans is based on the Mahjong solitaire tile-matching game, not the four-player gin-rummy-like game played in many Chinese and Jewish-American households. The game offers six different game layouts, with tiles spread across the table several layers deep. The goal of the game is to remove all the tiles from the board. Match two exposed tiles to remove them from play. Exposed tiles have empty space to the left or right and mostly lie along the edges of each layout. The rules are fairly basic, but there's strategy involved in selecting which tiles to match. Poor decisions could lead to locked boards without any available matches (that's when you use the undo option). As with Chess Titans, Mahjong Titans is only available in the non-Home Basic versions of Vista.
Purble Place
If you're an elementary-school-aged child whose likes include cakes, matching games, basic pattern recognition, and practicing the process of elimination, then Purble Place is the Windows Vista game for you. The game consists of three minigames--Purble Pairs, Comfy Cakes, and Purble Shop--that all share the same nonthreatening Purble visual style.
Purble Pairs is a basic memory game that has you matching tiles on the board. However, the game adds some twists with special tiles that modify the board or grant bonuses when matched. You can also earn "sneak peek" tokens that let you view the entire board for a brief period of time. Comfy Cakes puts you in a high-pressure cake production line where you have to build cakes to order. If you fail to produce a perfect cake, the head Purble will chastise you and force you to try again. Fail three times, and you'll lose the game for wasting ingredients. Purble Shop is a guessing game where you have to figure out what a hidden Purble looks like. Match features such as eyes, nose, and mouth to win. The more advanced version adds more colors and features but doesn't change the fact that you don't really care what the Purble looks like.
InkBall
InkBall, originally released for the TabletPC, makes its way over to the desktop in Windows Vista. However, be aware that the purpose of the game is to teach tablet users how to use the touch screen and stylus control scheme. After struggling to play through advanced levels with the mouse, we can see why Microsoft is only including InkBall with Vista versions that have tablet support.
The game consists of a square grid that's walled off on all sides. Each grid has an entry point where balls of various colors come into play, as well as exit holes and obstacles such as walls and blocks. The balls themselves will bounce off walls, each other, and any "ink" lines you draw onto the grid. The goal of the game is to sink balls as quickly as possible into the correct holes to score points. The game ends if you sink a ball into the incorrect color hole or when time runs out.
Discuss: What's your favorite built-in Windows game? What games are you looking forward to the most in Vista? What's your best Minesweeper time at intermediate?
A Look at Windows Vista Installed Games
We take a look at the Windows Vista games that will be responsible for countless hours of wasted productivity through the end of the decade.
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