Minesweeper Flags

Written by John Scalzo  on February 26, 2009

Review: A classic timewaster, now updated (slightly) for the HD age

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Like Solitaire, it's likely that everyone on the planet has played some variation of Minesweeper over the years. Bundled with every version of Windows since 3.1 was released in 1992, Minesweeper gives players a grid of 64, 256 or 480 squares and asks them to uncover each square while planting flags on the mines. Mines are, of course, denoted by the uncovered numbers that state how many mines are touching that square.

If you've never played Minesweeper before, I suggest you dig into your Start menu and give it a whirl. I'll be here when you're done. (Apple and Linux users may want to check out mine-sweeper.com).



Are you done? What did you think? Because honestly, there's not much more to Minesweeper Flags, the new Xbox Live Arcade variant, than that. Sure, there's a new Campaign mode that pretties up the board (adding fields of wheat and animals on the North America board for example), adds more variety to the board shapes than simple square or rectangular grids and basically creates a progressively harder "story mode" as players travel through boards set around the world.

Minesweeper Flags also adds the, wait for it, Flags mode, that brings multiplayer gaming to Minesweeper for the first time. In this mode, players are competing against each other to uncover the most mines and then planting their flag on top of it. The player with the most flags wins. Flags mode can be played both online against real live humans or against 1-3 computer AI players. However, even on the beginner difficulty levels, the computer AI has a supernatural ability to ferret out flags that would be just guesswork for a human opponent (which will actually be in short supply as the Live lobby is pretty much a ghost town).

As you would expect, Minesweeper Flags is really just Minesweeper in an HD wrapper. At 400 Microsoft Points ($5), it's a steal for a true Minesweeper addict (which I am), but it's still just Minesweeper. And not only that, but it's Minesweeper played with a controller. And playing with a controller adds a mental barrier to the pick up and play feeling of Minesweeper that playing with a mouse does not. Playing a two-minute game of Minesweeper on your PC is just a nice way to pass two minutes. Playing a two-minute game of Minesweeper on your Xbox 360 with a controller just reminds you of all the other, better, XBLA games you could be playing in those two minutes.