America's Greatest Solitaire (formerly known as Absolute Solitaire) is chock full with every flavor of solitaire imaginable and some small, nifty features thrown in to grab your attention. AGS also carries a reasonable price tag that's bound to please most fans of solitaire and can be played on a wide range of Macs.
America's Great Solitaire is definitely not lacking in diversity. With 37 different games, it has the largest collection of solitaire games that I've ever seen, all packed into a nice, single 2.8 MB application. The small size goes very well with its low system requirements. The black and white option was a nice touch, and really keeps the potential audience as large as possible. So, you can buy AGS for your grandmother's old Mac and know that it's going to run great.
With that wide an audience comes some loss in customization options. To keep the screen looking fresh and your eyes from aching, you're going to want to change the background of your card table and the design on the back of your cards. AGS offers eight choices of each, but there's no room for expansion. Your background is limited to eight patterns; no pictures are allowed and no importing of additional patterns. Also, you can't create your own cool card design and import it for a personalized deck of cards. While this may seem like overkill, you can definitely agree that Solitaire requires as much variety as possible.
It's doubtful that you'll be familiar with all 37 games to choose from but thankfully there's a full manual that provides official, detailed instructions and rules for each solitaire game. It includes a great cheat sheet of keyboard shortcuts on the back cover that can keep your time low for a higher score. These instructions are also available right in the game, and can be very helpful for a quick reference if you forget the rules. Also added are a trio of auto-options to improve your Solitaire experience.
An auto play option will move cards automatically to your foundation piles, an auto end option will end a game when there are no more possible moves, and an auto flash option will flash cards after each move that can be played. Some simple sound effects, a built-in timer, a high scores list and Undo/Redo arrows gives AGS some extra weapons to compete with the growing crowd of solitaire titles.
AGS certainly does live up to its promise of offering a diverse solitaire experience. It provides a full scope of solitaire gaming with a number of features and small touches to remain a solid contender with competing products, most notably Eric's Ultimate Solitaire which does offer a slightly nicer interface. While not providing a spectacular or glitzy show of cards, AGS delivers a solid package of single player fun.
