Hands-on: Casual Games on Vista

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Hands-on: Casual Games on Vista

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After Wild Tangent sent out that email saying that essentially the only web games that seem to work on Vista are theirs, I decided to check it out for myself.

Hit the jump for the report on Real Arcade, MSN, Yahoo Games, AOL Games, and yes, even Wild Tangent.

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Real Arcade
Installation: Infested my computer with Googleware, after warning me, but otherwise installed without issue.
Game Explorer: Doesn't seem to recognize Real Arcade as a game. Not sure if I would argue the point. ZING!
Game Test: I downloaded the demo of Bejeweled 2. Installation was fine, game was fine. No difference that I noticed.

Yahoo Games
Installation: No issues
Game Explorer: No recognition
Game Test: I downloaded Beetle Bomp, it worked just dandy.

AOL Games
Installation: No issues
Game Explorer: No recognition
Game Test: I downloaded Atlantis Quest, it worked fine.

MSN Games
Installation: No issues
Game Explorer: No recognition
Game Test: I downloaded Sudoku, it worked fine.

Wild Tangent
Installation: No issues
Game Explorer: Recognized Blasterball 2 Holidays when I played it.
Game Test: I downloaded Blasterball 2 Holidays, it worked fine.

Ok, to summarize, the only difference between Wild Tangent and all of the others is that when I played a game using their service it popped in into the Games Explorer. While I'd agree that means Wild T provides better support of Vista I think it's an extreme overstatement to send out a press release that says "Vista is breaking games."

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