Microsoft Minesweeper

Much like solitaire, every one must have played minesweeper since it was shipped with Windows at the time. This one is a puzzle game in which you need to mark the bombs on a field correctly, and have a few indications to how near the mines are. Unfortunatly, its a really flawed game, particularly at the higher difficulties. At those levels there are simply way too many mines on the field and you just have to take a lucky shot because there is no logical way to find the true placing of the bombs. Im guessing that this is a side effect of the procedural generation of the puzzles, but its such a big flaw that prevented me from getting more into this game. The low level difficulties are enjoyable for a while, but after getting down the mechanics of the game you really want to challenge yourself and the only challenge available is a very flawed experience.

I do have some nostalgia over this title, but not really enough to ignore its shortcomings.

Very fluid game. There's essentially no limit to how good you can get, and so playing for speed is very satisfying. Easily one of the better action puzzles humanity has produced. It's biggest flaw is the amount of luck involved. Many people complain about forced guesses, but if you're trying to improve your times the bigger problem is simply how "nice" the layout is. Given how short each game is, it goes without saying that your best times will not only involve your best playing, but your best luck as well (often, for instance, it will be better to guess in order to save time, even if a safe move could be determined with a lengthy thought process). This is something you just have to accept about the game if you want to go far with it.

If you're a player who is just concerned with winning and not speed, then I don't see why you'd care too much about a forced guess. The real "victory" in my opinion is in making correct predictions. Actually completing the game from there is little more than a formality, and so if you've proven that the last few tiles can't be determined then you've effectively won anyway (that is, you've played the whole board without mistakes).

Further, I'll just add that forced guesses typically only happen in the very beginning or very end of the game. If you feel like you're often being forced to guess midway through then you're almost certainly wrong. Also, here's a trick that sometimes helps. You always know how many unflagged mines are left on the board, and you can occasionally use that knowledge to determine that last few tiles (usually when there's 3 or 4 tiles left).

About the only thing that made working on a PC bearable for me. It's not the deepest game you will ever come across, but at least you use your mind. Exceptionally basic graphics, but really, they don't need to be very fancy. Does its job for when the boss is looking the other way.

While a classic, it is also rather frustrating game; the lower levels are basically just a race against time, and on higher levels one usually ends up in a situation where it's impossible to solve everything by pure logic, but have to do guessing of the location of the mines, often with 50:50 probability of guessing wrong. And these points usually become obvious only at the end, so one has already invested some time and thought to get to an unsatisfying ending, whichever it is.
For mindless commonly available games there are plenty of better options, starting from Microsoft Solitaire.