Best tablet friendly Windows games?

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Blue_Tomato

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#1 Blue_Tomato
Member since 2002 • 1585 Posts

I recently got an Atom based Windows 8 tablet, and I am trying to find games that works well with the touch based input and slow CPU/GPU.

I already checked most of the new tablet specific game apps without finding much worth playing, with just a few exceptions such as Skulls of the Shogun... Now I am investigating games on Steam and emulated classic games.

Any suggestions? Keep in mind the Atom CPU is quite slow, so Age of Empires V in touch input mode wont work well for example. But I would love some good turn based games less taxing on the CPU. ;)

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skrat_01

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#2 skrat_01
Member since 2007 • 33767 Posts
Is that an ASUS one? I had one tried it for gaming and it wasn't great; a lot had to do with it being a capacitive touch screen with little pressure sensitivity, so certain mouse inputs done on a touch screen didn't work very well (like AoE 2 that I tried). Otherwise I'm not sure man, you could try stuff like Frozen Synapse or anything turn based, maybe Alpha Centauri or Master of Orion 2?
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Byshop

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#3 Byshop  Moderator
Member since 2002 • 20504 Posts

The Atom platform has a lot of problems when gaming. First, the cpu isn't very fast (obviously), but the bigger problems revolve around its GPU. On paper it's faster than a Tegra chipset tablet, but the software support is terrible. The other problem you have is (last I checked) the GPU doesn't support scaling, so if you run at anything less than your native res (I'm assuming 1366x768) then the game will not fill the screen.

Mostly, you're going to want to stick to 2D and pre-rendered games. Bejewelled, World of Goo, FTL, etc all play fine. Some 3d games play ok, like Torchlight 1 (on low settings) and the Sam and Max series. The Win8 Store version of Hydro Thunder works but the frame rate is a little bit low on high detail.

Even among 2D games, ones that use full screen panning tend to not work very well. Limbo and Bastion are unplayably slow. Braid works, but slowly. Adventure games like Gemini Rue or Broken Sword work great. Pretty much no even remotely recent FPS titles will be playable.

Older DOS based games mostly play great, but the resolution scaling issue becomes a problem. The original X-Com, Fallout 1 and 2, and a few others are great. Fallout is unplayably slow if you pick the wrong draw mode, but using the correct one it runs perfectly (I forget which mode works).

One more thing to take into account is that many games do not work well with touchscreens and may require a mouse. Touchscreens use absolute positions whereas a mouse cursor's position is relative (where the mouse has been moved to relatve to where it was). This causes problems with some games. Using a stylus -may- help in some games, but not all.

-Byshop

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Blue_Tomato

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#4 Blue_Tomato
Member since 2002 • 1585 Posts

Thank you, and FTL is a good suggestion. But, when I tried the game it crashed due to some graphics driver issue, I think the GPU is not only slow but also suffer from bugged drivers... ;(

 

The tablet I am using is the Acer Iconia w510, it has an Intel GMA 3650 GPU it seems, but other sources states PowerVR SGX545 . Hmm, perhaps I need to find a better driver.

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#5 Byshop  Moderator
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Yeah, FTL would occasionally crash on me as well. It sucks, because the game doesn't have an autosave feature (only save on quit) so you lose your progress. It's been months since I had tried it so I was hoping that the drivers would have improved by now.

As far as I know, all the current gen Atoms have the PowerVR GPU because that's what's integrated with that CPU. As for drivers, I would normally suggest going straight to the source and downloading the drivers directly from the Intel site, but for this particular chip they don't seem to host them so you -have- to go through your hardware manufacturer. Make sure you're running the most recent, because the early drivers were pretty glitchy.

Other games you can try will include most anything on the Windows Store that's designed to work on an ARM tablet. Ilomilo is a 3d puzzle game that I think ran alright at low detail, Hydrothunder I already mentioned, Cut the Rope, Plants vs Zombies, Fruit Ninja (little sluggish but ok), Where's My Water (little sluggish but ok), etc.

-Byshop