Wednesday, June 15, 2011

The tablet of gaming

Ladies and gentlemen, it finally happened. I am the proud owner of a tablet pc. No mamsy pamsy Android Honeycomb, either. this is a Windows Tablet. Alright, if you aren't guffawing yet you should be. Windows wasn't designed first and foremost with tablet users in mind. However, because there are no cut corners on a Windows Tablet, and provided you have the horse power you can have the full functionality of Windows frollicking around with you in an easy to use format. This particular model does not disappoint.

The Acer Iconia Tab W500 sports a dual core processor That Puts the competition To shame, But it need} to! This is Full windows we are using. As such the system comes standard with 2 GB of DDR 3 RAM and, most delightful of all, a dedicated AMD Radeon 6250 via the Fusion APU. This means a lot of power in a very small package. This is where this article is going (you all knew it!) This means this thing packs a wallop for gaming. Can an Ipad run Heroes of Might and Magic 5 or Half Life 2? I don't think so, and since I already own these they were instantly accessible right out of the box. Tested so far:

Heroes of Might and Magic 5:
This was my first eye opener for the power in that little fusion chip. Supposing you don't tax the CPU too much by choosing a gargantuan map this game will run at the highest settings gracefully. I was very impressed with it's framerate and functionality on a touch interface, but if it seems a bit much for your fingers you can always connect the included keyboard dock and instantly have a viable alternative input. Wowsers.

Halflife 2 ran remarkably well considering its evolving engine. The new dynamic shadows ran silky. The game had a few slowdowns, but automatically recommended itself at the high settings by default, an impressive estimation. This game has to be run by the keyboard dock as there is no touch input for WASD.

The third title that shames less  capable operating systems on tablets everywhere is Beyond Good And Evil. The game runs smooth at the basic setup, but with a little tweaking you  can add some anti-aliasing and better shadows. At some points the reflective water scenea gave me some grief, but those settings can also be changed. I was impressed!

Those are just a few of the titles I tried. To put it straight everything ran, just some better than others. Bioshock, Knights of the Old Republic, and of course many of what you would expect: Plants vs. Zombies, World of Goo. Crayon Physics, Disciples 2.  All ran, most very well, others (Bioshock) would need a little tweaking and some just weren't good matches for touch interfaces. Regardless, show your colors, gamers! Play great games on your tablet!