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I just got my WIndows tablet with 8.1! :D *happy new gadget dance*

To justify the wad of cash I spent, I'm going to test playing games on it and report back here. I've got a list of games to go through below. These games were selected by the highly scientific method of asking myself 'What do I like playing?' I'm expecting about half to have significant issues.

Anyone else have suggestions?

Games:
1 IE Game (Icewind Dale, Baldur's Gate, Planescape: Torment)

Age of Wonders - DONE, ok but not great. Worked after tweaks, but main character was tiny.

Dark Fall: The Journal - TEST MORE. Starts and plays. Needs high screen brightness to make UI elements visible. Having trouble interacting with objects.

Dwarf Fortress - DONE. Best gameplay yet. Sized the window to fit snugly about the keyboard and limited FPS. Plays great. Doesn't overheat or freeze. Would not do megaconstructions, but my fort ran for several years without issues outside of the ones I signed up for by playing DF.

Evoland - DONE. Runs, can be played with onscreen keyboard, but keyboard covers gameplay area and will cause frequent deaths.

Guild Wars 2 - TEST MORE. Runs like molasses in windowed mode on lowest settings and largest UI. Can take part in events, but will CTD very easily. May be more useful for trading and chat than real gameplay.

Jade Empire - TEST MORE. Installs and runs, but needs a mouse to actually play.

King of Dragon Pass

Little Inferno - DONE, ok but not great. Gameplay worked but UI was inaccessible.

Master of Magic

Morrowind

Neverwinter Nights

Torchlight

Quest For Glory

Suggestions:
Grim Fandango Remastered

Papers, Please - DONE, great to play. Sometimes freezes.

Theme Hospital

Zeus/Poseidon

Fellow Contributors:
ET3D
Yesterday: works very well.
Lilly Looking Through: some performance problems, but generally runs fine.
Sweet Lily Dreams: some problems with mouse responsiveness, so it's playable but the extra work to get it to respond makes it less fun.

Games I installed and ran, but didn't play (that is, I got to the title screen but not much further):
Broken Sword 5: cursor went haywire when used with the pen.
Batman: Arkham Asylum: wanted to try the controller with it. Didn't immediately work, and it's an annoying game to try because I have no idea how to get out of it.
The Blackwell Deception: Don't remember exactly why I didn't like it. I think it was the way the low resolution was handled. I copied it to Android and play there with AGS (which was what I wanted to do from the get-go, but wanted to see if the Windows experience would be a good enough alternative; it wasn't).
To The Moon: suffered from similar control issues that Sweet Lily Dreams has. I think I couldn't even easily get into the game.
Post edited February 26, 2015 by Gilozard
Little Inferno:

Surprisingly bad on the tablet. The gameplay was somehow not sensitive to taps. I had to swipe everything. Also, the game controls are all mouse-driven. It automatically uses fullscreen mode, and there is no way to exit with the touchscreen. I had to edit settings.txt to get it to open in windowed mode.

Before I figured that out, the only way to exit the game was:
1) Swipe up the charms bar
2) Open Settings
3) Open Control Panel
4) Finally, back at the desktop. Long-press on the Little Inferno icon on the taskbar
5) Use the right-click menu to close the game

The game did push my tablet hard - I could hear the fans going most of the time I was playing. Since the point of Little Inferno is setting things on fire, not surprising.

Age of Wonders:

I had to tweak the resolution and the compatibility settings for several AoW.exe files. The game was weirdly purple/green and the UI doubled itself.

Win7 compatibility mode, changing the resolution and disabling display scaling fixed those issues. Game has some trouble recognizing touch. UI is also tiny. Haven't gotten beyond the startup screens yet.
Post edited June 03, 2014 by HGiles
It isn't mentioned, so I'll post it: Heroes of Might and Magic 3 (and probably the other HOMM games) plays great on my windows 8.1 tablet, especially with a mod that allows higher resolutions. Precision can be hard sometimes, but you can get used to it and most of the time it doesn't really matter.

I also tried Torchlight, and almost immediately de-installed it. I didn't try out other resolutions (maybe I should), but many of the on-screen buttons were rather small, so I couldn't use them in a quick and handy way. What I also disliked was that using a right-mouse button wasn't really possible (it is on my tablet, but needs pressing a little bit longer, which isn't practical in an a-rpg). Maybe I should've changed some settings.

I also remember disliking Legend of Grimrock, even with its tablet mode, but I don't exactly remember why.
Try Zeus+Poseidon, or any other building game you might have, like Theme Hospital etc.

Also might be worth trying Long Live the Queen, Papers, Please, Expeditions Conquistador..oh this is hard, I could recommend a whole bunch of games, but I guess the best, first step would be to try out your entire GOG library.

I am def interested in the results.
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cmdr_flashheart: Try Zeus+Poseidon, or any other building game you might have, like Theme Hospital etc.

Also might be worth trying Long Live the Queen, Papers, Please, Expeditions Conquistador..oh this is hard, I could recommend a whole bunch of games, but I guess the best, first step would be to try out your entire GOG library.

I am def interested in the results.
I would love to see Papers, Please on a decent tablet like an Android one with full touch capability as that game looks PERFECT for that :)
Kudos for scientific experimentation!
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cmdr_flashheart: Try Zeus+Poseidon, or any other building game you might have, like Theme Hospital etc.

Also might be worth trying Long Live the Queen, Papers, Please, Expeditions Conquistador..oh this is hard, I could recommend a whole bunch of games, but I guess the best, first step would be to try out your entire GOG library.

I am def interested in the results.
avatar
JudasIscariot: I would love to see Papers, Please on a decent tablet like an Android one with full touch capability as that game looks PERFECT for that :)
Definitely, the shooty parts would be particularly smooth if it works. But then again, I think making you feel uncomfortable during gameplay might be part of the game's philosophy, lol.

@HGiles, you've probably already thought of trying out android games, maybe try all the ones included in HBs first.
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sibberke: It isn't mentioned, so I'll post it: Heroes of Might and Magic 3 (and probably the other HOMM games) plays great on my windows 8.1 tablet, especially with a mod that allows higher resolutions. Precision can be hard sometimes, but you can get used to it and most of the time it doesn't really matter.

I also tried Torchlight, and almost immediately de-installed it. I didn't try out other resolutions (maybe I should), but many of the on-screen buttons were rather small, so I couldn't use them in a quick and handy way. What I also disliked was that using a right-mouse button wasn't really possible (it is on my tablet, but needs pressing a little bit longer, which isn't practical in an a-rpg). Maybe I should've changed some settings.

I also remember disliking Legend of Grimrock, even with its tablet mode, but I don't exactly remember why.
I really didn't like HoMM3. Visual design too busy and too glittery. Might try another one in the series.

Torchlight was that bad? I would have thought it would work OK. When I get to it I'll try different resolutions.
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JudasIscariot: I would love to see Papers, Please on a decent tablet like an Android one with full touch capability as that game looks PERFECT for that :)
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cmdr_flashheart: Definitely, the shooty parts would be particularly smooth if it works. But then again, I think making you feel uncomfortable during gameplay might be part of the game's philosophy, lol.

@HGiles, you've probably already thought of trying out android games, maybe try all the ones included in HBs first.
I'll add Papers, Please to the list.

Little Inferno is an Android game from HB. That's why I was surprised it was so irritating to work with. I expect that from a Windows game written over a decade ago. Not from a modern, touch-designed game.
Post edited June 03, 2014 by HGiles
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JudasIscariot: I would love to see Papers, Please on a decent tablet like an Android one with full touch capability as that game looks PERFECT for that :)
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cmdr_flashheart: Definitely, the shooty parts would be particularly smooth if it works. But then again, I think making you feel uncomfortable during gameplay might be part of the game's philosophy, lol.

@HGiles, you've probably already thought of trying out android games, maybe try all the ones included in HBs first.
I would think that the paper shuffling and other things would be even more uncomfortable as you'd have to be right quick to move all those papers around. I feel like it would create a slightly more immersive atmosphere as if you were really shuffling papers with a touch interface :)
http://www.gokgs.com/
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HGiles: Torchlight was that bad? I would have thought it would work OK. When I get to it I'll try different resolutions.
Well, you should try it for yourself. I wasn't really used to my tablet yet, and it is some time ago since I tried it, so your experience could be different.
This post was delayed by a serious design flaw in my tablet. It's hard to believe anyone sober OK'd this.

For any future systems engineers:
If accessing a standard feature requires using workshop tools to construct a custom aid, you're doing it wrong.

Now on with our regularly scheduled gaming report

AGE OF WONDERS
The game ran beautifully. I found the gameplay similar to HoMM. I played through much of the tutorial. Didn't finish the tutorial because everything was so tiny. Selecting my characters on the map was difficult. Accessing menu items was tricky. Everything worked, just irritating to use. Patience, humility and rolling with misclicks are key.
VERDICT: Waiting for precision stylus before continuing.
Post edited July 01, 2014 by HGiles
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cmdr_flashheart: Definitely, the shooty parts would be particularly smooth if it works. But then again, I think making you feel uncomfortable during gameplay might be part of the game's philosophy, lol.

@HGiles, you've probably already thought of trying out android games, maybe try all the ones included in HBs first.
avatar
JudasIscariot: I would think that the paper shuffling and other things would be even more uncomfortable as you'd have to be right quick to move all those papers around. I feel like it would create a slightly more immersive atmosphere as if you were really shuffling papers with a touch interface :)
Papers, Please is a great choice for Windows tablets. Paper shuffling works well. Inspections and searches are a bit harder. Only real problem is that it keeps freezing. Might be due to overheating. My tablet heats up very quickly.
Gotten back on track with this.

Jade Empire: Installs just fine. Bur the game doesn't recognize doubletaps, so I wasn't able to get past the start screen.

Dark Fall: The Journal: Required resolution tweaks. Was able to start and play the first scene. Unfortunately, it had the same issue as JE. No doubleclicks meant I couldn't get up on the platform in the second scene. Saving and loading looked like it might have issues due to screen resolution changes.

Guild Wars 2: The client runs and the game loads. Not very responsive. I didn't try doing any fighting, mostly because the UI is built around a keyboard and I couldn't move without one. For playing the game this probably wouldn't work well, but for mobile access to trading and chat it would likely be fine.
How about GF Remastered?