Games on Surface Pro

[Ashles]

It'll be great to have the option of so many older PC games. (Be interesting to see if this leads to a resurgence in older games that had lower PC requirements but superb gameplay).

I'm tempted to load Baldur's Gate 2, be amazing to be able to play that on the go on a tablet.
Do you reckon it'll work well with the stylus?

Anyone have any gaming plans for the Pro?

 

[ARosch]

Wolfenstein is the first thing that comes to mind for me.

 

[bosamar]

I'd be very happy to play Civ3 or 4 on it....

 

[dvdcatalyst]

It'll be great to have the option of so many older PC games. (Be interesting to see if this leads to a resurgence in older games that had lower PC requirements but superb gameplay).

I'm tempted to load Baldur's Gate 2, be amazing to be able to play that on the go on a tablet.
Do you reckon it'll work well with the stylus?

Anyone have any gaming plans for the Pro?

Older games on a touch screen, stylus or not, is no fun unfortunately.

For the last couple of weeks, I've been playing some games at night on an Acer 700W, which is a little more powerful that the surface pro.

The only game that works OK with touch is Civ5, but for other games, I ended up either using a trackball (wireless logitech) or an XBOX 360 gamepad (Fallout 3, Skyrim).
Initially I looked around for some on-screen controls, so I wouldn't need to, and there are a few apps that do that, but it was a hassle to get it to work right, and only worked ok when in windowed mode.

But, with Baldurs Gate having gotten an update recently (enhanced edition), it might work fine with touch, but they have something on the site about not working with Intel HD Graphics

 

[magicrobots]

I'm stoked about getting steam installed.

 

[ontulmora]

Would be cool to get a Baldurs Gate for Windows 8, since they are remaking it for iOS I don't see why they couldn't make a touch screen version for Windows.

 

[xterrapro]

I have hopes to play some games on the pro while on travel. Not sure how d3 will play but plan to give it a shot.

 

[starLog]

I'm stoked about getting steam installed.

If we could get Source to run, with the spen as the kill shot device I am there.

 

[GreatWindows]

HD 4000 = Not the greatest gaming experience. You might be able to play wow on Low-Mid settings... lol and CSS

 

[rilot]

It'll be OK for some games. Looking back in time the HD4000 is about on a par with a GeForce 7900GT which was a great card in it's day. I used to run WoW on Ultra settings on one of those back in the TBC days at 1920x1200.
So yeah, I would expect Source Engine games to run fine at medium to high detail with no AA. WoW should be fine on high with Shadows and Dynamic Water turned off and no AA.

Gaming is going to kill the battery though I bet.

 

[magicrobots]

I played WoW on my old Macbook Air that had the HD4000; it was definitely acceptable.

 

[dvdcatalyst]

A video of skyrim on the 4 different stock quality settings at 1920x1080 on my Acer tablet:


[video=youtube;xKPVSsPFvbI]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKPVSsPFvbI[/video]


(Top 2: Low and Medium, Bottom 2: High and Ultra).

Most of the videos on youtube were recorded using fraps or something similar, which affects the framerate a bit. These were done using a Haupauge HDPVR2, which records the HDMI output so it should give a better indication as to how it runs.

At low quality (top left) it runs really well, but with the other 3, it was a bit hard to control. the game itself runs decent at medium at this resolution, but using an xbox360 controller, it jumps when moving and looking around.

I've actually been playing at a lower (1366x768) resolution at medium settings, which works well.

Loading times for High and Ultra, even though I am running from a fast ssd are pretty sad though.

A similar video of Fallout 3:


[video=youtube;IEp6RLhsmVg]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEp6RLhsmVg[/video]


This one runs really nice at medium at 1080p

Battery-life on the Acer W700 for Fallout 3 is a little over 2 hours or so. I've been using it on the charger mainly though.