Surface Pro for Gaming - What have you installed? Issues?

[kingbobyjr]

I read a review somewhere that stated the wireless controller with the USB dongle won't work, but a wired USB 360 controller will.

Not true...at least on mine. What I liked about the wireless MS 360 controller was that it works with games from the MS Store. I tested with Reckless Racing Ultimate, Skulls Of The Shogun, & Hockey Nations Powerplay. The cool thing is, when I unplugged the 360 controller, it went back to onscreen controls and if I plugged it back in, the 360 controller took back over.

And in desktop mode...it works just fine also.

 

[polbit]

Just tried Minecraft on it last night, and it works great (fancy graphics, far distance) as long as you're using the keyboard/trackpad or mouse - couldn't get the touch controls to work, but then I'm not sure what to expect from touch on full Minecraft, not an iOS app...

Anyway, will play with it some more today.

 

[Ted Ritsick]

It's minecraft. I'd be concerned if the touch controls actually worked so soon after putting them in.

 

[bauerbach]

I play minecraft all the time on it. works great, I get around 30fps, I decrease graphics to fast because no need to chew up the battery or heat the unit like that.

It does get warm, but that's it.

if you touch the screen it takes it as both a directional command (you pan around in the direction that you touch with speed corresponding to how far from the center you touched), and you also get a solid left click, so you start digging, mining, whatever you have in your hand. Soooo not very functional.

you cant play it on a type cover, the keys and trackpad don't work at the same time, so no way to move and turn. With a mouse its fine.

 

[DarkSynopsis]

Glad to see Minecraft working though after all the other games I've read the device is playing, Minecraft should be easy enough! Just playing Vanilla Minecraft or did you guys install Optifine which is meant to increase FPS and such?

Also the Touch Controls for Minecraft are purely for the inventory mode right now so you can drag items around to chests, furnaces etc! Works fine on my iPad when I remote Desktop to my PC via Splashtop.

Glad to see this device playing so many games... Once I finally see some where in NZ selling them I might just have to pick one up!

 

[ComCypher]

The biggest challenge that I've encountered is installing and running games from CDs (remember those? :wink. One such example is Rise of Nations, which I managed to get working by sharing the CD drive on my laptop as a network drive and mapping to it from the Surface. Then I had to physically copy over the entire game directory from the laptop to the Surface to bring it to the latest version. Finally, I had to download a no-CD "patch" of dubious legality so that the game could start without performing a CD check. Thankfully I don't have too many CD-based games anymore.

As a side note, I also noticed that the native Surface resolution (1920x1080) was way too high for the game, but found that setting the game resolution to 1366x768 made things much more readable.

 

[zulu69]

Hey guys,

Just wanted to let you know that the surface pro with the March firmware and the intel drivers update 15.31 (gaining up to 10% of a boost) means the surface pro is a tablet beast for games. What really knocked me out is how well it handles games and how it outputs the games onto my TV - it's like having a PS3 or xbox as well!! The device is honestly the best thing out and i love mine. MS really went all out with it and it shows. My ipad is a piece of junk and toy compared to this.

Check out some video's i've posted showing some benchamarks and games i have installed. I'm going to post an updated one for Street fighter at 720p because it's hella fast with 70 fps + and the youtube clip i posted was all over the shop. I might also post how the surface outputs games to my tv.

The games i currently have are - Borderlands, Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3, Bulletstorm, Dirst 3, Need for Speed Hot Pursuit , Trine 2 and Outrun 2 2006 coast to coast (video coming up). I plan to install steam and TF2 with possibly Half life 2 (fav game). TF2 is te best games and i was totally addicted to it, imagine it on the bus!!

Lat thing i need to is buy a Samsung micro sd 64gb so i can install them all on that instead of my external usb 3.0 hd. I'll order it very soon and my surface will be complete!!

Check them out here.

kakamesh - YouTube

 

[Talldog]

How is minecraft on it?

The one thing I'd do differently for Minecraft if I could go back is buy a small laptop mouse rather than the wedge mouse. I'd much rather have a wheel than the touch scroll. In fact, I disabled the touch scroll and just use the number keys for inventory items. Other than that, Minecraft runs great.

 

[rkeenan]

I wondered how bad this thing would handle Steam games. This would totally eliminate my need for a gaming laptop. I have a gaming desktop as well so this I could hook up to the tv. Just awesome.

Sent from my SCH-I605 using Tapatalk 2

 

[agm353]

I use my Surface Pro to play L4D2, and I have a corded Xbox gamepad. Needless to say, its pretty amazing. I like to think of my Surface as a "portable Xbox" sometimes.

 

[vertigoOne]

I wondered how bad this thing would handle Steam games. This would totally eliminate my need for a gaming laptop. I have a gaming desktop as well so this I could hook up to the tv. Just awesome.

Sent from my SCH-I605 using Tapatalk 2

Mine handles steam just fine. All of the valve made games I have tried seem to run at high settings very well also, even the more recent titles such as portal 2.

 

[Major]

I only play Diablo 3 these days. How does that run?

Sent from my GT-P6800 using Tapatalk HD

 

[coconutxyz]

how bout skyrim??

 

[Kevin N Smith]

Installed skyrim, combat is slightly awkward, but the walking/actions with E/shouts /etc are great.

 

[Christopher Ortiz]

Diablo3 runs great!

 

[Bo]

I just installed NFS Underground and Monopoly on my surface. both games had to be tweaked to run full screen but I have NFS running at 1280x960 with max detail. I think I'm going to have to tweak it some more because the fans start to run full blast without even racing. I also set the processor not to run at full speed but that didn't help so my guess is that I'm going to have to turn the detail down to try to keep this thing from overheating but it runs just as good on my surface as it does on my Phenom x4. Monopoly's graphics aren't that great but it also makes the surface fans blow. I didn't have to do anything special to make that run full screen from within the app, but I did have to select the compatibility settings because I kept getting prompted the game wasn't compatible.

 

[uzeroni]

I run Minecraft at far, maxed out settings with Optifine, and TF2 maxed out at native res (naturally)
I disabled turbo boost so throttling is less of a concern for me, and that means it's more stable. I'm using the 30.71 drivers and I can easily say this beats my old HP with an i3-380M and ATI 5470
Just had to disable automatic updates, hibernate, paging file, indexing (but left it on for xbox music) and a couple of services, now I have 56.1 gb free and (hopefully) an SSD that will last longer.

 

[thundr51]

I wondered how bad this thing would handle Steam games. This would totally eliminate my need for a gaming laptop. I have a gaming desktop as well so this I could hook up to the tv. Just awesome.

Sent from my SCH-I605 using Tapatalk 2

I have been trying to update a thread in the Acer Iconia w700 forum where I am testing steam games. While I don't have a surface, I can say that Win8 devices seem to run games fairly well. Currently I'm testing games that I have (currently 4 games installed) that basically work only with touch. I happened to see this thread and the tip about disabling dpi in the link config settings works great. I was having problems with SpaceChem and Spectromancer and now those games work great. I noticed that the other 2 games that I tested (MTG 2013 and Defense grid) already have the option checked.

I've been looking around and I think it's time somebody put together a list of touch\tablet friendly games.

 

[Jj Thacker]

Yes, if someone could upload a list of what games work flawless and what games need to be tweaked and how....

I just got my surface and I am a very heavy gamer....I'm reading about black ops working and I'm assuming this is not linked to Xbox black ops is it? (ie. My rank is 52 on my Xbox so I can start at 52 on my tablet) that would be too good to be true haha

Thanks...new member here and love the forums I've been reading!!!

 

[sashlon]

What about Star Wars: The Old Republic?