Switching My ‘Sofa Gaming’ Platform… Again!
Getting Ahead of My Self - Games Before Productivity
Yes, I am perhaps jumping the gun here as the first post I should be doing about my lovely new Apple iPad 13inch Pro should be about why I have one and what I will be doing with it ‘work’ wise! And yes, I will come to that in another post BUT I thought it was interesting to look at the machines secondary use of gaming, as it has been something of a surprise to me.
Above: ‘MOBILE’GAMING’ - I guess I had the impression that gaming on the iPad would include a lot of fairly simple ‘mobile’ games. And while that is partially true, the level of sophistication that can be achieved on a touch screen tablet means that some of these ‘casual’ games can be novel, interesting and fun. Here, for example is the mobile version of the very popular HOUSE FLIPPER, this actually works very well using the iPads touch screen controls.
When I got my new iPad it was as a replacement for my ASUS TUF laptop, as my wife - a teacher - was in need of a more powerful working laptop while I had been drooling over the iPad Pro range for a very long time because of it’s use as a graphics productivity machine. So instead of buying her a new ‘Pro’ laptop we simply did a swap and she bought me the iPad Pro instead.
The problem was then that I would have to slowly gather the iPad equivalent of all my graphic applications to get the Apple machine up and running as my ‘creativity’ production computer, but I could not do that all at once and would have to spread the cost over several months.
SO… What to do in the meantime? And this lead me to looking into what other things the iPad Pro could do aside from the main purpose of productivity. And I could not help myself but to look at GAMES.
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Above: MOBILE GAMING - ‘Wings of Steel’ is a 2018 IOS flight combat sim that looks very similar in quality to 2005’s ‘Heroes of the Pacific’ game for the PC. Combining the simple means of controls inherent to mobile devices with more powerful chips and larger screens that were being made provided gamers with games that were a hybrid halfway between technical simplicity and graphical sophistication. As mobile devices became more and more powerful developers were able to make games which looked increasing more like those you might find previous generations of PCs or consoles. The gap in the quality of games was slowly shrinking, with the latest ‘mobile’ chips - like Apple’s M4 - being able to recreate graphics *close* to those one might expect on desktop machines with specialist GPUs (if set to lower qua lity).
Is The iPad a Life For Like Replacement For a ‘Gaming’ Laptop?
My ASUS TUFF laptop is described as a ‘gaming laptop’ because of it’s GPU, it just so happens that what makes this laptop good for running games also makes it good for running graphics programs and producing videos and 3D design.
But the iPad Pro was specifically purchased because of it use for creativity, gaming was not a big consideration. So imagine my surprise when I found out that the machine has quite a gaming community behind it and that there is a large library of games for use on it.
Above: SHOOTERS - the first big question people might have about iPad gaming is ‘can it do shooters’. The answer is yes BUT with the caveat that the controls for a touch screen device make FPS gaming a little tricky. But I have discovered that there are workarounds. This game - SIERRA 7 - for example uses the touch screen in a novel way to provide you with an arcade type of shooter that is great fun. You can also get some shooters that use the Xbox controller or you can use a mouse with the iPad!
Being - originally - a ‘Mac’ guy, who only switched over to the Windows platform later in life, I had assumes that the iPad suffered from the same derth of games that other Apple computers had suffered from (with the same old Apple user snobbish attitude that ‘it’s not meant to be a gaming machine’). But, apparently, this is an old fashioned mind set.
To be fair, there is a difference between Apple Mac computers and the Apple iPad family of tablets, with different operating systems. The iPad’s IOS system is not designed to have the horsepower that the ‘Mac’ series has and however ingenious it’s design is the iPad can still be describes as being ‘just a big iPhone’.
And because of this, and the huge popularity of iPhones, that means that the iPad benefits from being able to have access to the very excising world of mobile app development and mobile games.
What I had not realised, that said, was just how advanced mobile gaming had gotten over the past few years. An industry that I had thought could be perfectly described by CANDY CRUSH was now - due to some of the more powerful chips going into recent tablet machine - operating over ‘lite’ versions of PC and console ‘AAA’ games!
Above: An example of a triple-A PC/console game that has been ported to the iPad is ‘SNIPER ELITE 4’. This showcases the excellent graphics of the M4 iPad Pro, but also the problem recreating a controller setup on the tablet. This game is one of the ones that does provide controllers support, but if like me you like to play FPSs using the mouse this might not be good thing! That said, I have linked a Bluetooth mouse to my iPad and you can play this game using it, making it must easier to control.
So, while I had originally thought that the choice of casual gaming amusements on my iPad would be things like puzzles, tower defence and ‘cozy’ games -and principally of the 2D and isometric graphic types - I suddenly found that I could get slightly tweaked versions of games I was ready playing on my very powerful PC gaming rig.
This was totally unexpected.
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| Above: DRIVING GAMES - There’s nothing more relaxing than- IMHO - than relaxing On the sofa and playing a good racing game. Luckily, in this case, the combination of iPad and Xbox controller is a match made in heaven. The Apple App Store now includes a special category just for iPad games which support controllers. |
Still, that is not to say that I could expect that my gaming experience to be like for like, the iPad is just a tablet - all be it a very good one - after all. And there is no room for a chunking great NVIDIA or AMD graphics card in its very svelt case. And, indeed, as a portable machine, the iPad is simply not intended to be replacement for your desktop gaming rig. (I’ll come to the issues with making an iPad your sole computer in another post.)
Conclusions (Thus Far)
SO, managing my expectations - and as you can see from the example games I have scattered throughout this post - I can say that, NO my iPad (even the Pro version) is not a replacement for my gaming rig. BUT, it is does come quite close in providing me a casual gaming experience closer to that I enjoyed with my gaming laptop, if you consider the more casual nature of the type of ‘sofa gaming’ I used to do on my ASUS.
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| Above: STRATEGY GAMES seem the idea genre to play usi\/ng the iPads touch screen control system. -. DOOR KICKERS is an ideal ‘sofa game’ for that laid back playing session. |
Above: And here’s an example of a more sophisticated port from the PC to iPad, COMPANY OF HEROES. It’s a slightly older game that I already have on my PC, but it just goes to show what you can run on IOS. Strategy games are the ideal game genre to play on a table for relaxed sofa sessions!
My laptops mouse has been replaced with a controller - which is good as having to use a laptop ‘table’ with space to use a mouse on my lap was always a pain in the ass - and as such I have had to forego playing some of my favourite FPS shooters (I have *never* been able to master the console controller for shooting games - the mouse is still king).
And while these are still very early days for any decisive opinion about how iPad/tablet gaming compares to desktop/console gaming, let’s just say I have been very happy that I have not been relegated to simply ‘having to make do’ with mobile dross like some of those module games you see spamming in your social media adverts! 😂
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| Above: At odds with my interests in the more graphically sophisticated IOS games that mimic the quality of grander titles on PC or console is ‘KNIGHT LANCER’. At first glance this pixel art game with it’s simplistic touch screen controls seems to be a typical mobile game, but don’t let the cutsie graphics or simple premise fool you. I have found this game strangely compelling and very addictive. It has a sort of retro gaming feel in it’s music and animation that makes it an absolute delight to play. |
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