Testing out old and new games
Predictably, low-power 2D games work the best here. I was able to get my favorite short break game, 20 Minutes Till Dawn, downloaded and running without any hiccups. This is a minimal 2D game based on the Unity engine—it’d probably be pretty easy to get an Android port made, if the developer wanted one.
Hades 2 is a bit of a midpoint for this test. Technically, the gameplay is all 2D, but there are up to a dozen or so polygonal models going over the 2D background at any given time, plus a lot of effects, some pretty serious high-res sprites, and voice acting.
The game eventually downloaded and played on my phone, but for some reason GameHub kept trying to download the demo version at first. It took several tries to get it up and running, and when I did, it could only go at about 30 to 45 frames per second once combat started. That’s certainly playable, but far from ideal.
Then I tried Absolum, a wonderful 2D beat-em-up from last year. With all-2D gameplay, it should do at least as well as Hades 2. Maybe even better. Yet… it wouldn’t launch at all. Dang.
Alright, let’s go for some older titles then. Skyrim is an obvious choice, which has been re-released a dozen times and runs fine on the 10-year-old Arm-based Nintendo Switch. It downloads and launches, though getting through the pre-load screen requires you to use the phone screen as a touchpad. Once launched, I’m in the familiar interface and running at 60 frames per second. Nice!
Another classic 3D favorite of mine is Just Cause 2, and it has about the same technical requirements as Skyrim. So I downloaded it and… it won’t launch. Bummer.
Time to try the hardest test here: my favorite current obsession that’s also a visual treat, Dead as Disco. (Incidentally, this one works fine on handheld gaming PCs.) It’s a full-power Unreal Engine 5 game, but it only needs a few gigs of storage. I loaded it up… and it demanded a Visual C++ component—an Arm64 one, for a bit of additional insult.
So yeah, playing any particular game you want via GameHub is a bit of a crapshoot. Older games and 2D games are much more likely to work well, though a few more recent ones should also be playable.
