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GestureWorks' Gameplay Virtual Controller (Video).

Windows 8 tablets, with the exception of Razer Edge, aren't good for gaming. The majority of PC games are designed using a mouse, keyboard, or a gamepad. Although Civilization V and other select titles have special multitouch controls that are designed for the Surface Pro enthusiast, the majority of games are simply not playable without peripherals. The solution? Find a middleman.



GestureWorks Gameplay promises to alleviate tablet owners' gaming problems on the move by creating a virtual interface that mimics keyboard and mouse inputs. The suite lets users create multitouch controllers that can be customized by using virtual joysticks and d-pads aswell with buttons, buttons and mappable swipe gestures. It's an interesting idea particularly when you consider the effort Android and iOS gamers make to avoid touchscreen controls. We spoke to the company to get an overview of the beta version of the program.



GestureWorks CEO Jim Spadaccini greeted us with the ThinkPad Helix and his son who was tearing through the world of Castle Crashers on his own Windows 8 device. MINECRAFT SERVER LIST A digital directional pad and tiny buttons crowded the lower edge of his tablet's display and were superimposed on the game as like native controls. Spadaccini made it appear easy and fun to play with them, however, he stopped us from jumping into a game. He wanted to first show us how to set it up.



Gameplay's menu system is easy. It divides its main screen into profiles that can be downloaded as well as a list of layouts that have been saved locally. The community currently has around 50 profiles available to download. Editing or creating new profiles is simple. Spadaccini hit the edit icon on Castle Crashers to pull up the same layout as the one on his son's nearby slate. From there we were able add, relocate or resize buttons with a few easy taps. You can map buttons to any keyboard input or mouse input. A virtual joystick is also available for control of the cursor. There's also a gesture menu that permits users to translate commands into flicks, swipes or pinches and we were told that motion control options would be added in the future which will allow accelerometer-based steering for driving games. Users can save the profile from here, but if they aren't satisfied, the layout can be tweaked in-game.



After creating a profiles, users can link the layout to the program it was created for, making it easy to launch multiple titles with its custom control setup. Launching Castle Crashers alongside our host's young son was as easy to do by pressing the play button, and the game's simplistic controls worked well with the touchscreen configuration. Spadaccini called simple side-scrolling games like Castle Crashers the program's "sweet spot," and indeed, they performed flawlessly. Portal 2 and Borderlands 2 were a slightly different story -- while GamePad offers relatively easy access to all the game's main commands managing them all with our thumbs was difficult. We ran into some issues with the virtual joypad, too that emulates a sometimes unstable mouse control, rather than an actual analog joystick input. Despite these hiccups we were able to resolve a couple of GLaDOS' maniacal test with relative ease and were told by GestureWorks to expect improved mouse emulation prior to the release.



Gameplay isn't the perfect app but it appears to at least be a good one: it fulfills a need, lives up its promises, and does both with a simple and user-friendly interface. Its touchscreen gamepads will never replace a physical one however they do provide Windows 8 tablets with a mobile gaming experience that is otherwise impossible without extra hardware. However, it does have one compatibility issue - it only works with games that utilize DirectX (that means no Minecraft, sorry kids!) GestureWorks Gameplay might be the best choice for you when you have a Windows 8 tablet and a Steam backlog. Visit the website of the company to sign up for the beta or just sit tight: the full version is available on November 5th for $14.99.


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