Strategy Games: Dota 2 and Battle for Middle Earth 2
Dota 2
Naturally, I was most interested in the Venue 8 Pro's native 1280x800 resolution for testing. All of the detail settings were turned down as low as they'd go, except for texture quality, which I nudged up to Medium.
As far as controls go, this type of title requires a keyboard and mouse. So, I didn't bother with the SteelSeries Free gamepad or GestureWorks Gameplay software. You can see the result in the video below:
Performance isn't great, but I'd still say that Dota 2 is playable on Dell's tablet at these settings. Of course, there's a big difference between frame rate and network-imposed lag when you're playing an online game. While 30 FPS should be playable for a MOBA, too much latency makes gameplay unpleasant (and that applies to every gaming platform).
Battle for Middle Earth II
I have a fondness for EA's Battle for Middle Earth series, set in J.R.R. Tolkien's fantasy realm. This title really pushed the visual boundaries of what I expected from an RTS back when it came out. So, I'm dusting it off for today's experiment.
Right off the bat, I ran into an issue: the game doesn't run on Windows 8. Thankfully, a resourceful fan who goes by the alias of Turin Turumbar created the BfME_Startup_Fixxer.exe patch to get around the problem.
The display's native 1280x800 resolution caused some performance problems, so I dialed that back to 1024x768 and cranked the detail preset up to Ultra-High. On Dell's small 8" screen, the lower resolution makes very little difference. Once again, I went with the Bluetooth-attached keyboard and mouse for control.
As you can see in our video, the game looks great considering its age. It runs surprisingly smoothly on Dell's small Windows-based tablet.