5 PC Games We Want on Android Smartphones and Tablets
I, like many of you reading this, love to play video games. It's been a constant in my life since I was about eight or nine years old. I've seen the medium change and grow as I have. Sometimes for the worse, but often for the better — and recently, it seems that gaming is becoming more and more mobile.
Devices like the Nintendo Switch 2 and Steam Deck have freed gaming from being shackled to a TV or computer desk, and brought it out into the world. Gaming on mobile is no exception to this, and there are hundreds of great games to pick from. But I'm a greedy man, and I want more of what I love.
Specifically, I want more of the games I enjoy on consoles to come to my Android smartphone. After all, what's the point in having all of that processing power if I don't actually get the chance to use it? Here are five of the games I love that would kill on Android smartphones and tablets.
5 Crusader Kings or Europa Universalis
It's something of a surprise that many of Paradox's games haven't made it to mobile yet, because at face value, they're an excellent fit for the medium. Paradox specializes in a genre known as "grand strategy games." It's similar to the Total War series in that your aim is to conquer the known world, but where the series differs is in the execution of such.
While Total War games focus on real-time battles and tactics, the Crusader Kings and Europa Universalis games don't worry themselves about such small-scale achievements. Instead, it's all about the big picture. Scheme, plot, and marry your way to the top, using all the political means at your disposal to reach your ends.
It's a slow-burn game for sure, and you can often find yourself living through several generations of your family before you finally become King of Wales. And then, there are simply other problems to worry about, like your son being incapable of the simplest tasks, or your suspicion that the vastly powerful King of England wants your land.
Audiosurf
Audiosurf is the best game you've probably never heard of. Released in 2008, Audiosurf asks one simple question: What if you could ride your music? Audiosurf takes a music track and turns it into a racetrack, complete with dips, speed changes, and twists that match up with the music.
Think "Temple Run, but with your music" and you're on the right track. The most popular mode is mono, which involves hurtling down your racetrack and hitting the color blocks, while avoiding the gray bricks in your way.
Ingress Prime
Ingress Prime, but turned up to eleven This one's a little bit different, because I'm not about to argue that one of the actual Watch Dogs game should be ported over to Android. Frankly, that's a little bit too much for me to argue, and I'm not sure it would be a particularly good fit.
But what if we stayed true to what Watch Dogs represents, rather than what the game is? Have you ever heard of Ingress Prime? It's a real-world augmented reality video game. Players use their phones to compete for and capture "portals" placed over real-world landmarks, securing them for their team.
The team behind Ingress Prime also worked on Pokémon Go, which is where a lot of Go's augmented reality aspects came from. So why not take that and apply it to another game? Watch Dogs is a hacking game, and in the original game, players would use their smartphones to hack and control aspects of the world around them, and help take down enemies.
Dungeon Keeper
The legendary series deserves a real chance to shine For the young 'uns out there, Dungeon Keeper is a legendary game series from the late 90s that hit on a then-revolutionary idea: Why not be the bad guy?
Dungeon Keeper casts you as just that, the big bad of a dungeon. But really, all you want to do is keep your gold safe, your creatures many and happy, and maybe do a little light raiding on the hapless humans above.
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
There's time for at least one more release before VI, Todd You don't need Skyrim explained to you. The 14-year-old video game is one of the most purchased and played games of all time, largely rivaled only by behemoths like Minecraft.
If you're a gamer, you've played it, and you've probably ended up buying it multiple times, thanks to it releasing on multiple console generations, and in various Special Edition and VR guises. Does it need to be on Android? Absolutely not. Would it be hilarious if it were? Beyond the shadow of a doubt.