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Comment by plexicle | Hacker News Reader

Indeed. And also big platform games-- consider Hearthstone (Blizzard), etc.

You'll have to expand on the etc., Hearthstone is the only "professional-grade" game that I can name on Android (and even that lagged months behind the iOS version, which lagged months behind the PC client). I keep waiting for gaming to take off on Android, but it's just so inundated with P2W garbage (cue heated discussion over Hearthstone's own P2W status).

  Borderlands
  Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel
  Super Mega Baseball: Extra Innings
  Valiant Hearts : The Great War
  SoulCalibur
  Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance
  DOOM 3 BFG Edition
  FINAL FANTASY IX
  Half Life 2: Episode 1
  Half Life 2: Episode 2
  The Talos Principle
  Broken Age
  Portal
  Goat Simulator

I could go on, but if Hearthstone is the only "professional-grade" game that you can name on Android then you clearly haven't even bothered to look.

Borderlands definitely isn't on the Play store, unless you're talking about Tales from the Borderlands, which is something entirely different.

Portal and the Talos Principle do seem to be on there, but only for specific Nvidia chipsets.

And calling Hearthstone "professional-grade" is a pretty big stretch as well.

Correct. Borderlands 2 is a coming soon title.

I play Borderlands 2 right now on my Nvidia Android TV. Looks about as good as the xbox 360.

Goat simulator is far from professional grade (on purpose).

World of Tanks Blitz (7 on 7 tank battles) is really good.

It's not P2W, but there is a "Pay 2 have an marginal edge" factor (you can buy better components and ammo with in-game money, and you don't earn enough in-game money through regular play to use all the better ammo all the time).

The devs are pretty good about maintaining a good in-game economy - they actually just upped the amount of in-game you earn in response to some new features that were costing to much.

> It's not P2W, but there is a "Pay 2 have an marginal edge" factor

That IS what P2W means.

I don't really play games on Android, so that's the main one I can think of.

But consider all of the great games that are ported natively to Android. Several Final Fantasy games, Chrono Trigger (my personal favorite). If the keyboard mapping is solid, that could be a really big deal. I know I'm in opinion territory here, but I'm pretty excited. Your question is fair though.

Minecraft?

Last time I checked (which was a while ago, mind), mobile Minecraft was so limited in its capabilities that I couldn't bear to play it after putting so many hundreds of hours into the actual version. Have they unified them yet?

You can run the full desktop version of Minecraft on Android using Boardwalk: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.zhuoweizha...

It is still fairly limited though they are constantly adding more features.

I believe redstone for example is now available in the Pocket/Console editions.

The third party ecosystem is not well developed yet, and Mojang doesn't seem to be caring. Hypixel (perhaps the largest multiplayer server) started and shut down a massive (thousands of simultaneous players) PE server b/c it just isn't there yet.

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