The Underrated PC gaming companion app ‘Xreva GamePad’

PC gaming can often become difficult to some, the numerous keys to remember and different trigger keys within different games can make it hard to remember. Some of the audience tend to plug in controllers for their games, however even for the less dedicated of understanding the systems, setting up controllers on their PC can be difficult – especially if the game doesn’t officially support it and requires third party methods.

Here’s where Xreva comes in. I’ve downloaded this about a year ago onto my iPad Mini, and honestly I feel as though it’s a Godsend! I’m not a regular PC gamer and instead go to my many consoles due to my PC being a Macbook Pro and not a fully dedicated and powerful gaming PC.  Previously when I had first purchased the application I played it alongside my first play through of Mass Effect.

Once you open the app, you have a choice to select through pre-installed presets of games so that the controls are already set up, or you can customise it yourself and save a preset for later use. The app mimics features which SmartGlass or even the Wii U Gamepad does, having a secondary screen which can offer extra features and shortcuts for the players convenience. The app contains many buttons placed on the side which are hotkeys for actual keyboard functions, with the icon for the hotkeys customisable to suit the action of the button. Additionally there’s gestures which can be activated to cause certain actions or a virtual d-pad to control players or steer vehicles!

All of which causes extra comfort while playing games as it allows one hand to control the keyboard ‘W,A,S,D’ or arrow keys whilst the other hand can shift to the touch screen and activate simple gestures without having to question which key activated what in your keyboard.

Xreva Gamepad is $4.99 on the Apple App store for JUST iPads running iOS 5 or above (NOTE: Hasn’t been tested on iOS 8 beta) & I definitely recommend for you to download it.

Yet I’m interested, how exactly do you set up your PC to play video games? What control mechanism do you prefer?