The main features of smartwatches have mostly revolved around health and fitness, with wearable devices operating on the Android Wear operating system and the Apple Watch including several features for such purposes.
Video games have been present in smartwatches, but mostly as extensions or accessories to the versions for smartphones. YouTuber Dave Bennett, however, took the next step.
Bennett, as shown in the video that he uploaded, was able to get massively popular first-person shooter Counter-Strike working on the LG G Watch.
For those that would like to replicate what Bennett did in the video, the Xash3D app needs to be installed first on an Android Wear smartwatch so that the device could run an old copy of the Windows operating system. In addition, users will need to have a copy of Counter-Strike 1.6 and a special client app installed in the smartwatch to run the game.
With Counter-Strike installed on an Android Wear smartwatch, players will be able to join matches with real players on their PCs. However, with the small screen of the wearable device, it would be very difficult to play a proper game, much less to match the skill of PC players.
The video showed Bennet experiencing significant lag while playing the game on his LG G Watch, though that could be due to the smartwatch being one of the older models. Using a more recent and faster smartwatch for the project would present more problems though, as most new models have circular displays and not rectangular ones.
Nevertheless, the feat is an impressive one and shows how far smartwatch technology has progressed.
The port to Android Wear as used by Bennett, however, is simply an extension of the Android port of Counter-Strike which was released last week.
It might be a better idea to play the game on an Android smartphone compared to an Android Wear smartwatch, though it is still far from being very playable due to slowdown and the massive number of touch screen controls.
