OnLive Gaming Service Beta review

[CptStern]

Based on my experience with the OnLive gaming service, it appears to work well for certain types of games. In my testing I found that games that were slower paced, or at least had slower paced input mechanisms, played well enough that I could be fooled into thinking I was playing on a modestly configured local gaming system. Both Burnout: Paradise and Tom Clancy's HAWX seemed to be completely playable on both my home PC and my notebook computer.

Obviously the games that didn't work were the fast paced shooter games: Unreal Tournament 3, Crysis and even Call of Juarez. If you are an avid PC gamer you will likely be very disappointed by the experience, both in terms of image quality and input latency, of playing these types of games using OnLive. This is especially true if you use a keyboard and mouse - using a game pad did mute the adverse effects quite a bit and made the game (and my apparent skill) more acceptable.


My first hands-on experience with OnLive turned out to be better than I thought it would be going into the experiment. Both Burnout: Paradise and Tom Clancy's HAWX provided an acceptable gaming experience through the streaming game service. Both titles did look a little less impressive when placed side by side with a locally installed copy of each game but that is probably always going to be the case. Unreal Tournament 3 was less impressive - actually it was awful to be blunt about it. Some of that could be a result of our latency warnings every time we started the OnLive client and living outside the southern California area, but regardless, playing UT3 with OnLive was not anything I would recommend to experienced or beginning gamers.

very detailed review. you guys should read it (1% of you actually will). remember this is still beta so there's always room for improvement on the latency front. this looks like it'll be a reality sooner rather than later

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=859&type=expert&pid=1

 

[Acepilotf14]

Tachyons.

 

[CptStern]

note to self: if a thread requires the average hl2.net member read more than a short 2 sentence paragraph the thread will go mostly unread


stupid reading

 

[KagePrototype]

How in god's name is burnout paradise "slower paced"?!

 

[Dinnesch]

How in god's name is burnout paradise "slower paced"?!

It obviously doesn't need precise aiming at fast-moving targets. Racing games can bear much more input lag than FPSs

 

[Insano]

note to self: if a thread requires the average hl2.net member read more than a short 2 sentence paragraph the thread will go mostly unread


stupid reading

It's not our fault you're posting walls of text.

 

[MuToiD_MaN]

That's not a wall of text, man. It's like ten sentences.

 

[Barnz]

Doesn't look bad, but why? If you really want to play the game, then get a decent rig.

 

[Qonfused]

Oh look, it sucks. Who would have thought?

 

[Insano]

That's not a wall of text, man. It's like ten sentences.

tl;dr

 

[Rico]

tl;dr

ts;dr

 

[MuToiD_MaN]

As much as I want this service to fail, either to have my prediction come true or for some other irrational reason, I do acknowledge that I am not the target market for this service and some people who don't have the means to buy expensive PC hardware might actually enjoy this service.

 

[CptStern]

I dont think it's a either or service. it's more like Gametap; an alternative to retail games or digital distribution. it could do wonders for pc games: no need to download a demo to see if you think a game is worth purchasing. or for casual gaming. hell services can be built right into it: think video games in hotel chains. the basic setup would be next to nil and customers could play/pay by the hour etc.

 

[Kyorisu]

Input lag, lower quality graphics and image quality issues in general. I think anyone who dared called me out to say these wouldn't be issues should slap themselves (no one here I think). Sigh, silly people.

Yes it might be "acceptable" but we still need pricing information. How is this going to compare to a local console for instance?

I dont think it's a either or service. it's more like Gametap; an alternative to retail games or digital distribution.

...Gametap IS digital distribution. The only difference to every other platform is Gametap is subscription based, otherwise it functions in exactly the same way as everything else (Except for the part where you get oodles of DRM, say goodbye to mods and stuff).

it could do wonders for pc games

I very much doubt it will.

 

[unozero]

I've been playing, and other then Sound distortions it's been a-okay.

 

[Krynn72]

Gamestreamer.net already does this for pc games, i think.

 

[Insano]

ts;dr

It was pretty short to read.

Anyhow, on topic: it's obvious there are some things that stand in the way of this becoming mainstream. The idea of cloud computing itself is very interesting, but it seems right now that the latency is the biggest problem.

Of course, I'm talking about computer gaming. As mentioned before, controllers will have less problems with this.

 

[Darkangel]

I really don't see the market for something like this besides things like hotels.

If someone is really casual and doesn't know much about PC gaming/setting it up, then chances are they will just buy a console.

If someone doesn't like consoles and wants to game on their pc, then chances are they already know enough about computers to buy a decent/cheap GPU.

The only reason I can think of anyone wanting to use this would be to potentially play a maxed out version of a very demanding game such as Crysis, but a according to the preview it seems that not all games run maxed out...

Edit: Hopefully someone who's testing this service can answer this for me; How well are the games integrated into the Onlive service? like what would happen if you clicked exit to windows or tried to mess with the video settings? are the options blocked off somehow? also, what happens if a game crashes?

 

[Kyorisu]

What happens when the data centre closest to you hits peak load and the next one is 100-200ms away? Sure they could add more servers or they could just continue to oversell make a huge profit and then leg it when all is said and done.

 

[Gargantou]

Screens

http://i45.tinypic.com/anndhk.jpg
http://i50.tinypic.com/33m4nbt.jpg

Anyway not surprising, especially not the fact that some MP games are barely playable due to the latency and response time issues.