TSA Goes Online with OnLive (UK)

Disclaimer: this article reflects my personal experience using OnLive. Due to many factors, such as Internet speed, there’s every chance your experience will differ. For the games tests I was running OnLive through my laptop using a WiFi connection.

I love my laptop, I really do. It has 4GB of memory, a dual core processor and some funky wizardry that means the area next to the touch pad remains 25% cooler than my body temperature. Essentially it’s my base of operations; however it is useless for gaming. It’s this fact that prompted me to take a look at the cloud based gaming service ‘OnLive’ when it launched last week.

For those who are unaware, OnLive stores games on remote servers which you then stream via the Internet. This means you can play any game on any machine, as long as you a) have an account and b) have fast enough broadband. In theory it sounds like my idea of heaven.

In all honesty I wasn’t even expecting to be able to create an account. My broadband speed runs at “between 1.5 and 3.5mb, with an estimate of 2mb” which is bang on the minimum requirements to access the service from your laptop. Much to my surprise, after spending about a minute creating a free account, OnLive kicked into life!

First up I should probably mention a few things. There has been one particular launch week hiccup which has seen gamers have to wait a few minutes before being able to log on at peak times (probably caused by the thousands of free OnLive consoles given out at the Eurogamer Expo). This issue has been acknowledged, and apparently is being worked on.

The next stumbling block is the whole idea of never actually owning the game you have paid for. What if the service collapses and shuts down? What if my Internet service provider has an outage? I’m left stranded.

There’s also the small matter of Internet usage. Currently I’m on a BT Unlimited package, which is just as well because OnLive reportedly uses 2GB of data per hour. I don’t think that figure has been officially confirmed, but it’s one I’ve seen from several sources who have run tests on their machines.

As you can see there are many hurdles to overcome when it comes to convincing gamers that OnLive is worth a shot. Never-the-less, let us continue.

Once logged on, you are greeted with a rather swish user interface that is split into the following areas:

• Arena
• Profile
• Marketplace
• Showcase
• My Games
• Last Played
• Brag Clips
• Friends

We managed to speak with John Spinale, OnLive’s VP of Games, at the Eurogamer Expo and he was kind enough to go through some of these options for us, as well as put our minds at ease regarding OnLive’s future support of current games. Check it out below.

It looks smooth on the video, but what about in real life using a normal Internet connection? Well, the whole set-up has left me very impressed. The ease at which you jump into a game, purchase content or communicate with friends came as quite a surprise. I’m not entirely sure what I was expecting, but it wasn’t this.

Once I had messed about adding friends and admiring the scenery it was time to do some actual games testing, looking at graphical quality and lag. For this I used Borderlands, Trine, The Maw, Flatout 2 and DiRT 3. To make it a fair test I logged on at the following times over the course of three days:

• Between 8 – 10am
• Between 2 – 3pm
• Between 6 – 8pm
• 10pm onwards

Any time between 2 – 9pm saw the “OnLive is full” message appear, followed by a wait of about five minutes before being allowed to log on. Only once, on the launch day at about 6pm was the service what I deem unusable, with a fair amount of pixilation. All other times have been fine.

It’s at this point where I had to switch from mouse and keyboard to a controller, due to a medical condition known as “being cack-handed”. I purchased a Microsoft Wired Controller (basically an Xbox 360 controller) and downloaded this driver (thanks to Wolvogamer1 for the link). After a quick system reboot OnLive automatically recognised the controller and changed the interface so that keyboard prompts were replaced by button prompts.

In terms of visual quality the games were a mixed bag. The car models on DiRT 3 looked fine, but the backgrounds seemed particularly fuzzy. Borderlands, on the other hand, looked absolutely great with no issues that immediately jumped out. The same could be said of The Maw. Trine seemed to be a middle ground, with nice enough graphics albeit with a slightly fuzzy effect. To be honest it’s a matter of taste as to how harshly you judge the games. I was in no way put off, but others might be.

Lag was where the biggest surprise happened. I have suffered none. I couldn’t quite believe it, but cornering in DiRT 3 was perfect, precision platforming in Trine wasn’t a problem, and headshots in Borderlands came with ease. At one point in Borderlands I just span my character in circles, changing direction quickly to try and catch OnLive out. It didn’t work. I have heard that others haven’t had such a smooth experience, but I can’t complain.

[drop2] Borderlands was dragged out once again to test a bit of online co-op. I couldn’t fault OnLive as setting up a bout was easy, it ran effortlessly and there was no lag. Also, Borderlands is great isn’t it? I never really played it much on the consoles, but I can see it becoming a time sink.

I haven’t managed to play any full multiplayer games yet, but I have spectated on one of my friends playing Duke Nukem Forever and Homefront (he has a similar Internet connection to mine) and it all seemed fine.

The last few days have been very interesting. I’ve gone from being hopeful yet sceptical, to someone who will use OnLive very frequently. So far, for me, it has worked perfectly (bar the “full” message) and I’ve actually gone as far as to pre-order Saints Row 3 plus the monthly PlayPack.

I can totally understand why some people don’t like the idea of OnLive. As someone who has gamed for 25 years, I too like to have the physical media stacked in a neat pile in my house. That won’t change anytime soon. Instead I’ll be using OnLive more as a supplement to my console gaming, and I can see myself using the game rental facility quite a lot.

I was speaking to Peter about this a couple of days ago, and I quite liked his thoughts on the matter. “Just because you stream a film or two from LOVEFiLM, it doesn’t mean you’re going to give up buying DVDs”. I think the same applies to OnLive, and I see it sharing a space with retail games rather than taking it over.

I really hope the service flourishes, and with EA on board, and titles such as AC: Revelations and Batman: AC on the way, things are looking positive.