Cheap PC Gaming: OnLive

When OnLive was first announced I looked on with derision and skepticism. There was no way that they could stream an entire game to my lowly little laptop without crippling lag and swear-inducing bugs. I genuinely didn’t think it could happen, there was no chance. I saw people saying it could work, my own father amongst them, and I argued against it.

I explained why I thought so, I explained the bandwidth implications, the horrible internet cap issues I already had, that if the service goes down I wouldn’t be able to play my games and I refused to believe it would work. It was too incredible, too sci-fi to work.

I am not one to refuse to admit when I was wrong about something, so here it is: I was wrong. I was genuinely, 100% wrong. And I’m happy to admit that, because OnLive is amazing. I’ve been using computers and playing games on them for a good three quarters of my 21 years; I went through PSOne-PS2-PS3 technological advancements, the first games I played when I was a kid were 2D and the pixels themselves were visible, but nothing, and I mean nothing, has ever amazed me quite as much as OnLive.

Let me just explain that to you. This is streaming games – entire goddamn games – to your PC, laptop or OnLive console. It requires next-to-no hardware on your end and, in return, you can play any game available on the service, from Capsized to Dirt 3, Deus Ex to, well, Deus Ex: Human Revolution.

[drop]Now, this feature is based entirely on my own experiences with the service. I’ve tried it in three different ways on two different connections: My PC (wired) and my laptop (wifi) on my 50mb connection, and my laptop (wifi) via a 2.5mb connection. I tried a variety of games, including (but not limited to); Batman: Arkham Asylum, Homefront (Multiplayer only), Alpha Protocol, Warhammer 40k: Space Marine and Saints Row 2.

The difference between the wifi and wired 50mb connection were negligible and could easily have been attributed to the screen on my laptop versus the 40 inch Bravia I use for my PC. I did get ‘Network Problem’ whilst playing over wifi a couple of times but it didn’t seem to affect the actual game in any way; it just popped up in the top right corner and I continued to play as if it didn’t. Graphically on both connections the games looked good – it’s obvious the game isn’t installed on the system itself, as text (particularly white text) can be a tiny bit grainy and difficult to read, and the colours are less vibrant than they would be were I to play the game natively.

The 2.5mb wifi connection was a little more interesting. Graphically, there was an obvious step down. There were artifacts, things could get a little grainy and Space Marine was unplayable the one time I tried it (I don’t really know how to describe the problem other than ‘big red splotches on the character and prominent, sticky-out bits in the scenery’, it was just impossible to see what was going on properly). All of the other games were easily playable, however, despite the obvious graphical step downs.

Controls on all 3 setups were, however, flawless. I’ve heard reports of input lag but I have only experienced it once (and that was almost certainly because my mouse’s batteries were low, it was on the 50mb wired connection and was gone once I changed them). Personally, this is what amazed me, how it’s possible for me to move a mouse and have it moved for me on another computer in a different part of the country at the same time is well beyond my comprehension, but I was playing games like they were on the computer and I continue even now, two weeks after starting to use OnLive often (ever day for those two weeks, in fact), am still amazed.

Perhaps the only real problem with OnLive is the game selection. Make no mistake, there are big games in the OnLive Marketplace, with Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Assassin’s Creed 2/Brotherhood, Batman: Arkham Asylum, Warhammer 40k: Space Marine and Just Cause 2 being perhaps the most prominent, along with pre-orders of Batman: Arkham City and Saints Row 3 available, but there are a distinct lack of killer games. Modern Warfare 3 and Battlefield 3 would be ideal candidates to make the service really kick off (not that they’re likely to appear on the service, whatever the rumours say), and some other big names would definitely help.

[drop2]As this is Cheap PC Gaming, I’m obligated to mention the cheap part. Other than the possible saving on buying super-powered PCs, there are two distinctly exciting offers in OnLive at the moment. First, there is the PlayPack. This is a subscription that costs £7 a month and, at the time of writing, features around 105 games.

Admittedly, a lot of those games are fillers and things I’ve never heard of, but the pack includes the multiplayer portion of Homefront (still my favourite FPS multiplayer at the moment), Batman: Arkham Asylum, Just Cause 2 (as well as the it’s predecessor if you’re interested), the original Deus Ex, Fear 2, Fear 3’s multiplayer, Alpha Protocol, Borderlands… the list goes on, and is added to every month with new games (Arkham Asylum is a new addition).

The most surprising offer, however, is this; if you’re in the UK, your first game costs £1. It has to be a game that’s already out (so no pre-orders) and it has to show up on the game’s screen in the OnLive app (it’ll just say it costs £1 if you can use it with the offer). Personally, I got Space Marine. For £1. It’s probably the best deal I’ve ever seen.

Oh, did I mention the free trails? There are few games on OnLive that don’t have a 30 minute free trial that you can try without even having to enter any card details – just register, install the app, log in and choose your first game to trial. You can trial that for 30 minutes and and saves you make will stay there in case you buy the game afterwards – or you can just buy it from within the game when the time expires and carry on playing.

Don’t want to use a mouse and keyboard? Plug in a wired 360 controller, boot up the app and any game that supports it will be happy to let you use it. The interface is actually better suited to a controller than a mouse, anyway.

Really, go to OnLive.co.uk. You should at least register and try one of the game trials, it doesn’t cost you anything, after all.