Universal OnLive Wireless Controller Reviewed on Android Tablet

After seeing you post obsessively about Onlive (small dig) and finding that some of my Humble Bundle purchases had unused Onlive keys in them I decided to try it out. I tried it on a Mac Mini connected with gigabit ethernet to my 25mb/7mb broadband connection and on my crappy laptop connected with wireless N. It worked well on both.

I found the games run smooth and the input is not terribly delayed. It does take a little bit of time to become comfortable with the slight input lag that is present, and obviously unavoidable with a service like this, but I think after 20 minutes or so your brain compensates and you don't notice it. I used both keyboard and mouse and a wireless Xbox 360 controller. Their support for the 360 controller is really good. Unfortunately on the Mac the software will tell you it can't use the controller until you remove third party drivers. Once you do they support all the functionality of the controller. But this also means your controller will not be recognized by any other software. They should work around that. Either work with the third-party driver or provide the option to install their superior driver to the system.

The games that I have on my account, I think, are games that really work well with this service. They are Braid, Osmos, and Trine. All are good indy games with decent graphics but the service can easily push these games at what is pretty much their best. On the other hand these are games that both the systems I used can handle and I would not choose to use Onlive over another service that plays the game locally while providing cloud saves such as Steam. I wanted to try games that I knew those systems could not handle with the graphics on decent settings or even at all. The service provides the ability to try almost every game for 30 minutes. I tried a bunch of them... Batman: Arkham City, Unreal Tournament 3, Fear 2, Dirt 3, Aliens vs. Predator, Amnesia, Shadow of Chernobyl, and maybe a couple I am not remembering at the moment. Some of these games I own and play on a system with nice hardware where I can run with settings maxed. That offered a good comparison. For the most part these games ran fine. It didn't matter which game I tried on my crappy laptop because, even though it is incapable of running most of these game at all, if it can run one Onlive game it can run them all. All that matters is that it can handle the stream.

I was not impressed with the graphics. I didn't really expect to be but it would have been nice to have found myself surprised. I wasn't. The games look like what they are, real-time streamed content. Streaming technology gets better all the time and I expect that the quality has nowhere to go but up. As it is right now streaming high definition games is not good enough to provide a high-end PC or modern console experience. The graphics were definitely good enough that you can enjoy the game content without being terribly distracted but there isn't much "wow" factor in the visuals. Many of the games were not running with settings maximized. It is obvious that they lower or disable many shader effects such as water and lighting effects. Textures are somewhat soft and, should you blow the picture up to a large size as I would do with the Onlive console hooked to my front projector, you would find that the video compression introduces digital noise. On a computer monitor you have to look pretty close to see it but it is there. If you compare the quality of a high-end game running on Onlive to a mid-to-high level PC the PC will surpass Onlive by quite a bit. This is probably the single biggest thing that will keep me from regularly using this service. When it comes to audio the games sound great. I don't really have any complaints about the audio.

There were some hiccups from time to time. A few times I could see an underrun where the typical digital pixelation and uneven redraw occurs. One time on the wireless I got kicked out and informed that the service was unavailable. That isn't surprising when considering that it is wireless on the other side of the house but it is a good wireless connection and good internet connection and I was impressed with how infrequently I had any issues while using it over wireless. When using it wired I really didn't have any issues with fluidity or lag.

The arena feature is pretty awesome. Should you choose to keep it enabled someone can watch your game at any time. While watching they can give you a thumbs up or thumbs down. It is a little strange at first when you see the message pop up that someone is watching. You don't want to look like a noob. But it is pretty cool to see someone approve of the ass kicking you are delivering to Penguins minions. I wouldn't turn it off because I would hate for everyone else to turn it off. I love going to the arena and popping into other people's games. If I just want to chill with some coffee and watch some good gameplay I can pop into a game and get pretty sucked in. If I am browsing through the marketplace and I want to see some gameplay for a game I have never seen I can look at the bottom for all currently running games and view them to see what the game is all about. Popping in and out of the games is very smooth and it is impressive to see so many streams on the screen at once. I really like this feature. It is probably my favorite part of the service.

Overall Onlive is an interesting idea. If I wanted to play a lot of games but I was not interested in buying a decent PC or a modern console, or I simply did not want to ever have to upgrade again, I would use this service or even purchase the $99 Onlive console. I just don't see many gamers that are going to fall into that category. Maybe this service is not meant for them. Maybe the casual gamer is the expected customer but most of the games I saw were not casual games. These are AAA titles that take many hours to play through and skill to beat. You might point out that the rental service provides gamers that don't have a high cash flow with the ability to play a lot of games. I would agree except that we have services that will deliver games right to your mailbox. It may not be instant gratification but I think most people who want to really experience these games would consider the delay worth it when you consider the elimination of input delay and the games playing at their finest graphics levels. Where I would agree to an exception to all of this is when you consider tablets. This is an awesome option for people who are interested in gaming on their tablets.

I would not replace my other gaming platforms with Onlive. The experience is pretty cool but it is not good enough. While I can live with the input lag I would not choose to. I would also never consider playing a fast-paced online game with Onlive. You would be at an incredible disadvantage. That doesn't mean I won't ever use it. At the very least it doesn't cost anything to make an account and demo games on it. Heck, if all you want to do is play instant action UT3 then running the demo is all you need. I would recommend that anyone who is interested in checking it out should do it. The account is free. Download it and see how you like it.

Now having said all that... I would feel a much stronger draw to Onlive if they released a Linux client. I don't game in Windows. I haven't in about a decade and I don't intend to pretty much ever. That means I sometimes go through a few hoops to play a PC game. Onlive on Linux would be a pretty awesome experience. I think they can make it happen with relatively little complication and I believe that internally they are already working on it. I would love to help test the beta when they need it!

Quite a detailed review, and I have to say that I pretty well agree with it. I have a few more technical issues than you did with my computer systems, and a few less with my wired microconsole. Graphic settings aren't set terribly high on the cloud, and the stream adds a certain 'fog' on top of it.

What keeps my attention is the savings in money and time. With onlive there are occasional client upgrades, but I never have to wait for my games to patch or install. With their regular sales, free demos, and inexpensive rentals, games are indeed far less expensive on the service than purchasing physical or downloadable titles. To top it off, next gen there will probably be no new required hardware to buy or maintain--and I'm a little gun shy about risking more than, say, $200 on a next-gen system after the messes that happened this gen.

The only thing I can indeed say about next gen, is that if Onlive is still there, I will be on it. If they do a good enough job they'll be all I need, but they've got some growing to do. Wheel support and a few racing sims and they'd probably buy me for life.

Edited by Reaperman, Fri Dec 30, 2011 6:17 PM.