OnLive Review

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Ricardo Trejo

Aug 21, 2010

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Back when first announced mid-last year it was a little hard to imagine that OnLive could be a serious competitor to the hardware systems you depend upon to pop to play your cherised games. Well, it’s finally here and we’ve toyed around with this new digital distribution method and we gotta say: it’s pretty good so far!

So what is OnLive first of all?

According to Wikipedia it: “is a cloud gaming platform: the games are synchronized, rendered, and stored on remote servers and delivered via the Internet.”

In short, it’s a service that lets you stream games from the always internet connected OnLive application to your PC. It’s also capable of streaming games directly to your TV without the need of a computer, although you’re going to need the “MicroConsole TV Adapter” which comes packaged with a wireless OnLive branded controller.

Pricing

The controller and “console”, which seemingly only takes in an ethernet cable from behind (that’s what she said” and runs the OnLive service, along with the included wireless controller, will run you a cool $99 bucks off the bat. Now that doesn’t include the subscription charge!

To simply browse the service, even if you don’t rent or buy any of their games, will you cost you $14.95 a month — well over the price to keep yourself connected to Xbox Live. But for those who sign up immediately will get a whole free year for being a “Founding Member”, whereupon the beginning of your next year’s subcription will only warrant a $4.95 a month free. It’s not too bad when you think about it, since you’re paying for the convenience of not having to invest into a $300 gaming machine like the rest of the big boys.

For the PC crowd, the MicroConsole Adapter and Controller aren’t necessary, but if you want to use a controller you’ll have to plug in a Xbox 360 wired controller (or a wireless controller with receiver) if you don’t want to be stuck to a mouse and keyboard.

So now that the initial investment to get onto OnLive has been explained, how do you actually get to play the games? Well, you have two options:

1.) Rent them over a set period of time (prices range from $4.99 to $8.99 for 3 to 5 day rentals, though some games can’t be rented and only demo’d)

2.) Purchase the games for unlimited access as long as you subscribe to OnLive (prices range from $9.99 to $59.99).

What Games are available?

The full list of games available right now isn’t that long but there are quite enough notable titles to keep your interest:

aaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! - A Reckless Disregard for Gravity
Assassin’s Creed II (Ubisoft)
Batman: Arkham Asylum (Square Enix / Warner Bros. Interactive
Entertainment)
Borderlands (Take Two Interactive Entertainment)
Brain Challenge (Gameloft)
Defense Grid: Gold (Hidden Path)
Dirt 2 (Codemasters)
Dragon Age: Origins (Electronic Arts)
FEAR 2: Project Origin (Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment)
Just Cause 2 (Square Enix)
LEGO Harry Potter: Years 1-4 (Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment)
demo now full version available at official launch 6/29
Madballs in Babo: Invasion (Playbrains)
Mass Effect 2 (Electronic Arts)
MLB 2K10 (2K Sports)
NBA 2K10 (Take Two Interactive Entertainment)
Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands (Ubisoft)
Puzzle Chronicles (Konami)
Red Faction Guerrilla (THQ)
Shatter (Sidhe)
Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Conviction (Ubisoft)
Trine (Frozenbyte)
Unreal Tournament III (Epic)
World of Goo (2DBoy)

How does it perform? Is there Lag?

The answer to these questions all depends on how fast of an internet connection you have. OnLive’s minimum requirements say you should have AT LEAST a 2mbps connection speed, with 5mbps being the optimal.

While playing games such as World of Good and Assassin’s Creed 2, we experienced a great picture on par to that we’d see on our home consoles, with crisp visuals. However, since internet connections tend to vary in speed every now and again, unless you have a consistent high speed you’re going to get moments when the blockiness and blurry graphics become noticeable. This does get corrected over a few seconds of time, but you’re going to want to be wary of doing anything else that takes up bandwidth while playing OnLive.

That means no streaming Netflix on another source, and that defintely rules out torrenting moves and music (you pirate you!)

Unique Features

Arena

One of the cool things that OnLive brings to gamers is the ability to spectate and cheer/jeer on your fellow players. This can be done in the Arena section of the main menu in which you can look up certain titles and catch people playing their current game in session, during which you can give them a thumbs up or thumbs down depending on whether you believe they’re doing a good job or not. Cheers or jeers doesn’t reflect upon any player card but it does give you that extra boost when a spectacting player gives you a cheer after you’ve completed a difficult area of the game you’ve been playing for hours.

Brag Clips

This little diddy lets you capture upto 10 seconds of footage and then share it with anyone on the OnLive service. Essentially this feature is exactly what it sounds like; a means to brag about what you’ve accomplished in whatever game is your finest.

Overall

Our initial thoughts when we got to experience OnLive at E3 was a generally positive one. And now that we’ve gotten enough time to spend with it at our own leisure, well… it’s hard to ignore this up and coming online platform anymore. We expect good things to come from it, and who knows — maybe we might get some cool updates along the way.

The only issue right now might be the ongoing subscription fee that may scare a few people off, also those who may not be priviledged enough to have a fast enough connection. But by all means, with enough games being added to OnLive this could definitely become a viable option for those who just don’t want to get mixed up in the “console wars”.