OnLive is an online streaming service which lets you play PC games on almost any machine with a monitor and a controller. A huge server full of choices runs the game you want from its own brain, and streams it to your computer almost instantly, bypassing the need to use any of your own hardware. It’s basically ‘cloud’ gaming, a craze that really seems to be catching on lately. What this means is the minimum system requirements to run a game like Crysis* is now simply a fast internet connection, and not a ridiculously expensive gaming rig. The service has been running in America for a while now, and is available in the UK at long last, so I had to try it out.
It’s a very interesting concept. Since forever, the world of PC gaming has required a regular upgrade of hardware in order to run the newest games, but services like this potentially eliminate that stage altogether. Any machine connected to the internet has the potential to play the latest blockbuster, even a sodding iPad. The games do not require any processing power from your end, as everything is handled by the central hub in OnLive’s lair – all you do is connect to it and control it remotely.
It means no installation, you just choose the game you want to play, and within minutes, you’ll be playing it. I signed up earlier today and did exactly that – at work, using a 4 year old macbook I was able to play Assassins Creed Brotherhood on a wi-fi connection. It was pretty impressive. Aside from the fact you can’t edit the graphics settings (possibly a limitation of it being a demo and not the full game, but equally possibly because it recognised I was on a less-than-reliable wi-fi connection, or maybe its just a limitation of the service) the game ran about as good as it would on my own PC. I only played it for 10 minutes, but it was a very good first impression.
The service isn’t free of course. You have to pay a subscription in order to access the huge library of games, and I don’t intend to invest in this just yet as I have enough of a backlog of unplayed Steam games lying around waiting for me. But I’m glad this service exists. It gives hope to people who can’t afford a decent gaming PC, and it offers a very novel solution to playing games where they might otherwise be unavailable. And who knows, maybe the more support cloud based services gain, the more widespread high-speed broadband will become. That’s gotta be a good thing.
* Crysis isn’t actually available it seems but you can understand the implications of this, right? If this catches on, nVidia could be out of a job. This makes me want to cry.
Dome Keeper is an excellent little spin on the tower defense game, in which you play the role of a jetpacking miner defending his base from swarms of aliens, whilst searching for a hidden relic buried somewhere beneath him. And now, with this huge free update, you can play it with friends.
I want to talk about Cloudpunk, a game where you get to be a flying-car delivery driver in a futuristic cyberpunk city. Its world is an incredible achievement of environmental design, and while the gameplay itself may be basic, the city of Nivalis is a thing of beauty to behold. Nivalis is built out of hundreds of hand-modelled cuboid buildings; there’s nothing procedural about it. Apparently it took 3 years for the devs to design the city, and it really shows.
I do love me some quality pixel art, and it doesn’t get much better than this. Cast n Chill is a cozy side-scrolling fishing game by small indie dev team Wombat Brawler, with absolutely gorgeous visuals. It’s simple to play, and you you can dip in and out of it at your leisure, making it a fine addition to our collection of coffee break games.
Hades is a great example of a coffee break game. You can play through a single run within 30 minutes, but if something comes up and you have to stop mid-run you can save and quit in whatever room you’re in and continue later. As the father of a toddler, I find this particularly appealing these days. I like to squeeze in a quick game during my baby girl’s nap time, and since I never know exactly how long she’s going to sleep for, I need games that can be played in short bursts. I’m starting this new mini-feature series with Hades, because you’re almost always guaranteed to have a good time, no matter how long you play for.
A friend on Facebook posted a list of their favourite movies, listed in the year they came out, which I immediately followed up with my own list. There’s only one rule: you must pick your favourite for all of the years that you’ve been alive, and you can only pick one per year. I decided to give it a go for videogames. It’s a lot trickier than you might think! Some years have featured an abundance of incredible titles, whereas other years it’s easy to pick out a clear winner in your mind. So, without further ado, here’s my list of favourite games, one per year since I was born. This was insanely difficult…
VVVVVV is one of the only 2D platform games that I have completed from start to finish, which makes it special to me. I became obsessed with Veni Vidi Vici, an entirely optional sequence of deadly traps that teases you with a collectible orb right in the very first room, which is blocked off by a tiny box. You can’t jump in the traditional way as most other platformer’s, so the only way to overcome the box is by leaping up through the ridiculously cruel chambers above, navigating your way to the top…and then back down again.
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