OnLive’s idea is very neat, and almost seems like its way ahead for its time. Over Easter weekend, OnLive was having a sale, and I hopped in and bought FEAR 2 for $5. This gave me unlimited access to the game. Now say if it wasn’t on sale, I could of bought either a 3 day or 5 day pass for the game if I only wanted to try it out. You can also try most of the games out for free for half an hour. Lastly, OnLive does offer a subscription based service for $10 a month, which enables you to have unlimited access with any game within its catalog.
OnLive can be played through a variety of ways. OnLive can be played on a PC, Mac, TV, and you can watch other people play through Android & iPhone devices as well. The TV accessory is sold directly through OnLive with a gamepad for $100. However, the OnLive service itself is free to play online, and you all have to do on a PC & Mac is download the free application. Thankfully, the adaptor is not required.
OnLive offers a TV Adapter & Gamepad combo for $100.
Even though, I already own a gaming PC, I tried OnLive out on both my main desktop PC and my laptop as well. Though 95% of my gameplay experience, I had zero to few problems while playing. The games are very responsive, and the video quality is good while running a high speed internet connection. On my laptop, I noticed some pixelation and OnLive was constantly saying it had network problems, but this only seemed to happen very rarely. Overall, the service is very smooth, and is perfect for anyone who has interest in the PC platform, and can’t afford to keep upgrading a PC or buying new PCs to play the latest games.
The video quality is certainly something to note. The quality is decent, but not amazing. The games look good, but not nearly as good as they should be. Even though a quality drop in video is rare, the service should at least offer higher resolutions so the games will look better. It feels like its YouTube quality, rather than me actually playing it on my PC or Xbox 360. The only games I tried out were FPS’s which usually require precise control, and all have fast paced gameplay. Though the games I played, I noticed no sort of “lag” and I never died due to a delayed control response or anything like that.
OnLive lets you watch other gamer's play games.
OnLive also lets you watch other players play a game. I noticed that anybody can watch you play a game, which I feel is a little creepy, but it didn’t bother me while I playing my game. OnLive also includes a friend system, and a voice chat system so that you can talk to your friends while they either watch you (or them) play a game or you can play a game together with them.
All in all, I feel that OnLive is a very neat idea. I don’t think many hardcore gamers will like it due to the video quality, but I feel more casual gamers will enjoy it due to being playable on lower end PCs. It’s said that OnLive may be built into some televisions in the future, and will more open up more gamers to the service. The catalog at this time is decent, with nearly two dozen publishers backing the service such as Ubisoft, Epic Games, THQ, Atari, and more. Despite the large support for the service, the game catalog is still rather small, but will likely grow as time goes on. I even saw that new games such as FEAR 3 will be playable on the service once it is released.
OVERALL RATING – 7.5/10
Pros – Can play any game within the catalog on any PC and Mac without having a super gaming PC. Quality is acceptable, and the gameplay is very responsive.
Cons – Video Quality may drop at any given time depending on your connection; video quality isn’t as good as it should be, game catalog doesn’t have many interesting or new games.
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