Tech Olive

When OnLive was first announced last year, I was quite intrigued by how it worked. If you happened to be left in the dark, OnLive is a cloud-based gaming service, which streams games to your computer. This means that every frame and every button command you press all goes through the internet tubes to Onlive’s servers and back, without using much of your computer’s resources. This means that users who want to game, but don’t have a super-awesome gaming rig will actually have a fighting chance with this new service. However, does OnLive fit the bill? Does it perform admirably? Does it prove as a worthy alternative for poor gamers? Come with us to find out!

On top of the unique way that OnLive works, it can be used on both PCs and Macs. So Mac users now have another service that they can use other than Steam to fulfill their gaming needs. OnLive works over either a wired connection (recommended) or WiFi (currently in beta). The service works on Windows 7, Vista, or XP and Mac users must be running at least Mac OS X 10.5.8 (10.6 recommended). You also have to have at least a 3mbps internet connection in order to use OnLive, but 5mbps is recommended.

Setting up and installing OnLive was pretty simple and easy. After my account was set up, All I had to do was download and install the OnLive Launcher, then I was set to go for the OnLive experience. The menus were excellent eye candy and were pretty easy to navigate. I really liked how all of the surroundings are different games being played. This is a big part of the all-around great looks.

The main menu currently contains eight different sub menus: Arena, Profile, Marketplace, My Games, Friends, Brag Clips, Last Played, and Coming Soon.

The “Arena” is where you can spectate other OnLive gamers even if they’re playing a game that you don’t own. You can simply jump right in and watch them play without any loading screens whatsoever.

The “Profile” section is pretty self-explanatory. This is where you can view your friends list, send/receive messages, as well as make changes to your settings such as audio, video, and controls.

The “Marketplace” is where you purchase all of your games. You can scroll through the almost 30 games currently available (more on the selection later) and when you click on one, it will take you to the game’s page where more info will be presented such as trailers, Arena, Brag Clips (more on that later as well), and even the Metascore of the game if it’s available.

“My Games” is also pretty self-explanatory. This section simply lists all of the games that you own in the same way that the Marketplace lists the games available.

The “Friends” menu is where all of your friends are listed. If you don’t know anyone personally that uses OnLive, you can easily take a trip to the Arena or Brag Clips area and find a friend there. You can spectate a player or watch a brag clip of theirs and if you like their playing style for whatever reason, you can request them as a friend right there on the spot. It’s a great way to quickly make new friends in the gaming community. You can also add a thumbs up or thumbs down while you’re viewing gameplay (or as OnLive calls it: Cheers or Jeers).

“Brag Clips” are simply videos that gamers record and then post up for others to see. I’ve noticed the clips are limited to ten seconds, which isn’t a lot of time. What it does is record your gameplay at all times, so if you did something amazing in a game, you immediately press Alt+B and OnLive will turn the last ten seconds into a Brag Clip. You’re also limited to only 15 Brag Clips. So any new clips that you record, older ones will automatically be deleted.

The “Last Played” menu will automatically launch you into the last game you were playing. If you left off at a certain point, that’s where you will be put back into the game.

“Coming Soon” gives you the scoop on upcoming games that will be delivered to OnLive gamers in the future. When you click on an upcoming game, the trailer will pop up and automatically play.

Let’s talk about some of the flaws of the OnLive service. First and foremost, the graphics weren’t anything terrific. They’re capped at 720p (1280×720), so if you have a large 22-inch monitor with a 1680×1050 resolution, maximizing the gameplay window will only make it worse. The quality simply looks like a streamed video that you would find on UStream or other live video streaming service. It only makes sense, though, since OnLive is, in fact, a streaming service.

Below is a screenshot comparison of the graphics quality between MLB 2K10 on OnLive (left) and the same game played locally (right). Not only is there a huge difference in color quality, but if you look towards the outfield at the advertisements on the scoreboard, you’ll notice a big difference in clarity.

(Click for larger view)

The game selection is kind of weak, but I expect that to change over time. OnLive is only a few months old and they’re always advertising new games coming soon to the service (hence, the dedicated Coming Soon section mentioned earlier). However, it’s really sporadic as far as the different options for purchasing a game. Some games will have 3-day, 5-day, and Full passes, as well as a free demo to play. Other games will only have a Full pass to purchase and no demo, and some will only have a demo available. This gets kind of frustrating when a game you want to play only has a demo available.

Another thing was the connection issues. Before I talk about that though, I want to make it clear that I have a 25mbps fiber optic connection. This is over eight times faster than the minimum speed required to use OnLive (3mbps). I was constantly getting warnings of my connection being too weak, which resulted in a ton of lag. I’m not talking about button lag either (that actually wasn’t an issue). I’m talking about the video stream glitching and skipping like crazy at times. It made the action games simply unplayable. I even got kicked off of OnLive once because it said my connection was below the minimum requirement speed.

I did like how my Xbox 360 controller was fully compatible with OnLive from the start. That’s a plus.

In the end, OnLive is simply a service for those that can do some gaming on their not-so-gaming-friendly machine. They might not mind that the graphics are only sub-par or that the selection of games is mediocre at best. They might just want the opportunity to play a video game and just have fun, but if they’re going to be paying a monthly fee (no monthly fee anymore, as of 10/4/10) for the service on top of the price for the games, they should get quality service.

Score: 6 Olives

Full Disclosure: OnLive gave us a “Reviewer Account.” This means that we got to try out the service as well as play any games for no charge, which is why in some of the screenshots above, the prices for the games are shown as “$0.00″. This will not be the case for regular users.