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The promise of cloud gaming excites me. In this video I offer my initial thoughts on Amazon Luna. I focus mostly on the quality of the streaming experience and how well Luna handles input lag. So this video isn’t going to be a full review of the Luna platform. I’ll have a video for that later where I’ll talk about the user interface, the controller, the features, the cost, the game selection, all that fun stuff. And, I’m also working on a direct comparison of Luna vs Stadia, the two cloud gaming platforms I have the most experience with. Go ahead and subscribe to this channel, and click the bell notification icon to ensure you don’t miss those videos. So, why am I dedicating an entire video just to input latency and stream quality? Why is input lag and streaming quality so important? The easy answer is because input lag and poor streaming quality quite literally break the game. Video games are unique in that they demand skilled user input to function in their world of game rules. If the input is broken, the game is broken. If the input is broken, the rules that govern the game world can no longer be abided by. If the game needs me to time my jump just right but also doesn’t allow me to time my jump just right, the game has lied to me. I don’t like liar games. Same goes for the stream quality. All that crap I just said about breaking the rules and such, that’s all the same when talking about skipped frames due to a poor internet connection. Watch to find out how well Amazon Luna does in terms of input latency and streaming quality.Tag Archives caleb j ross
So let's get the bad news out of the way...well, some of the bad news, anyway. Stadia’s refusal to state November 19th as the Cyberpunk 2077 release date all but confirms for me that the game is not going to launch on the same day-and-date as other major platforms. You are safe for now, PS4 pre-order. Before we go any further, please consider subscribing to this channel for more video game content. I’ve done a lot of Stadia focused content lately, and it’s been really fun. The Stadia community has been incredibly welcoming. So, I’ll probably keep doing Stadia content in addition to my normal non-Stadia content. Yes, the July 14th Stadia Connect has come and gone, and overall, I’m a bit deflated. The number of games was underwhelming. The type of games was underwhelming. And I don’t believe Stadia did much to expand the user-base like I think they…
I just finished playing through a full 15 hour game on Google Stadia. Did the experience turn me into a Stadia believer? This is the longest single-game commitment I’ve made to Stadia. I learned a few things along the way about whether or not Stadia works and if it’s a good option for anyone. In this video I give my thoughts on the controller, the impact of a strong internet connection, the Stadia UI (user interface), and more.
Video games are unique. We’re connected to a video game by an input device, one that maps our thoughts to the actions we see. As we press buttons the feedback changes our approach, our input changes, and the loop continues until we arrive at a win state. No other entertainment medium offers this level of malleability. No other medium wants us to stretch and shape the product to an end while the product stretches and shapes us to that same end. This reciprocal molding is what makes video games uniquely immersive. And this contract between game and player relies heavily on a firm understanding of the ruleset. Most games literally tutorialize to the player. Books don’t tell you how to read. Movies don’t tell you how to watch. Video games tell you how to play. And this simple fact, I think, is why video games have trouble being humorous in their own right.
Eating food while playing video games is a problem that’s existed since the very dawn of video games. Way back in the 1900s, a man named William Higginbotham built the first video game machine called Tennis for Two and it required more than one hand to operate. That creation of tennis for two's two handed control pad seeded an industry trend that continues it's destructive path still today. But not all is lost. Here I present to you a few ways you can play video games while eating.
Video games have a relatively brief, but no less interesting, history of using blood as a character weapon. From Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, to The Binding of Isaac, to Bloodborne, to Death Stranding, and plenty more. The idea of using a person’s own life as a weapon is intriguing. Intriguing enough to make a dumb seven minute video about it.
I haven't touched Google Stadia in a while, but after their recent Google Connect video, I dove back in. I was reminded of a really cool feature: Google Stadia recognizes a variety of different video game controllers without the need to restart games or update drivers (I think this is called hot-swapping). It's pretty cool.