I first heard about the cloud-based streaming game service OnLive at PAX 2009 although I did not give it much credence as I was not yet into PC gaming beyond Neverwinter Nights. I admit that I did not fully understand cloud gaming in 2009 and had not really thought about it until Google Stadia was announced in June 2019, but by then I was fully invested in the Switch and was already finding that I was spending significantly fewer hours playing in front of a computer screen. When Amazon announced Luna as their cloud gaming option, I did sign up for their beta testing but was only able to participate in this weeklong trial period. For me, this lasted from Friday, November 20th, through Thursday, November 26th.
The first thing I did on Luna's information page was look up information about controller options. Luna has their own dedicated controller, which looks remarkably like the Switch controller (which in-turn looks similar to the Xbox 360 controller) and is heavily marketed as the best option for playing games on Amazon's service. Luna is also compatible with the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 controllers (with future support for the Xbox X and PS5 controllers), but none of the other controllers I have, wireless or otherwise ended up being compatible: Steam Controller, Xbox 360 Wired, Switch Pro. This meant that I was relegated to using mouse/keyboard for any and all games I wanted to play, which is not necessarily a bad thing. I had not thought that this would actually limit the number of games that I would be able to play, but that did end up being the case. Something else that I think might be controller related, but cannot be for sure as I could not find any information on any of Luna's pages, was if the controller was capable of taking screenshots and if this was the only way using Luna's client. I tried the usual F12 and nothing happened and even pressing the Print Screen button only worked to pull the image from the submit feedback page (apart from the one time it worked on Everspace's title screen.
The other thing with the Luna controller was that you were required to download a separate "Luna Controller app" to log in/connect your Luna controller with your account and computer. I guess. This all seems needlessly complicated just to get a controller hooked up to your computer, but I have never tried a cloud-based game streaming service so maybe this is something that just has to happen if you want to be able to play on your computer, through your TV using an Amazon Fire stick, or play on your phone. And maybe because there is integration with Amazon's Alexa devices there is the need for additional connections. What do I know? I only got a smartphone in 2012.
After looking up information on the controller options, after downloading the Luna client, I glanced over the games that came with the basic $5.99/month service since I was not a paying subscriber to Ubisoft's service which you can link to Luna and play those games with this client (instead?). The first two games that caught my eye were Control, and Metro Exodus. I had previously tried Control Ultimate Edition - Cloud Version on the Switch last month (article on that pending) so I liked that I had that experience to compare this one to. I also made sure that I tried a couple of games that I felt would be difficult to play without a controller such as the Castelvania Anniversary Collection, Contra Anniversary Collection, and more recently, Blasphemous. I probably also could have tried ABZU as I had just recently played it on the Switch (article coming soon) so that play experience was fresh in my mind, and I have also played RiME and the first Steam World Dig, but those were a few years ago and I last played Lumines about a decade back on the PSP. The point being, Control seemed like the primary game to entice people to at the very least, test drive Luna being a game that they may not have already played or to see how well cloud-based game streaming would work for them.
I was a bit surprised when I tried the Castlevania collection as I was told that the game was designed for a controller and that I would not be able to play it if I did not have a compatible controller connected. This quickly put a bad taste in my mouth since I could still play Blasphemous, although not very well because it is a side-scrolling platformer that was designed with a controller in mind, I was still allowed to play. Right off the bat, that there would be games that I was forbidden from playing because I did not have the correct input device (a Luna, Xbox One, or PS4 controller), was not a positive experience. And this is different than trying to boot up a game on Steam that requires the Vive or being upset that I cannot play Skyrim VR on my Switch, this was an active choice by either Konami or Amazon to not allow their game to be played when you can very well play these with a keyboard, albeit I could not play them very well. Because of this, I thought (although did not confirm) that I would not be able to play Steam World Dig 2, River City Girls, or Shantae & the Pirate's Curse.
But I did play a handful of games that I felt would help give me a taste for what Luna would be like if I decided to ultimately describe so I started off with Control, GRID, Everspace, and Metro Exodus. When I started Control, I went to the settings screens as I was not greeted with the option to decide how I wanted to play as I had with the Switch edition, if I wanted to have the game focus on performance with downgraded graphics, or have the best graphics with decreased performance. I did not see this option in Control or any of the other games that I was able to play, which I feel should be an option for a cloud-based game streaming service. When I started, I also made sure that there were no other devices actively using the internet; this was before Conklederp was awake and I was not streaming music through our Dot. Control played alright, kind of, but it did not feel better than when I played on the Graphics Setting on the Switch. The gameplay felt like there were significant drops in fps (well below 30) and the cinematics was a bit choppy while the audio sounded a little buzzy. With GRID, I felt that this game was not suited for keyboard/mouse, or at least as well as my experience trying Assassin's Creed and Dark Souls without a controller. Most of the default keybindings did not feel intuitive and I spent a lot of time tweaking the controls, playing the game, going back to move around keybindings again, and so on. I also experienced similar gameplay issues with GRID as I did with Control and Everspace. Everspace was kind of a mixed bag in that the first time I played there felt like there was lag between button presses, slow down when there was more than one enemy on the screen at a time, which is a big issue with an outer space shooter, and also that the game was difficult to play with kb/m. On a second run, I felt more comfortable but still experienced some fps drops and about the same latency issues. Oddly enough, Blasphemous also gave me some issues with lagging inputs, buzzy sound, and a few times there were latency issues with the fps dropping then ramping up for a half-second to catch up, but I was able to defeat the first boss at least. I ended up stopping with Blasphemous because I will probably pick it up on the Switch and did not want to spoil too much.
The only game that played well for me was Metro Exodus although having recently played the first two Wolfenstein games on PC with screen-tearing from 1/3 to 1/2 of the screen, I might already be accustomed to a playable game while experiencing somewhat severe technical limitations. I had never played a game in the Metro series and I realize that this was to test the system and not just to play games, but playing a first-person shooter that was released almost two years ago seemed like a good test and the experience was fun enough that I decided to pick up the first game in the series on GOG since the copy I have on Steam was having technical issues.
Over the course of the seven days that the free trial lasted, there were a couple of additional games added to Luna's library (I did not make note of the additional games, and these of course do not include the games that you buy or rent out to play that are not included with the subscription fee), although again I cannot say what was included and/or added to the Ubisoft+ library. I did not play as many games as I had wanted to test and looking over everything that was being offered on Luna, I really only felt that Control, and (maybe?) Metro: Exodus were the big draws, but that is just my perspective. If you had a controller I imagine that there would be more games that would be appealing like the Yooka-Laylee games or River City Girls. What I find interesting though, based off of the compatible controllers, is who the targeted market for Luna is for. If someone already has the Xbox or PS controller, there is a good chance that they either already have a number of the offered games or even one of the subscription services offered by Microsoft or Sony. It really feels like this service is directed towards people who do not already have either a gaming level PC (like me), do not have a home console already (not me), or who are just getting into video games and not sure how/where to start (again, not me). I could be very wrong with my criteria but based off of the game selection, the controller requirements, the overall interest in video games, and the lack of options to customize the playing experience based on the strength of our in-home WiFi, I feel that I am not the target audience for Luna.
This was only my own experience and yours could very well be different enough to encourage you to sign up for their service which is reasonably well priced at $5.99/month, but I would highly recommend giving the service a weeklong test to see if it right for you. The concept is appealing but with our current setup and how the games handled on our WiFi (and again, lack of streaming options), I decided to cancel the service before it auto-renewed. I do really love the idea of streaming games since my laptop most likely would not be able to run current games like DOOM Eternal, but there really needs to be more customization options for how the games are streamed before it is going to be as accessible as those companies focusing their energies really want it to be. At least as accessible for us anyway.
~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
Ye Banished One of Endless Thirst
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