Games Streaming Service, OnLive, Gives You More Ways to Procrastinate

What happens when you want to take a break on your laptop or netbook? Don’t like cheap, free, Flash games from Miniclip and Addicting Games.com? The service OnLive, which streams games over your Internet service provider, gives you a nice list of games to play without taking up hard drive space.

What most people were worried about is the lack of games. Starting with only around ten titles, OnLive has added the likes of games such as NBA 2K11,  Kane, and Lynch: Dog Days. Other games include Just Cause 2, MLB 2K10, Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell, and Red Faction Guerrilla. If those don’t appeal to you, don’t worry, as new games are being added weekly.

The interface of the service looks great, including many different  categories to satisfy your game hunger when you don’t exactly feel like playing games. One of these categories is Brag Clips, where you get to watch pwnage and ownage moments from other players. There is the Arena, where you can watch other people playing the games that they’re playing. This is useful if you would like to find out what a game is like before purchasing it, or if you’re just bored.

Since OnLive doesn’t take up any hard drive space, and games are streamed, a few problems result from this. In NBA 2K11 and NBA 2K10, I experienced a few dropouts on specific times. I emailed their customer support, who said that they would fix the problem, but it still happens. Another annoyance, especially for online gamers, is that it’s really hard to find an online partner to play with while using OnLive. The problem for this is that OnLive online games only allow you to play online with people who are also using OnLive. Bummer.  Also, when the service is open, it makes Internet browsing considerably slower for others using the same network, which can be kind of an annoyance.

If you’re wondering, you can use OnLive using an XBOX controller. And, if you’re wondering in the picture above what the OnLive MicroConsole is, that’s basically just a console that enables you to run OnLive on your TV. Overall, even with its slight problems, OnLive is still really cool to play. Games that I hadn’t even heard about, such as Just Cause 2 and Mafia 2, and proving to be some of my favorite games yet. Even though some games have dropouts (rarely), and it kills your internet bandwith while playing, it doesn’t matter too much. The next step to becoming a premier service? Getting Black Ops.