If you haven’t already heard, Onlive is a cloud-based games system that allows you to play high-end games at 720p resolution on the weakest of PCs with a decent internet connection. This service runs on Windows XP, Vista and & PCs and Macs with OS X 10.5.8 or later.

I tried out the system recently on my 10 Mb virgin business cable connection; little contention, no throttling, packet sniffing or download limits. Be warned, if you don’t have this set-up, your results will vary. OnLive generally recommends 5 Mb or faster, but the minimum sits at 3 Mb; a minimum that is above what most people have.

It’s not a new system, I saw it at GDC 2009 and should have come out in the winter of 2009. It missed that deadline, but now it is up and running, available as both a pure web-based service and as a tiny set-top box for those without a PC at all.

Once you log on, you get a Cooliris type display that allows you to pick a game to demo or pay for. I didn’t buy any games and instead chose a FPS on a time limited preview to test out the system. FPS relies on low lag rates and fast reactive controls to be any fun, and I thought this would be best in trying out the system. There is barely any load time as when you click the screenshot of the game you want to play, it enlarges and after about 5 seconds the game is playable.

It works!
With all the heavy crunching done on Onlive’s servers in the US, the system demands on my laptop were only as much as playing an equivalent sizes video. Lag was not noticeable and the reactions to my key presses were as fast as if it was running on the machine in front of me. I was very impressed by the system and didn’t notice any drawbacks on the hardware/software at all, although there are some things to take into account.

The drawbacks
Payment has to be mentioned here. You can buy access to the game of your choice in a variety of flavours; a 3 day, 5 day or full play pass, which I think means you get to play the game for as long as the service exists. However, none of these options are particularly cheap though. Hawx 2, which is available for peanuts second-hand is $49.99. Patrician. an old strategy game, is $29.99 and even World of Goo is $9.99.

In its defence you can’t compare the shop based price for the Online service, because the shop based price is not inclusive of the high-end hardware you will need to run the top end titles. Considering the service will allow a pretty basic netbook to play Metro 2033, you are seeing a saving of around £600 on the cost of a proper PC to play it.

Also, the service is new, and as such, isn’t generating much traffic. In three years time when we have all downgraded our computers to Atom based, thin PCs and are joining the service at 6pm to get our gaming fix, will there be a network strong enough to support all the data? We are already seeing ISPs throttle and traffic shape our broadband when we use services they consider to be too much of a drain. For example, using torrent software means that your speedy connection gets downgraded to a barely broadband service. Any kind of similar shaping for Online will mean the end of this service, or the need for a premium ‘un-shaped’ service from your ISP (believe me, they are coming).

Not being able to play high-end games has been a reason for me to stay away from getting a tiny atom based PC, but if Onlive can work out a way to bring the prices down and sort out the broadband service, my next PC might be one I could put in my pocket.

This demo drops you straight into the action; fighting off hordes of things that rush at you but have no real clout. After what seems like ages pressing the same button over and over to kill them you are removed from this situation. I will say though, it wasn’t long before I became just a tiny bit irritated by the combat. The AI design seemed unimaginative in that the enemies simply rush towards you, and the danger is not in their weapons, or their skill, but in their number. Although when I say danger, I mean apparent lack of. I couldn’t help but think back to the retro style games where button mashing and pointing in the correct direction was the key to survival. Dante’s Inferno does not even require aim, it seems; If you press (x) and there is an enemy on screen there is a very high chance it will be taken out with no real skill from yourself.

Next I found myself enjoying the minutest bit of platforming ever. I am not going to knock the demo for its length, or lack thereof, but it was only a matter of moments before I was ambushed again. Three minutes in and I was already bored. This did not bode well. As I was now capable of destroying anything in my path (I knew which button ‘attack’ was) my attention turned to the quality of the platforming, the bits that I was presented with that is. At one point the camera angle is so bad you have no idea where your little man is. He could hurl himself into oblivion and you might never know. I couldn’t find a way to alter the camera angle, so cue more eye rolling.

Yes, I'm not really sure what that thing is either.

The demo treats you to a boss battle; Death himself! This battle didn’t pose any real threat, although it was thankfully a little more inspiring than the combat up to this point. I was glad that it wasn’t all the same. Following this particular battle the demo takes you through the skills upgrade system, which looked like fun; I love upgrading myself. Killing the hordes and hordes of faceless baddies earns you their souls to spend on either holy or unholy skills. These skills (which mostly seem to be battle oriented) require sequences of buttons to remember in order to unleash them upon your foes. By this point I am lost somewhere between a vegetative coma and terminal inertia that recalling them in the heat of the moment just is not going to happen. I’ll stick to pressing (x).

You are then treated to a cut-scene in which you get to see your fiancee’s boobs. Great! What I will say, is that Beatrice’s knockers included, (by the way real life Beatrice met real life Dante twice and barely looked at him) the graphics, particularly in the cut-scenes is phenomenal. I mean really, really good. The animation is beautiful, and the use of light is stunning. One image (of a horse’s hoof in a puddle) particularly sticks in my mind. Unfortunately so does the rather horrifying depiction of Dante sewing the cross into his chest. While the graphics overall look stunning, I would take issue with the in-game animations. I get annoyed by a lot of things (as you are no doubt working out) and one of those is on screen sprites continuing to do their ‘running’ animation long after they have hit the wall. Clearly the developers had money in order to make this game look great, so animating the main character so appallingly smacks of laziness.

The sound is a mixed bag; one the one hand, the score works really very well, and is the sort of music I would be likely to purchase. On the other hand the voice acting is rather terrible, and very bland. Dante (who is annoyingly given an American accent) sounds like an announcer for that horrible fake wrestling. I could get bored with him very quickly. Oh, and I did.

So guess what? I won’t be buying this game, even though it is basically a mix of The Legend of Zelda, Prince of Persia, a bit of God of War and some medieval literature (on paper, that sounds just about perfect). I’d really like to like this game, but the demo was enough to really put me off; I feel it is such a wasted opportunity. I tell you there will a very unhappy Bryony if anyone ever makes a game of The Iliad and treats it with this much contempt.