My Half Year Review of Google Stadia (2020)

For the last 8 or so months I've had access to Google's Brand New Stadia cloud gaming platform. Whilst the echo chamber of twitter has seemingly already written off of this new platform as dead before it's even a year old Stadia has actually been quietly and steadily growing, improving and becoming a small but very tight knit community to the gamers that have given it a fair chance.

So with that being said i am going to give my own personal thoughts on a few key areas at this yearly half way point, is it good? is it bad? is it somewhere in the middle? lets begin...

How does it feel to play?

The first thing an internet troll will say about Stadia is "Theres too much lag, it will never work" and on the whole i massively disagree with this statement. I have a modest internet set up in my city centre apartment, nothing special, and i have still encountered zero lag or performance issues on the chromecast ultra set up. The games are silky smooth, the UI is fast and the resolution is incredibly stable. TICK right? well, no, sadly. Performance on browser is still spotty at best for me on any of the 3 laptops/towers i have available to me and that's a real shame. I understand the need to use a chrome browser for ease of use but perhaps a more streamlined extension or maybe even a separate downloadable .Exe might serve to iron out a few of the low latency issues that i have encountered so far.

As for the mobile app, its great! Even on low quality internet at the local Cafe's and bars i am able to play fairly consistently stable games with little issue. I still think google would be wise to make something along the line of a controller dock (A controller for your phone to sit in not just the claw!) to make on the go gaming even better but right now the on screen touch controller works fine for most slower games.

Overall, i think Stadia from a tech side has come on leaps and bounds over the last year. Achievements are in, mobile gaming is in, crowd play is very soon, so yeah great stuff!

THE GAMES

This is the hardest section for me to review because it's been good...but also bad. Pro continues to be an excellent value for money with tons of games and deals being drip fed out at a fairly commendable rate. The quality of those games is top notch too, GRID, ESO and Rise of the Tomb Raider are all great additions to any library and the smattering of smaller titles such as the Steamworld Collection, Serious Sam and Spitlings rounds out the service nicely.

So where's the bad?.... Well.... There still isn't that 1 game that you HAVE to play on Stadia. Xbox had Halo, Playstation had MGS/FFVII, Nintendo had Mario and Sega had Sonic. Spitlings and Gylt are fun games but they are not going to persuade hardcore gamers to give up there consoles and buy full priced titles on a cloud service. Google is so close though, if they are able to produce a must play title from Jade Raymond's talented teams then i think the library stands up nicely to its competitors, especially in the cloud gaming sector.

My favourites!

I've played about 20 different titles so far on Stadia and my favourites are mostly the pick up and play titles on offer. Trials Rising was a big surprise for me, I've not played the previous games and thought very little of them but for £8 in a sale i took a gamble and my what a joy. It's simple try, fail, try again gameplay loop suits Stadia's play anywhere tag line perfectly and i think encapsulates the Stadias biggest strengths.

Another standout is the hugely addictive Spitlings. A simple and colourful puzzle game that starts easy and then gets brutal quick. Through its hilarious multiplayer and being a Pro game and you've got arguably Stadia's most fun exclusive game.

Overall i go into the second half of 2020 fairly positive about Stadia's future. They have some questions to answer about commitment, no one trusts Google after all, and desperately need a killer app but as the premiere Cloud gaming service right now, there is no better.