The Platform is NOT As Lacking As I Thought...

Yesterday, I posted about how I felt the Stadia platform was lacking. I was playing from Stadia.com (using Chrome), and I was surprised to see that Destiny, Tomb Raider (the first of the recent series) and Samurai Showdown weren’t rendering in 4K and then subsequently streamed in 4K. It was brought to my attention by a couple posters that using a Chromecast will make things look better and that Chrome doesn’t allow for a 4K stream even if the game were rendered in 4K.

Now, having said that, none of the games I was playing render from the source in 4K, so even if I got a 4K stream it wouldn’t change much. HOWEVER, it was also brought to my attention that there is ONE game on the platform that does render in 4K and it’s Shadow of the Tomb Raider. To test things out more fairly, I got my Stadia controller and Chromecast setup and purchased Shadow of the Tomb Raider.

Here are my thoughts on Shadow of the Tomb Raider -

Pros: - Like all the others, the game opens quickly - The game looks pretty great in performance mode! The stream is clear (maybe a TAD washed out), but still impressive. - Stadia controller latency exists (seems like slightly more input lag than on PC weirdly) but you get used to it and the game is totally playable. - The Stadia controller is far more comfortable than pictures would suggest.

Cons: - I honestly can’t think of anything notable for cons. The game runs shockingly well! Maybe some minor audio lag, but that didn’t feel nearly as obvious as in Destiny. Which brings me to...

Amended thoughts on Destiny 2 -

Pros: - The game opens quickly - Load times are better than PS4 and on par with a PC - Stadia controller input lag felt fine. It was definitely still there (but to be clear, it’s NOT a hindrance)

Cons: - Graphics were...still awful. On Chromecast, the image is so no longer blurry, it’s like someone added a sharpen filter over the whole thing. The aliasing now is out of control. As before, the game also felt less alive like some of the game’s added flourishes were turned off in the graphics settings. There’s no excuse this shouldn’t be running at full 4K with all bells and whistles on. - Audio lag was pretty bad. Nothing less sexy than shooting a gun and hearing the shot after the gun animation is almost over. I’d go so far as to say the audio lag is a hindrance. It’s not something you get used to like the input lag. I really hope Google figures this out.

I walked away from my Stadia controller + Chromecast experience with more optimism. Their state of the art hardware should be sending all of their launch games in 4K at max (or close to max) settings, and it’s a huge shame they’re not. But playing Shadow of the Tomb Raider does absolutely show the potential of the platform.

Overall, the platform is still lacking overall, but there’s definitely enough promise here to keep me intrigued. They need to up their graphic fidelity across all their games and they need to figure out this audio lag issue. I think if they can nail those much sooner than later and start folding in the features they’ve already announced, this could be a very promising endeavor. I’m cautiously optimistic.

Submitted November 22, 2019 at 08:52PM by vgskid https://ift.tt/2rjP8Eo